Oldest Human DNA in North America Found in Oregon

Long before it was dry sagebrush desert, Central Oregon was underwater, and that submerged landscape may be exactly why it keeps producing some of the oldest evidence of human life anywhere in the Americas.

A Summer in the Sagebrush

Archaeology students from the University of Oregon just wrapped up another season near Fort Rock in Lake County, camping for a month alongside students from other universities and members of local tribal nations. The work is part of the Northern Great Basin Collaborative Archaeology Field School, co-led by University of Oregon professor Katelyn McDonough and University of Nevada-Reno professor Geoff Smith. Fort Rock itself, a towering volcanic formation that rises abruptly out of the desert, actually formed as a wave-battered shoreline feature sometime between 1.6 million and 16,000 years ago, back when a deep lake still covered the basin. As that lake gradually dried out over thousands of years, the once-marshy landscape became the dusty sagebrush plain visitors see today.

The Oldest DNA in North America

This part of Oregon already holds a major distinction in American archaeology. In the early 2000s, a University of Oregon field school working at the Paisley Caves in Lake County recovered human DNA that remains the oldest ever found in North America, dating back approximately 14,300 years. A separate field school working near Burns in 2012 found stone tools that could turn out to be even older, potentially dating back at least 18,000 years if researchers confirm the age, which would make them the oldest tools ever found anywhere in the Americas.

Rewriting How People Reached the Americas

Findings like these have steadily undermined the long-standing theory that the first Americans arrived by walking through an ice-free corridor that opened in the ice sheet covering Canada around 13,000 years ago. Evidence from Central Oregon, along with similar discoveries elsewhere, is thousands of years older than that model allows, suggesting people were already present in the Americas well before that corridor existed.

Eighty New Sites, No Digging Required

Rather than concentrating on a single excavation this year, the field school shifted its focus toward reading the broader landscape, studying how the environment, waterways, plants, and animal populations changed over thousands of years. Using these landscape-interpretation methods, students identified 80 archaeological sites, ranging from ice age obsidian projectile points to turn-of-the-century homesteads. University of Oregon senior Hayden Richards and his classmates also learned to knap obsidian into projectile points themselves, using techniques that predate the pyramids of Giza by thousands of years, a hands-on approach McDonough said helps students develop a sharper eye for spotting genuine artifacts in the field.

Whose Ancestors Are These?

Geoff Smith says his research increasingly points toward continuity rather than replacement: the people who lived in Central Oregon at least 14,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of Native American communities living in the region today. Perry Chocktoot, director of culture and heritage for the Klamath Tribes, visited the field school this year to share knowledge that he says has often been overlooked in archaeological research, particularly regarding stone rock features found across the American West. Built to mark personal and spiritual milestones, from a successful hunt to a young person’s coming of age, these features vary enormously depending on who made them and are considered sensitive; Chocktoot has asked that people avoid photographing or disturbing them. The Klamath Tribes also maintain an oral history describing the eruption of Mount Mazama roughly 7,700 years ago, the same event that created the caldera now known as Crater Lake. Chocktoot said growing collaboration between indigenous knowledge holders and academic archaeologists over recent years has been an encouraging development, one he hopes will continue to expand protections for these sites and traditions.

Sources

This report draws on original reporting by Skeet Starr for the Redmond Spokesman, including interviews with field school researchers and Klamath Tribes traditional practitioner Perry Chocktoot.