Siberia to America 400 kya? Very Possible

In my last two posts, I mentioned two Siberina sites that are over 400,000 years old, one is Diring Yuirakh, the other is Karama, both had been originally dated at over 1.5 million years (My), an age that was later revised to a more recent 400 to 800 kya.

These people were not modern humans, our lineage originated 300,000 years ago. They were either Denisovans (who lived in East Asia), Neanderthals on their easternmost reaches, or the predecessor of both groups, Homo heidelbergensis, the tools discovered at both sites are primitive cobble sytle stone tools, older than the Acheulean used by Homo erectus and the Mousterian of the Neanderthals (We don't have tools used by Denisonvans), these Siberian tools resemble the Oldowan industry used in Africa over 2 My ago. These sites could also have belonged to H. erectus, who arrived in Eurasia around 2 My ago.

The sites, located in Siberia, in a cold and harsh region suggest that those who lived there were well adapted to the tough climate. They must have mastered fire, used warm clothes, built decent shelters, and had a good knowledge of their environment. They could have survived futher east and north, all the way to Bering Strait, and beyond.

Could they have advanced and reached America?

In my post on Diring Yuriakh and its age, I mentioned the work of John D. Janssen et al., 2024 (Redrawing early human dispersal patterns with cosmogenic nuclide, EGU24-4168, updated on 08 Mar 2024. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4168 EGU General Assembly 2024) which dated the site using a method known as cosmogenic dating. It found its was ancient: "417 ± 82 ka, which is at least 300 kyr earlier than the previously documented earliest human presence north of 60 degrees."

Unsurprisingly, John Janssen is well aware of the implications of this finding regarding the occupation of Siberia at an early date, and the possibility that these people reached Beringia, crossed Bering Strait, and populated America 400,000 years ago. Janssen considers it feasible, and mentions it, as you can see in this video (starting at 21:50 min), where he presentatst the paper at the EGU 2024 conference. The following image is a still from the Video, and its text is "DIRING YURIKAH, Arctic Siberia, •61°N, limits of homo erectus? •early entry to North America?"

Video still, J. Janssen presentation. Notice the text! which reads: "Early entry to North America?"

In this video, Janssen describes his work on dating ancient sites in Eurasia using the cosmogenic method (that measures the concentrations of rare isotopes that are produced when cosmic rays hit rocks on the surface of the soil. The longer they are exposed, the higher the concentration, which serves as an indicator of its age).

But, at 25:27, the video gets interesting, when discussing the Siberian sites, so close to the Arctic, and America, Janssen states that:

"at the second site Diring we find humans very far north very much earlier than previously thought now nothing older than about 45,000 years ago has been reported from a range of Arctic sites closer to the Arctic Ocean and we see two dimensions to this. Firstly once Out of Africa around about 2.5 million years, say, humans moved Eastward remarkably quickly people were already at Shang Shen as you can see there in the map on the L Plateau by around 2.1 million and they reached Java in the tropical southeast Asia by around 1.5 million years ago now by this time humans were colonizing vast areas of mid to low latitude Eurasia and exploiting habitats as diverses temperate grasslands and tropical rainforests but then it took another million years or more quite a bit more for people to move as far north... and the other point to note here is that while of course there was still around 2,000 km from the Bering Strait it remains possible that people crossed in into North America well before the earliest widely accepted timing which at this point is still around about four 14,000 years ago now I should add there's there's not yet any genomic support for this early colonization idea so it seems that if any very early groups did cross uh into North America they failed to leave a genetic Trace in other words they they must have gone extinct. So what could have motivated these intrepid people to migrate into the chilly Arctic around 400,000 years ago here's one explanation of course earth's climate is always fluctuating and we think humans exploited a time of extraordinary warmth in the Arctic during what we call Super interglacial stage 11 that's this gray band shown in the plot there 9 and as shown by the green spike in the biological productivity in the Arctic there was really no better time in the past 1 million years to do so and this timing is also very interesting for another reason 400,000 years ago coincides with the suggested split in the neander and denisovan lineages. Denisovans are another yet another kind of archaic human and it's been shown by others that there probably exists a super archaic species known not from fossils but from DNA found in the sediments at the basal sediments of the Denisova cave in in the Altai. So I said before that we don't really know, uh, who these people were but there is an intriguing possibility that the Diring migrants were actually a group of archaic humans, uh, predating the Denisovans whose ancestry we only know thanks to work on the denisovan genome."

I am thrilled that a mainstream scholar suggested that Homo erectus people moved across Bering and entered America around 400,000 years ago. The lack of genetic imprint in the current Amerindians may not mean that they went extinct. Perhaps they left their admixed genes in the Native Americans but the "Great Dying" wiped this signal away when over 90% of the natives died following the contact with Europeans after 1492.

Other Scholars Who Have Suggested an Early Peopling of America

My research into Siberian sites led me to discovering some Russian academics and archaeologists mostly unknown to Western mainstream media. Sure, Western specialists in this field must know them, but I haven't seen them cited in the papers I have read about the subject, so maybe they are dismissed.

One of these scientists is Yuri A. Mochanov. I came across a review of his book Archaeology, the Paleolithic of Northeast Asia, a Non-Tropical Origin for Humanity, and the Earliest Stages of the Settlement of America, that he coauthored with Svetlana A. Fedoseeva, Richard L. Bland, and Roy L. Carlson. The review can be accessed in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology (Reviews, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2008), pp. 285-288. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41103634). The reviewer, Christy G. Turner II, mentions that "In 2001, I was much impressed, but not convinced, by Mochanov's arguments for a much earlier colonization of the New World than Clovis-era people. This discussion lasted long into the night in an Irkutsk hotel room, with Olga Pav- lova translating and Svetlana Fedoseeva, Mochanov's wife, offering frequent comments... Mochanov and Fedoseeva's work at Diring was the first to demonstrate that hominids were in Siberia long before Neandertals and modern humans arrived. Various dates for Diring and the chopper-chopping tool nature of the Diring artifacts hint at groups of East Asian Homo erectus roaming far north of those whose remains were found at the Lower Cave of Zhoukoudian near Beijing, China (about 40° N latitude)."

Feidel S., 2000 cites Mochanvov and then elaborates on his hypothesis of an early peopling of America:

"Yuri Mochanov, have been regarded skeptically, but thermoluminescence dates now suggest an age between 260,000 and 370,000 B.P.for this site, at 61°N latitude (Waters et al., 1997). If Middle Pleistocene hominids were capable of survival so far north, what would have prevented them from crossing Beringia and entering the Americas at a comparably early date (Butzer, 1991, p. 140)? Perhaps Homo erectus did get into the New World, but there is no acceptable archaeological evidence of a mid-Pleistocene human presence. However, Bryan (1978) photographed and described a poorly provenienced H. erectus-like cranium that subsequently disappeared from the Brazilian museum, where it had been stored. [see my post on this skull and also an article by Bryan, 1984, with pictures of the skull] Also in Brazil, a few alleged pebble tools have been reported from Level IV of Esperança Cave, associated with fossil bones dated to ca. 295,000 B.P. by the uranium–thorium method (de Lumley et al., 1988; see Lynch, 1990, for a skeptical assessment). If 250,000-year-old human occupation sites exist in the Americas, they should be as recognizable and recoverable as Old World sites of this age... there has been little controversy about Australian sites with relatively crude toolkits dating earlier than 30,000 years ago, Beaton (1991, p.213)..."

Regarding this final comment, I must point out that archaeologists in America are skeptical about ancient sites, they don't look for them, and ignore them or consider the tools geofacts or made by monkeys (see Coutouly, 2021 as an example). This has been pointed out by archaeologists like Boëda, 2014 who notes that "All sites predating 13,000 years ago are rejected, including by the discoverers themselves. This rejection applies equally to sites in North and South America, with arguments that the artifacts are not of human origin and/or that the stratigraphy is inconsistent and/or that the dating is insufficient, etc. The paradigm is all-powerful. Perhaps most surprising is that the scientific criteria required to validate the oldest remains are far from being as systematically applied to more recent sites. Similarly, upon reading these criticisms, it appears that some of them stem more from a principled opposition to the dominant model than from a scientific discussion presenting arguments and counter-arguments." (I have already posted about the opposition by Clovis-first supporters against older sites and an early peopling of America).

Regarding the remark by Beaton, 1991, his work compares the peopling of Australia and America, the attitudes of archaeologists in both regions, and discusses the different populating strategise. He is an inmpartial observer, not influenced by the Clovis notions, he is critical in his observations, and remarks that "The idea of truly Early Man in the Americas is an exciting one, as it would imply immigration of pre-sapiens Homo and the very strong likelihood of failed colonization and the first evidence for the extinction of Homo on a continental-sized land mass. For the uncommitted observer, however, as interesting as such biogeographic phenomena might be, they do not in themselves make a case for Early Man in America, and the presentation of evidence in support of Early Man is itself not convincing." I agree, strict methodology, and structuring the evidence is critical in supporting and building the case for a very early peopling of America. Borrero, 2015 admits that "Sadly, information for South America is still not always efficiently produced. Ambiguous but ambitious claims from places like Arroyo Vizcaíno, in Uruguay, or Vale da Pedra Furada in Brazil, are still prominen."

Beaton also puts forward an intelligent question that is thought provoking: "Australia and the Americas... were the recipients of the last continental colonizations. This occurred at roughly the same time in human history, and the source for the colonists was roughly the same. Yet, in the space of 40 (or so) thousand years, these continents became the stages for the playing out of very different cultural evolutionary trajectories. It is not a trivial question to ask how this came about.
In the Americas, archaeologists appear to take cultural differentiation at face value and do not question how it might be that in the space of a few hundred miles Great Basin hunters remained so apparently distant in cultural morphology from the fishers of the northwest coast. While the answer might seem terribly obvious that living in a high desert is quite a different matter from living on a very wet coast, Australianists could point to equally wet-dry environment zones, of equal nearness, where no such cultural differentiation occurred. Australianists might view their prehistoric record as indicating distinctive regional cultural differences, but the scale of these differences is intracontinental and takes on a very different coloration when compared with complexities in cultural morphologies in the Americas. One research problem that would appear to benefit greatly from an intercontinental perspective is that of colonization. Questions relating to foraging patterns, colonizing strategy, population history, and cultural evolution may be better phrased, and ultimately understood, for each continent with consideration of the other."

Beaton points out the incongruences: "Australianists will be equally impressed by the lack of credible pre-13,000-15,000 B.P. sites in the Americas. But if claims for sites of such an age are to be preferred by the "Early Man" and "pre Clovis" schools, then does this imply Homo erectus in the New World and extinctions of some early colonists? And how can it possibly be that so many of the claims for early dates come from sites in South America? Australianists might also be interested to hear from the American conservative school on the subject of how it is that in the space of only 13,000-15, 000 years the Americas, at the continental scale, have witnessed such extraordinarily high degrees of cultural experimentation and differentiation. What factors might account for this? Population, environment, unrestrained social vitalism?"

This criticsm prods both Clovis-firsters and those supporting a pre-Clovis peopling of America to up their game, improve their methods, strategies, and review or revamp their hypothesis.

The diversity of languages is a great point (See my posts on this matter), how did America develop such a variety in such a short span of time?

Regarding pre-sapiens presence, almost all genetic studies are below par. They usually include proxies for genuine Amerindians with people of mixed origins like a Peruvian from Lima (PEL), Colombian from Medellin (CLM), Mexican from Los Angeles (MXL), or a Puertorican (PUR) which also carry European and African admixture. Some studies ignore America altogether considering it recently populated. Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression is assumed to have been brought from Asia. The alternative, that Neanderthals or Denisovans reached America and admixed there with modern humans is not even considered. Conclusions are therefore based on limited data, tainted data, or prejudiced hypothesis. Every paper about Amerindians, their genetics, and diseases always points out their recent origin and European and African admixture. I doubt that any scientist has tried to identify markers that could have introgressed into genuine Amerindians before the European discovery of 1492, and the slave trade from Africa that began shortly after. If we can pinpoint bases in our DNA strands inherited 30,000 years ago from Denisovans, that in turn added some bases they got from mating with H. erectus, how can't we distinguish between recent and ancient European or African admixture?

And when it comes to the sites themselves, just one look at the scale of excavations undertaken in Siberia at the Diring Yuirakh site, moving several meters of topsoil, or the deep bit dug at Karama, I insist, once again, that nobody digs deep enough to find Early Pleistocene sites in America.

Mental blocks and prejudice also damage the cause of an early peopling of America. For instance, take the folliwng comment by Borrero, 1991: "ancient Korean industries have been invoked to justify the morphology of the material recovered in northeastern Brazil. The argument maintains that "The cobble industries that persisted in East Asia for more than a million years reflect original technological solutions" (Boéda et al. 2013: 446) and that the case of Boqueirão in Brazil is similar. One problem with this argument is that it was not Homo sapiens who produced the cobble industries throughout that period, which implies a completely different reality (Dennell 2009; Rabett 2012). Ultimately, the comparison with Korea is irrelevant." As you can appreciate Borrero does not admit that cobble-making non-sapiens people could have reached America and used this lithic industry in Brazil. So, yes, the comparison with Korea is relevant.

Returning to Butzer, 1984 he admits that it was "techincally" feasible for humans to have moved "from Asia into more productive regions of the New World for tens of millennia prior to 30,000 B.P." so the idea itself is acceptable. The problem is the evidence: "But the coeval record of prehistoric settlement in eastern and northern Asia is poor (Aigner 1981, 1984; Wu and Olsen 1985; Ikawa-Smith 1978; Aikens and Higuchi 1982; Larichev et al. 1987), and there still is no convincing record of such antiquity in Canada or the United States." He goes on, accepting the possibility of a Mid-Wisconsinan (~50-25 kya) entry into America "Human groups, physically less advanced than modem Homo sapiens peoples and with an unsophisticated middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) technology, settled the European tundra to within close proximity of the ice fronts in both western and eastern Europe (e.g., Butzer 1986; Hoffecker 1987). Several late Acheulian sites were already located in tundra environments. Sites of such age have been found in caves, in the former floodplains of small streams, as well as in valley-margin deposits of colluvial loess. Unless we are unwilling to ascribe similar mental and cultural capacities to East and North Asian peoples during early and mid-Wisconsinan time, it is possible, even plausible, that they did penetrate the New World under harsh climatic conditions."

Butzer offers many interesting tips on locating older sites, and calculates how scarece they are. It is an interesting paper that is worth reading.

Closing comments

It is encouraging to see that the tide is changing. An early presence of humans (Denisovans or even Homo erectus) in Siberia half a million years ago shows that they were capable of living in the harsh and freezing conditions of the northeastern limits of Eurasia. At that time, America and Asia were linked (during the successive ice ages) by viable land bridges with fauna that would have enabled them to walk across it and, leaving Asia, enter America.

The high prevalence of a Denisovan genetic imprint in Amerindians may be a sign of their survival over hundreds of thousands of years in the New World, and their intermingling, within the Americas, with the Homo sapiens latecomers.

My next post will look into this possibility

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Karama site in Siberia: 500-800 ky old

Following yesterday's post on a site known a Diring Yuriakh in northeastern Siberia that is 400,000 years old, today's post will look at another ancient Siberian site known as Karama which is just 15 km (less than 10 miles) from the famous Denisova Cave in the Altai.

The map shows the main sites in the Altai region, the red arrows mark Karama, and Denisova Cave.

Non-sapiens humans lived there 400,000 - 800,000 years ago

According to an online article this region, at that time had a relatively benign climate, and a forest cover with animal resources that favored settling there. But these were not modern human beings (we appeared ~300,000 years ago), these people were possibly Denisovans, Neanderthals, or even their predecessors, H. heidelbergensis or Homo erectus who fashioned cobble tools similar to the primitive Oldowan lithic industry:

"The earliest evidence of penetration of the Paleolithic man into the Altai is the Karama site dating back 400–800 thousand years. In red-color deposits of the lower Pleistocene, some large-size pebbles were found with roughly chopped-off sharp edges used as primitive stone implements like side scrapers, choppers, and choppings, which constituted the pebble-tool industry typical of the early Paleolith epoch. In that age, the climate in the Anui Valley was mild and favorable for the life of the primitive man. The occurrence of such deciduous species as elm, hornbeam, linden, maple, and oak, exotic for the contemporary flora of the Altai, in the birch and pine forests of the region testify to it. Numerous and diverse fauna inhabited the rich vegetation of the forests. Small and medium-sized mammals such as badger, marmot, hare, etc., made a significant part of the diet of hunters of the time. As for large prey, primitive men used to make a living by gathering the remains of meals of such predators as hyenas, wolves, or bears."

Most of the literature on this site is in Russian language (thank God there is a Google translating tool!). The site was excavated by Anatoly P. Derevianko and published in 2001 and 2002 according to his colleague M. Shunkov, both from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

These appear to be the first two publications on Karama, and they are cited in the literature, but I have not been able to find them:

Derevianko, A.P., M.V. Shunkov and V.A. Ulianov. 2001a. Novoe rannepaleoliticheskoe mestonakhozhdenie v Gornom Altae. Problemy arkheologii, etnografii i antropologii Sibiri i sopredelnykh territorii. 7:115-19. (In Russian).

Derevianko, A.P. and M.V. Shunkov. 2002. Middle Paleolithic industries with foliate bifaces in Gorny Altai. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 1:16-42.

One paper, Early Paleolithic Site of Karama in Altai: Initial Research Results, Archaeology, ethnography and anthropology of Eurasia 3 (23) 2005, provides an dating, when it ncludes that "Taken together, the palynological study materials of the section, along with other analytical data, allow us to correlate the accumulation time of the deposits in the middle and lower strata of the section with the Early Neopleistocene, i.e., to determine their age in the range of 400,000-800,000 years."

The old date for this site is ratified by a presentation given by A. P. Derevianko, M. V. Shunkov, 2008: Early Paleolithic of Altai, see p. 127 in the abstracts listed which provides sediment dating for this Early Paleolithic site.

Original (Russian) caption: At the ancient Karama site in the Altai Mountains, primitive pebble tools were found in multilayered Pleistocene deposits. Photo by A. Postny (top) and S. Zelins. Source

An article about Derevyanko (who seems to be an authority on Denisovans and their migrations across Asia), includes the image shown above, which depicts: on the upper left side, the Karama site, the same image can be seen in Derevyanko and Shunkov's 2005 paper captioned Fig. 1. View of the Karama site in the Anuy Valley., the lower left stone tool is seen in Fig. 17 of that same paper as Fig. 17. "2 - beak-shaped tool", and the excavation (lower righgt) can be seen in the paper as Fig. 9, the excavation #2 at Karama -but full of diggers.

Cobble, Oldowan-like tools

Shunkov, 2005 (English) describes the stone tools as follows: "... Paleolithic artifacts, which have been attributed to the Lower Paleolithic pebble industry judging form the morphology of the finds. The assemblage of the products of primary reduction include pebbles showing signs of core preparation with plain striking platforms and negative scars of parallel detachments and short non-faceted spalls. The collection of typologically distinct tools includes longitudinal and transverse racloirs; denticulate and notch-denticulate tools fashioned on short spalls, and cutting tools of the chopper/chopping tool type with a convex flattened cutting edge and a trimmed massive back. Most pebble tools from Karama are characterized by archaic morphological features and a comparatively advanced technology of secondary treatment." So they are primitive (cobbles) yet their finishing is advanced.

The original dates for the site were much earlier 1.77 to 1.95 million years, but it was refined to a lower limit of 800,000 years (see Kuzmin, Y.V., Kazanskii, A.Y., 2015 in Debatable questions of Siberia settlement by early humans. Stratigr. Geol. Correl. 23, 114–118 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0869593815010074) who writes: "... Judging by the results of a preliminary study of the Zasukhino site in Trans-Baikal, early humans could have appeared in Siberia about 1 million years ago, but additional research is required in order to obtain reliable information..." Regarding Karama, he this paper considers that the site "corresponds to MIS 16–19", roughly 620,000 to 780,000 years ago.

Regarding the stone tools, this paper confirms the technology employed by the people at Karama and, again, its antiquity:

"Archaeological materials of Karama are represented by Early Paleolithic pebble industries. They are characterized by irregular and parallel flaking. The primary flaking products include core-like pebbles with smooth or roughly prepared striking platforms, as well as flakes with sub parallel dorsal patterns and prepared platforms. The tool set is dominated by longitudinal, diagonal and transverse side-scrapers (as a rule naturally-backed or negative-backed), followed by massive-base choppers with straight, convex, or concave working edge. Next in importance are notches, denticulates and beaked tools formed mainly by Clactonian notches. The rest of the inventory is constituted by large pebble tools with an intentionally shaped thorn-like projection, core-like endscrapers formed by steep or abrupt retouch, massive tools with wide-angle working part, knives on “citrus slices” with clear traces of utilization, flakes bearing intermittent retouch.
Thus the site of Karama contains a sequence of Early Paleolithic horizons occurring in clear stratigraphic conditions. They yielded an expressive pebble industry, which can tentatively be dated to the period of 600–800 kya. For the time being this is the oldest archaeological assemblage with reliable stratigraphic and palynological data known in Northern and Central Asia."

Original (Russian) caption: Fig. 6. Stone inventory from layer 7 in excavation 1 of Karama. 1, 3 - side scrapers; 2, 4 - backed tools.. Source

A similar content is found in another paper by Kuzmin and Kazansky, 2019 (Chronology of the Lower Palaeolithic Site of Karama (Gorny Altai): Facts and Problems, Stratum plus. 2019. No 1), whose abstract places it not older than 800 kya. It reads as follows:

"Factual information and its interpretation regarding the geological age of the Lower Palaeolithic site of Karama (Altai Mountains, Siberia) are considered. It is demonstrated that palynological data do not allow to date this site to earlier than ca. 800 kya; archaeological data are consistent with this estimate. The viewpoint of V. S. Zykin with coauthors, according to which the age of Karama is ca. 1.95—1.77 mya, finds no support in the light of the available geological and paleomagnetic evidence. The so-called “Karama suite” of the Upper Pliocene of Altai Mountains in reality does not exist. For the time being there are no reliable data indicating than the initial peopling of Siberia took place prior to ca. 1 mya."

Siberia to America?

This post and the previous one have shown the presence of humans in Northern Siberia long before the previously accepted dates. 500,000 to 800,000 years ago some humans (Denisovans? H. erectus? H. heidelbergensis? were thriving in this region, fashioning tools that were primitive (not the Acheulean tools of erectus, or Mousterian tools of Neanderthals). Again, it makes one wonder, why didn't they continue their journey across Siberia and reach America?

My next post will explore this interesting hypothesis.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Diring Yuriakh site: Ancient humans in Siberia ~400 kya

The Diring Yuriakh site in Central Siberia shows that some humans reached the area long ago, well before modern humans had evolved in Africa, and more or less contemporary with the Denisovan and Neanderthal split. This was at least one hundred thousand years before Homo sapiens appeared.

But Siberia was a harsh environment, and the tools don't resemble Neanderthal Mousterian tool technology, it is more "primitive". Who were these humans braving the cold Siberian winters 400,000 years ago?

I found a very old (nearly 40 years old!) article in Science, Diring Yuriakh: A Lower Paleolithic Site in Central Siberia 🔒 by Forman, Pierson and Waters (1997) discussing the site and its archaic tools. (See it here too 🔓)

This paper mentions the accidental discovery of a site along the Lena River in Siberia, a spot known as Diring Yuriakh where stone tools were unearthed (see it in Google Maps). These were not natural (geofacts) stones, but man-made. The site was excavated by Mochanov, 1992 🔒, who believed they were very ancient, 1.8 to 3.2 million years old, which would place the makers of the tools found there in the Homo erectus or Homo habilis time period. Other researchers suggest a later date of 800,000 years (800 kya) to 1 million years, which would make them H. erectus or possibly the common ancestors of Denisovans and Neanderthals.

According to Richards, 1994, Y. A. Mochanov presented a paper in 1992 at the 45th Annual Northwest Anthropology Conference (The Earliest Palaeolithic of Northeastern Asia and the Problem of the Extratropical Cradle of Man) which gave thermoluminescence dating calculated by O.A. Kulikov of over 1.1 million years (My) for layer 6, 2.9 + 0.96 My for layer 5, and more than 1.8 My for layer 4. Richards recommends caution when considering those dates.

Unifacial choppers. From Fig. 3. in the article

The dates provided in the paper from 1997 (resulting from a 1993 samples obtained at the site), are a minimum of 260,000 years, and a maximum of around 370,000 years, on average, 300,000 years. Interestingly, Mochanov had previously reported other sites with similar artifacts in the same sedimentary layer, and hence, of the samey age, at 14 other sites along a 800 km (500 mi) section of the Lena River in Northeastern Siberia.

This site is very close to America, just 3,000 km west (1,880 miles) of Alaska.

How did these people survive in this bleak northern environment? The paper suggests that the people who lived here probably did so during a warm spell at the end of glacial period known as MIS 8 (Marine Isotope Stage 8) which spanned a period from 300 to 243 kya. Another option is the warmer interglacial stage 7 period (245-190 kya). But, even during the warmest summers, the climate would have been very cold, requiring the use of fire, warm clothing, and effective shelter strategies. This indicates that these people were well adapted to the harsh conditions of Siberia. How long they stayed here, or how much territory they coccupied is not known.

Simple Stone Tools

The image further up depicts some tools from this site, which look quite primitive. The paper reports finding over 4,000 artifacts, mostly cores and flakes. Around 500 of them are "unifacial pebble choppers core scrapers, and scraper planes. A few tools made from flakes are present in the assemblage."

Mochanov characterizes these tools as follows: "these tools more closely resemble those from Olduvai Gorge than from any other Early Pleistocene site, leading the author to ponder the possibility of a non-tropical origin for humanity." Indeed, the Olduvai tool industy is the most primitive one, and also the oldest. The Homo erectus later developed their Acheulean stone tool technology, an advance on the Oldowan one.

Now we know that the period suggested by the 1997 paper (260 to 370 kya) would have spanned the time that Denisovans were living in Eastern Asia together with Neanderthals on its western fringes. We don't have Denisovan toolkits for comparison, but the Mousterian tools of the Neanderthals were far more advanced than the Oldowan. This opens up the possibility that some well-adapted archaic hominin, probably even earlier than the erectus, or a group that opted for simple tools and not the Acheulean ones of the erectus, lived in the cold northern parts of eastern Siberia.

An archaeology blogger (NeilB, 1016) analyzed the data objectiely and concluded that "Verdict: Site inhabited ca. 300, 000 years ago. Likely candidates Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis.".

2024 Research places the age of Diring Yuriakh at 400 kya

More recently, a 2024 paper by John D. Jansen et al., (Redrawing early human dispersal patterns with cosmogenic nuclide, EGU24-4168, updated on 08 Mar 2024. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4168 EGU General Assembly 2024) used cosmogenic dating to date several Paleolithic sites in Europe, and also the Diring Yuriakh site, where they found "an age of 417 &plusm; 82 ka, which is at least 300 kyr earlier than the previously documented earliest human presence north of 60 degrees. This timing overlaps with exceptional warmth across the High North during the ‘super-interglacial’ MIS 11c (426–396 ka), suggesting that warm climate intervals permitted human migration well beyond widely accepted territorial bounds."

Janssen immediately understood the significance of such an old date in such a northerly location. He immediately suggested that these people could have moved on eastwards and reached America. But this will be the subject of a future post.

My next post will look into another site around 500 to 800 ky old, with cobble-styled stone tools close to the famous Denisova Cave, the Karama Site on Anui River, in the Altai, and then we will explore the subject of an early peopling of America by archaic humans from Siberia 400,000 or even more years ago.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Were erectus curious, intelligent, and sensitive humans?

A recent publication by Barkai, R., and Shalata, M., 2026, describes the finding of Acheulean tools crafted by Homo erectus using stones that contained fossils, holes, and geodes, which made them wonder if these hominins were attracted to them for magical reasons, and ask if they were sensible, intelligent, and mystical beings. (Lower Palaeolithic Tools of Potency: Handaxes Shaped around Fossils and Other Extraordinary Features at Sakhnin Valley, Israel. Tel Aviv, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2026.2637187)

The paper's abstract notes that "The handaxes reported here are part of a larger collection of hundreds of tools bearing typical Levantine Lower Palaeolithic Acheulean characteristics. What makes these handaxes particularly noteworthy is that they were shaped around fossil imprints or other geological features embedded in the selected flint nodule.. While thousands of handaxes are documented from Lower Old World Palaeolithic sites, fossil-bearing handaxes are extremely rare and garner special attention. This collection of unique bifaces provides valuable insight into their makers’ technological and aesthetic preferences, worldviews and relationship with stone. We propose that these handaxes served as tools and mediators between humans and the cosmos, conceived as objects of potency enhanced by the primeval fossil imprints and unique geological features within the stone. The richly embellished rocky landscape of Sakhnin Valley, particularly with its abundant geodes, may have encouraged early humans to express their profound and extraordinary relationships with the cosmos via stones."

The authors note that the flint used to make tools was selected by the Homo erectus who lived in this area (500,000 to 200,000 years ago), and they mostly chose flawless stones, however "Only a few handaxes, about one-tenth of those recovered during our survey, exhibit fossil imprints or other geological features. In addition, these features are located at prominent and distinctive spots on the biface, mostly at the centre of one of its faces. It thus appears that the handaxe was shaped around this feature... We therefore assume that flint nodules bearing fossils and geological features attracted the attention of Acheulean knappers and were intentionally collected by humans, who valued these features for one reason or another. Similarly, we suggest that knapping was conducted to position these features prominently, emphasising their visibility when holding or displaying the handaxe." Below are some images of these remarkable tools.

Acheulean tools with fossils, geodes or other structures in them. Source

This article suggests that the some aesthetic advances noticed during the Acheulean period, like the use of ochre, and these fossils and geodes deliberately used to make handaxes shows that these ancestral humans were developing and evolving a more advanced cognition. The authors suggest that this change in their intelligence was promoted by a change in their enviornment during this period. After hundreds of millennia of stability, their typical prey, elephants dwindled, and they had to adapt to other megafaunal food sources. Anxiety set in, and they developed a new perspective, where a cosmovision evolved. Rituals, symbolism, and magic developed. Stones had life, they were tools for hunting, and for this reason, shapes and distinctive features would be highly appreciated as they held power, or "mana". Magic could help them hunt better.

The interesting part of this article is that it portrays erectus differently from the usual cold description given by archaeology, which tends to picture them as primitive, brutal, with a limited intellect, thick-skulled, low-foreheaded, semi-human creatures that were static in time: they made the same Acheulean stone tools for 2 million years without developing any new technology. This depiction tends to make us think of them as very dumb creatures. We even doubt if they managed to master the art of fire making or build boats.

When an incised shell was found back in 2014 (see post), reported by a paper published in Nature, that was 430,000 to 540,000-years-old, the only possible crator of the shell engraved with geometric patterns, was the Homo erectus since no other humans lived in that region at that time. This was the first discovery to suggest that symbolic thought, something believed to be unique to modern humans, like us and the Neanderthals, was also shared by our distant and ancient relative, the H. erectus.

I find it relevant because Homo erectus lived for almost 2 million years in Eurasia and Africa, adapting to a changing environment and developing stronger cognitive abilities, while we, the Homo sapiens have only been around for one-seventh of that time (just 300 ky since the first alleged remains of a H. sapiens were discovered in Morocco), and most of that time we weren't as smart as we are now.

As I wrote back in 2014: "A smarter H. erectus is interesting, it means that 500 kya they could have not only engraved mussel shells but also, dealt with the cold Arctic climate and walked across Beringia into the Americas." I still feel the same way. These people were hardy, intelligent, sensitive, and well adapted to their environments, from the cold climate of northern China to the hot tropical jungles of Java, Indonesia. They were survivors.

To be Continued: Homo erectus in Siberia 800 to 400 kya

As we will see in my next posts, there were ancient humans living in Siberia, at sites far north, in the cold regions not far from Beringia, 400 to 800 thousand years ago. Considering the timeline, they were ver probably erectus. These people had the time, the survival abilities, and the intelligence to move east, and may have been able to reach America.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Hantavirus Patagonia and the current cruise ship scare

The media is full of news about an outbreak of a Patagonian strain of hantavirus that caused three deaths on board a cruise ship, the MV Hondius, that had set sail from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego on April 1, 2026.

Apparently the cases zero and one, were a Dutch couple that had arrived in South America last November, and traveled extensively in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, where they visited Neuquen, Mendoza, Salta, Misiones, and Buenos Aires, before arriving in Tierra del Fuego on March 29, a couple of days before embarking on the MV Hondius (pictured below).

The strain of hantavirus that killed these two tourists is unique to the Patagonian Andean region, it is carried by a species of mouse that lives in the Andean forests which passes it on to humans, and then, and this is the worrying part, it can jump from human to human. A unique feature of this strain.

The latest epidemiological bulletin (online, in Spanish) issued by the Argentine Ministry of Health discloses that the frequency of infection is very low, 0.32 per 100,000 people. Furthermore, there were 101 cases during 2025-2026 ytd vs. 57 for 2024-2025. The highest prevalence has been in the Northwestern provinces with 0.60 per 100,000, with 36 cases, 83% of them in Salta. There have been 32 deaths with a lethality of 31.7%. The following map shows the hotspots (red yellow, highest, black lowest) in the NW and Buenos Aires regions.

Hantavirus strains are found around the world, originally detected in Korea in the 1950s it was later identified in other places, including the Southwestern USA. These virus cause a high level of mortality. In Argentina there are different strains, and can be found in Buenos Aires, the Northeast (Misiones), Northwest (Salta), Cuyo and Patagonia regions.

It hasn't been detected yet in Tierra del Fuego, though sampling is ongoing, to capture mice and check them for the virus.

Contagion takes place when a person is exposed to the feces or urine of mice, in the forests, or while entering or cleaning rooms that have been closed for a long time where mice may have nested or lived, the dust particles in the air can carry the virus.

Back in 2018-2019, there was an outbreak in Epuyen, the region around the lake and river where the Plesiosaur was reported back in 1922. It infected dozens and killed eleven people with a very high mortality rate.

In this latest outbreak, the Dutch man died at sea on April 11, his wife died in a South African hospital on April 26, and the third person on May 2. A high death toll of 3 out of 147 people on board between crew and passengers.

Before the 2018-2019 Epuyén outbreak, only 2.5% of the cases were due to human-to-human transmission of the virus. This time it seems higher, and strengthened by the closed quarters of a ship at sea.

The 2018 Epuyén outbreak began with a man who had gathered mushrooms in the forest and fell ill, he infected people who he met, and more died after getting infected at the wake of one of the deceased. The lag between contact and end of contagion was determined to be 45 days. This outbreak had a 20-30% mortality rate.

Furhter reading about the 2018 outbreak here, online (Spanish).

No cases have been reported in Tierra del Fuego, and the local rodent, of the Oligoryzomys longicaudatus magallanicus subspecies does not seem to be a carrier. Further studies should clarify the issue. So, when visiting Patagonia, stay on the trails when trekking, keep in the open, avoid places where mice live and stay out of old sheds, barns, closed areas. The CDC has some interesting tips for protection against hantavirus, which are valid for the Andean strain.

In Patagonia, there is a cycle of population growth among the mice that are the carriers of the virus. When food is abundant, mice proliferate and they can be found by the hundreds in the forests. Some make it into settled areas and the interaction of mouse and human can lead to contagion. However, as the figures show, the chances of infection are extremely low. These people seem to have had bad luck.

Personally, seing how cruise ships were hit by Covid-19 during the pandemic, and how this virus and others (like norovirus), I will stay away from them.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The "Carthaginian" inscriptions of Bromptonville, Canada

There is an equivalent to the Brazilian Paraiba Phoenician inscription in Canada, the Bromptonville-Sherbrooke Libyan inscriptions, pictured below.

The image (Source) shows what are supposed to be Libyan (i.e. Carthaginian) inscriptions, and was published in the Canadian media in the mid 1970s.

The story began in 1904 when two inscribed stones were found "on the construction site of the Bromptonville church. They were handed over to the Séminaire Saint-Charles-Borromée. In 1966, specialists were unable to decipher them." (Source).

But then, in the mid 1970s, professor Thomas Lee of Laval University, announced that a professor Howard Fell of the comparative zoology department of Harvard University (odd, connection! zoology and ancient scripts! However, the he was a member of the Epigraphic Society) had deciphered a script incised in three sandstone rocks found in Bromptonville, and Sherbrooke, Canada (see spot in Google Maps). The script was an ancient Libyan one, called Boustrophedon.

Lee believed that those who engraved the rock, had sailed up the St. Lawrence and St. Francis rivers and left these texts to mark the end of their long voyage.

One of the stones found on a cliff overlooking Sherbrooke says, "Hanno, son of Tamu, reached this mountain landmark." The other two rocks, found side by side in a field close to Bromptonville said "record by Hatta, who attained this limit on the river, moored his ship and engraved this rock" and "expedition that crossed in the service of Lord Hiram to conquer territory."

Fell found the inscriptions similar to others he had deciphered in Yucatan, Mexico (source) that read: "... of Hanno, a Phoenician re-provisioning at this landfall, for the favour of Hercules that our hardships may be mitigated. He ordered this stone to be cut. Do not overturn or deface and do not destroy it, lest the lord Baal cast you down and forsake you."

The Stones: Fake or Genuine?

Intriguing story, and most probably false evidence and wishful thinking, so I decided to see what more I could find about these Carthaginian stones.

An interesting article published back in 1985 looked into the above mentioned newspaper article. It says that Ignace J. Gelb, an authority in ancient languages, of Chicago's Oriental University, reported in 1976 that the script wasn't ancient Libyan. Further rsearch by James P. Whittall II (yes, this person and I, have the same surname), Director of The Archaeological Department of The New England Antiquities Research Association, wrote, also in 1976, that the marks in the stones were provoked by natural erosion. The 1985 included similar rocks like the one shown below, the Petit Mitis rock with natural engravings mistaken for "inscriptions".

It also added the "text" from the Sherbrooke rock as a comparison:

These stones, and other similar ones found in the region were not engraved by Carthaginian scribes using Libyan characters. The article says that "There is no doubt of the natural origin of the "petroglyphs", and chemical weathering agents have made good use of the natural predisposition of the structure of this rock." However is continues with a hopeful note for those who believe in such voyagers having reached America: " The fact that the markings are "ludi naturae" does not disprove the presence of the Phoenicians in North America, it simply indicates that these stones are not proof such a visit. However, it is now possible to cast doubt on certain "proof" based on the translation of "petroglyphs" that this continent was visited by the Egyptians, Celts, Iberians, Libyans, ..."

The stones were said to have been added to the collection of the seminary museum, the Musée du Séminaire de Sherbrooke, which is now the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature and Science , but I have not been able to locate them in their website.

However, I did find a paper about some petroglyphs discoverd by amateur archaeologists in 1963, in Estrie, Quebec. But they aren't the Carthaginian stones. These are real, they have drawings of animals and people and were carved by natives and Europeans between the mid 1700s and 1815. Below is a view of some of the inscriptions.

Closing comments

I believe they are stones that were naturally weathered and eroded, and that human beings try to make out patterns and shapes (even in clouds). These are not Carthaginian, Phoenician or Libyan inscriptions.

Further Reading

Norman Totten. 1981, The inscribed Sherbrooke boulder, The Epigraphic Society Vol. 9 no 215 June 1981. Occasional Publications

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Chinese study finds link between Denisovans and Homo erectus

A paper published yesterday in the prestigious journal Nature (Quiamei Fu, et al., 2026, Enamel proteins from six Homo erectus specimens across China, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10478-8) identified protein from the teeth of Homo erectus remains of ~400,000 years of age from 3 sites in China, and found that "all specimens from all three sites share two amino acid variants. Of these, A253G in AMBN is previously unknown and has not been identified in other human lineages, including H. erectus from Dmanisi (Georgia), Homo antecessor from Atapuerca (Spain), Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans. The other variant, AMBN(M273V), has previously been identified in Denisovans, and our evidence now indicates it may have been introduced through populations related to these Middle Pleistocene H. erectus. The regions in the Denisovan genome attributed to super-archaic introgression, some of which later passed to modern humans, are likely to have originated from H. erectus. Late Middle Pleistocene H. erectus may have coexisted with Denisovans in parts of East Asia, where these interactions are presumed to have occurred." A clear link between Denisovans and erectus!

This new variant does not appear in any other primate except these Homo erectus.

AMBN(M273V) from erectus to Denisovan to human!

Then, is the second protein now found in Homo erectus was originally detected in Denisovans.

This discovery suggest that it was passed on from erectus to Denisovans.

This variant known as AMBN(M273V), results from a mutation (single-nucleotide polymorphism or SNP), at rs564905233, where adenine switched to guanine: A→G. Surprisingly, this mutation is also found in humans, and is believed to have introgressed into them, from Denisovans. The paper mentions its frequency as follows: "... 21% in the Philippines, 1.17% in India, 0.71% in Papua New Guinea, and is absent from most other modern human populations." Interestingly Denisovans have admixed mainly with humans from the Southeastern Asia region, including Papua New Guinea and Sunda islands.

Previous studies (see my posts: here, here and here) suggested that Denisovans admixed with superarchaic ancestors, a group that split from ours over 1 million years ago. The authors point out that "genomic studies reveal that Denisovans received 0.5–8% gene flow from a hominin whose ancestors diverged more than 1 Ma from the common lineage ancestral to Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans, and about 15% of these ‘super-archaic’ DNA regions introgressed from Denisovans into Asian and Oceanian individuals. This situation is similar to what we observe with AMBN(M273V). Consequently, this variant is not exclusive to Denisovans but appears to have been introduced into them through a population linked to Middle Pleistocene H. erectus from Zhoukoudian, Hexian, and Sunjiadong."

So the Homo erectus in China had sex with Denisovans and passed on alleles that eventually ended up in South East Asians and Oceanians! Below is Fig. 4 in this paper, captioned: " A possible model of gene flow related to AMBN(M273V) among H. erectus associated with the populations of Zhoukoudian, Hexian and Sunjiadong, Denisovans and modern humans."

The paper also clarified the status of two specimens from Hexian, which carry the new AMBN(A253G) mutation found in Homo erectus but absent in Denisovans like (Denisova 3, Penghu 1, and Harbin) this suggests that the Hexian remains belong to the H. erectus clade.

It would be interesting to find if the variant shared by erectus with humans via the Denisovans is found in other groups beyond SE Asia and PNG. For instance, in America, and in ancient human remains. However, the paper states that it is "absent" in most other human populations.

In coming posts, I will address the ancient sites of 400 to 800 ky of age, found in Siberia, which could have been the home of pre-Denisovan people, even Homo erectus, who, as we will see, may have advanced northeast, across Beringia and into America at that early date.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Peabirú the ancient transcontinental trail

Peabirú trail is quite controversial. It is mentioned by different non-scholarly sources as a mythical trail that linked the Andes with the Atlantic Ocean, cutting across Southeastern Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. The age and direction of the trail are unclear, but there are some historical records about it. Today's post will look into this mysterious trail and its links to an early peopling of America.

For instance this article published by Pulso, a Canadian-Latinamerican journal, calls it the "Sacred Road of the Gods", and says its name means "the round trip road" in Guarani language (Note: this may not be true, because a formal paper by Beatriz Sacagni, 2021 (O Traço do Peabiru - rastros desvelados em paisagens paulistanas) says it means "trail of trodden grass"].

Pulso, cites two Brazilian historians, Hernani Donato y Luiz Galdino and states that the Incas built the road between 1215 and 1450 AD. Another historian Rosana Bond says it was built by the Guarani of Paraguay when they moved towards the Atlantic coast c.1000-1300 AD. Then comes the fantasy: a white god-like man, Viracocha of the Incas built it after civilizing the Guarani, he was known by them as Zumé or Pay Sumé (See this website or this one for more on the mystical side of the trail).

An article in BBC says it is 3500 to 4000 km long (2,100 to 2,500 mi), and some parts of it are up to 10,000 years old, which is very ancient, and piqued my interest. Another online site said it could be linked to 25,000-year-old the Santa Elina site.

Alejo García The first European to use it in 1524

The first account of this trail was published by Díaz de Guzmán in his work "La Argentina Manuscrita", written in 1612. Chapter V (in Spanish) tells about an "entry" (expedition) "which four Portuguese from Brazil made by land, to the borders of Peru".

He describes the journey of four Portuguese men who had been cast away onto the shores of San Vicente, Brazil by a Portuguese officer named Martín Alonso de Sosa in 1526. The leader was a man called Alexo or Alejo García. He spoke a Guarani native dialect and with his companions walked inland, across the jungle to the Paraná River, crossed it, and continued across Guarani territory to the Paraguay River and with a large group of them went west, to "discover and recognize those lands, from where they would bring back many valuable clothes, and metal objects, both for use in war and for peace." Over two thousand natives marched west with Garcí. They stopped at a place now called San Fernando on a high cliff over the Paraguay River, others say they moved along a river called Paray. On their trek they came across other natives, in the Paraguayan Chaco region, and fought with them. Finally, after many days the reached the mountain ranges of Peru and crossed "the border of that kingdom between the distance now called Mizque, and the boundary of Tomina; and finding some settlements of Indian vassals of the Mighty Inca King of that entire kingdom, they attacked them, and robbing and killing all they found, they went on for more than forty leagues to near the towns of Presto and Tarabuco, where a great multitude of Charcas Indians came out to meet them; therefore they turned back... For this reason the Incas ordered all those borders to be fortified, both with good forts and with strong garrisons, as can be seen today, which remain along that mountain range, which they call the Cuzco Toro, which is the main one that runs through this kingdom for more than two thousand leagues." García sent two of his men ahead, to reach the coast and tell them about his expedition's outcome. But he and the other man were killed. His son with an Indian woman was spared, and it was this son who told Guzmán about the expedition.

There are some inconsistencies in Guzmán's sources, but it is an interesting story. The facts are that Alejo García, a Portuguese mariner formed part of Juan Díaz de Solís expedition along the coast of South America. He was sent by the King of Spain to find a southern passage into the Pacific Ocean, in 1516 (4 years before Magellan's voyage). Solís discovered the River Plate which wasn't the strait he was looking for, he was killed by the natives on the Uruguayan coast and the survivors returned to Spain. One of the ships sunk by Santa Catarina Island in Southern Brazil. The castaways lived with the Guarani natives there until Alejo set out in 1524-25 on his inland trek.

In 1526, the Spaniards had not yet discovered Peru (Pizarro's expedition reached Peru six years later, in 1532). A second expedition left San Vicente with 70 men under the command of José Sedeño, to obtain more gold from Peru. They went westwards along the Añembí river to the Paraná and from there to the Paraguay River where they fought against the natives who had killed Alejo Garcí. Sedeño was killed and his men massacred. The natives then united and marched west to attack the Inca realm. They fought against the Indians that lived on the frontier, took their wives and their offspring became the Chiriguanos. No more expeditions trekked the trails from the sea to the Andes.

Shortly after, Sebastian Cabot a Venetian navigator, commissioned by the King of Spain to follow Magellan's route to the Spice Islands along Patagonia, heard the story of Alejo Garcís expedition from the castaways on the Brazilian coast, and deviated his course into the River Plate, and went upstream along the Paraná River, establishing the first settlement at the confluence of the Carcaraña and Paraná Rivers, he named it Holy Spirit (Sancti Spiritu) the first Spanish settlement in Southern South America, and in what would become Argentina (I wrote about this in another post) he sailed north, reached the Paraguay River and was shown gold, copper, and silver from Alejo Garcís trek. A group set out by foot from Sancti Spiritu in search of Peru they brought back some gold trinkets from the natives that lived in the Northeastern Argentine Andean foothills, and originated the myth of the City of Caesars inhabited by white people in Patagonia (I've never written a detailed post about this myth, I will do so shortly).

Prehistoric Migrations of the Guaraní Natives

French naturalist Alcides D'Orbigny, wrote in the 1830s about the Guarani-Inca interactios. In his work L'homme américain (see Vol II, p. 339), he mentions the Chiriguanos as a Guarani tribe established in the Andean foothills in Bolivia. The Incas ruled by Inca Yupanqui attempted to subdue them and conquer the territory in 1430. He then cites the Inca Garcilaso's version of this military campaign (see Chap. XIV p. 271) in his Comentarios Reales. Garcilaso tells how the Inca Emperor led his men in rafts down the river into Moxos (or land of the Musus) two hundred leagues or 1,000 km - 620 mi. from Cusco, they navigated a river which flows into the Paraguay River far to the east. After many battles the Chunchu natives were reduced to being vassals of the Incas and paid tribute until the death of the last Inca at the hands of the Spaniards. However, the Musus were not subdued. They did not become vassals but, instead, allowed the Incas to settle in their territory. This probably took place around 1470 AD. In another post, I mentioned Yupanqui's voyage to Polynesia.

The migration that didn't happen. The Musus were associated and confederates of the Incas, living in peace and friendship until the time of Huayna Capac (1524) when the Inca expatriates living in Moxos decided to return to Cusco with their families as their work with the Moxos, civilizing them, was complete. But when they were ready to head back, they learned that the Spaniards had defeated the Incas and killed their emperor. So, they opted to remain with the Musus.

Nordenskjöd in his book The Guarani Invasion of the Inca Empire in the Sixteenth Century: An Historical Indian Migration" tells about all of these events (Alejo Garcí and the wars). His book includes the following map which shows Asunció (lower right) on the Paraguay River, Corumba (right, 20° Lat) and the area visited by Alejo Garcí It also shows some Inca fortifications along the border between the highlands and the Amazonian jungle.

Nordenskjöd concludes that "(1) That at the beginning of the sixteenth century numerous Guarani Indians emigrated from the Eio Parana and the Eio Paraguay to Guarayos and to the outermost valleys of the Andes towards the Gran Chaco. (2) That the districts in which these Indians settled were not previously inhabited by Guarani Indians, but chiefly by Arawaks. (3) That Alejo Garcia, the Portuguese, was in the Inca Empire before Pizarro."

Other early Reports of the Trail

The Spaniards continued the work of the Incas, and advanced into the Bolivian lowlands in wars with the Guarani people there during the 1500s and 1600s. But let's return to the expedition that followed Alejo García. After founding the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, the leader of the enterprise, Pedro de Mendoza, very ill from syphilis had returned to Spain, dying at sea. The fledgling town lacked food and the natives attacked it constantly. The settlers decided to look for a better spot upstream, along the Paraná River. A group led by Juan de Ayolas sailed along the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers, like Cabot had done ten years earlier. Ayolas reached the area where Aunción, capital of Paraguay is now located, and after defeating the Guarani there, learned about the Incas and the Payagua natives further upstream. Pedro de Lozano in his History of the Rio de la Plata Vol II p. 120 tells us that Ayolas sailed upstream to to the Port of Candelaria (21° 5' Lat S) and set out in 1537 westwards with 300 natives and gave orders for his men to wait for him for 6 months. He vanished in the Chaco jungle and was never heard of again. His men founded Asunción and moved the settlers from Buenos Aires to the new city.

Ulrich Schmidl, one of the members of Mendoza's expedition also described Ayolas' expedition from Candelaria, by the San Fernando Hill on the Paraguay River, known as Ytapucú-guazú by the Guarani.

The account of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca written in 1542 suggests that around 1515, a group of Guarani people marched west to loot the Inca empire. A prisoner he interviewed (see chapter LX, p. 299), from Itatí told him that when he was young his Guarani "people made a great calling and gathered Indians from the whole land, and went to the land, the land that was inland, and he went with his father and relatives to make war to those living there and they took and robbed the gold and silver plates and jewels they owned; and having reached the first settlements, they immediately began to wage war and kill many Indians, and many towns were depopulated and they fled to gather in the towns further inland; and then the nations of all that land gathered together and came against them [the Guarani people]... and they routed and killed many of them... and... followed them and took the passes and killed all... and that among those who escaped this Indian was saved, and that the majority remained in those mountains through which they had passed."

But the "trail" does not seem to be a well trodden one: "He was asked if he knew well the road by which he and those of his nation went to the inland settlements. He said that it had been a long time since he had traveled that road, and when his people passed through, they were clearing the way, cutting down trees, and clearing the land, which was very rugged, and that it seemed to him that those roads would soon be overgrown with scrub and weeds, because he never saw them again, nor traveled them; but he thought that once he started to go along the road he would be able to follow it, and that the road begins from a high, round mountain, which is within sight of this port of the Kings." Puerto de Reyes (Port of Kings) was close to modern Cáceres Bay, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil (see map in Google Maps). It can also be seen in the map further up, at 18° Lat. S, upper right side of the image.

Historian Hernani Donato in his 1971 publication Pearibú describes it during the early days of Portuguese occupation and colonization of Brazil, and says it had traffic along it, linking Spanish Paraguay and Guaira with the Portuguese settlements in Sao Paulo. However in 1553 the Portuguese authorities closed it to prevent the Jesuits going inland to pacify and convert the natives, and the Spaniards (Castellanos) coming down to the coast and threaten the Portuguese settlements. Later in the 1600s, the Portuguese slavers, who raided the Guarani villages in Paraguay to enslave their inhabitants, expeditions known as "Bandeiras", used the trail to carry invade, and to bring back slaves to the coast. Donato suggests the trail was built by the Incas, who were great engineers and road builders (the Chapaq Ñan was a vast road system spanned their empire and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina) they also embodied the civilizing white man, Sumé. Luiz Galdino in his book Os Incas No Brasil also proposed an Inca origin for the trail.

Serious research like the paper by Colavite, A. P., & Barros, M. V. F. (2017) (Geoprocessamento aplicado a estudos do caminho de Pearibu. Revista Da ANPEGE, 5(05), 86–105. https://doi.org/10.5418/RA2009.0505.0007) includes a survey of the trail, and several maps showing its course, as well as its current state of preservation.

I am still unconvinced about its great antiquity. It was probably a trade trail linking the Andes with the sea, but it was not frictionless, warring tribes, disease, floods and jungle must have been serious obstacles along the way.

Further reading

Rocha A., Caminos de Pearibu Historia e Memoria

Caminhos de Pearibu, Parana State official webpage (Portuguese).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

High African diversity despite population bottlenecks. Why? (archaic admixture in Africa)

Higher diversity is normally associated with a effective populaton size, and that is why the Out of Africa migrants are said to have a lower diversity: they moved in a small group and this carried less diversity than the original population (a founder effect and a bottleneck for the migrants),

However, a paper published in Nature by Jakobsson et al., 2025 studied the evolution of modern humans using genetic information garnered from "ancient southern African genomes" and found that the African population size wasn't all that big. In fact it was the same size as the Out of Africa band!

Below I quote the relevant passage in the paper, my comments in brackets, and I highlighted some interesting parts of the text:

"Long-term large population size
... Heterozygosity (HO) for ancient southern Africans (mean across genomes; HO = 0.80 × 10−3) was similar to other ancient Africans, only surpassed by an ancient western African individual (HO = 0.93 × 10−3), indicating a large Holocene population size in southern Africa. A multiple sequentially coalescent approach shows that the effective population size (Ne) was large for several hundred thousand years, up to Ne ≈ 30,000 around 200 ka, similar to other African groups. The large Ne at ≥300 ka for all humans was potentially caused by population subdivision. [interesting! so small populations divided into many give the appearance of a large Ne when in fact it isn't] We note a decline in Ne for ancient southern Africans from around 100–50 ka, to Ne ≈ 10,000 by the Last Glacial Maximum (20 ka), similar to non-African groups and the ancient northern Africans [So at the time of the supposed Out of Africa Event 100,000 to 50,000 years ago southern & northern Africans and non-Africans had the same population size! So where is the OOA bottleneck?]
Runs of homozygosity (ROH, where greater numbers and total length of ROH segments indicate a smaller population size) show that the ancient southern Africans were at the upper tail of the distribution of modern-day Africans, but less extreme than most non-Africans—a pattern attributed to the out-of-Africa bottleneck. [homozygosity is attributed to small populations, and inbreeding, loss of diversity or heterozygosity. So the supposed most ancient humans, the South African San people have the highest ROH among Africans — but lower than non-Africans.] This indicates a smaller population size (relative to, for example, western African groups) in the relatively recent history of each individual, but still larger compared with non-Africans and ancient northern Africans. Most ancient southern Africans are shifted towards greater total segment ROH length without affecting the total number of ROH segments, in particular the Great Brak River (2,355–2,310 cal. bp) and the Matjes River 1 (7,845–7,690 cal. bp) individuals [this date is extremely recent! well after the OOA event]. This pattern indicates a smaller recent ancestral population size, possibly with elements of inbreeding, indicating isolation and fragmentation among ancient southern Africans during the Holocene. Ancient southern Africans south of the Limpopo River therefore consisted of a large, stable population for many millennia, with a modest decline since around 50 ka, and a possible fragmentation and further decline during the Holocene."

Admixture with archaics!

As usual the paper also points out that: "Population stratification between southern Africa (the region south of the Zambezi River) and the rest of Africa probably existed for at least 300 thousand years (kyr), perhaps up to a million years. Such deep stratification may result from admixture with an unknown archaic African group predating the divergence of Homo sapiens from Neandertals and Denisovans, and//or from isolation from other groups." The isolation would mean that an archaic form of humans didn't admix with the others and carried ancient, unshared alleles. The admixture option seems more plausible.

When discussing diversity, the authors note that: "Cumulatively, the genomes of the ancient southern Africans show that this group displays many Homo sapiens-specific variants (and variable positions) at amino acid-altering sites, also reflected among the modern-day San people. This observation cannot be explained solely by a large, stable southern African population, which retained derived variants to a greater extent compared with other groups. The ancient southern Africans were probably also isolated from other African groups for long periods. The derived variants unique to southern Africans may also signal low-to-modest gene flow from an unknown/unsampled group of genetically differentiated humans." Indeed, introgression from archaics.

Notice how reluctant mainstream scholars are. Instead of digging deeper into the archaic admixture hypothesis, they set it aside. In this case, the authors seem to agree with this option, but, politely wrote: "Irrespective of cause, the many variable amino acid-altering sites among the ancient southern Africans point towards a genetic model in which different protein variants can be combined to viable outcomes... The many Homo sapiens-specific variants found in southern African genomes point to a combinatorial genetic model of human evolution in which there are many possible combinations of genetic variants that lead to ‘genetically modern’ Homo sapiens." Yes, a combination brought about by mating with archaics within Africa.

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