Scientists investigating a cave system in Oregon came across what they describe as the oldest known artifact in the America. Preliminary analysis indicates that the scraper-like tool belonged to a group of people that lived 14, 230 years ago, adding further substance to the idea that the widespread Clovis culture, which dominated North America between 12,900 and 12,400 years ago, was not the first population group to occupy this land. Archaeologist Dennis Jenkins, an expert at the University of Oregon in Eugene (UO), was the leader of the new research, Nature News reports.

“We had bumped into a lot of extinct horse, bison and camel bone – then I heard and felt the familiar ring and feel when trowel hits bone. I switched to a brush. Soon this huge bone emerged, then I saw the serrated edge. I stepped back and said: 'Hey everybody – we got something here,” says of the discovery team member Kevin Smith, who is now a master's student at the California State University in Los Angeles. The bones were discovered in a cave system near the town of Paisley, in south-central Oregon. The finds were presented by Jenkins in a UO lecture last month.

There is still no way of knowing if the artifact belonged to the Clovis culture or to individuals that lived before that. The scrapper had none of the traditional features that all other Clovis artifacts have, which threw the archaeologists off-balance. The distinct fluted spears and arrow points that are characteristic to America's first large civilization were not discovered at the location. Still, “they can't yet rule out the Paisley Cave people weren't Clovis,” UP archaeologist Jon Erlandson adds. He was not a part of the new investigation.

There were those who dispute the finds when they were first announced, the UO team says. The caves were first investigated a couple of years ago, but the evidence uncovered at the time, which hinted at the fact that it was the oldest archaeological digs site in the Americas, were widely disregarded. The new discoveries, which were made in the correct sediment layer, support the previous hypothesis, and clearly designate the Paisley Caves as one of the most important monuments and study sites of American anthropology.