Paisley Caves
|
Paisley Five Mile Point Caves
|
|
Cave No. 5 with Bill Cannon, BLM archaeologist
|
|
| Location | Address restricted |
|---|---|
| Nearest city | Paisley, Oregon |
| Built | ca. 14,300 BP |
| NRHP Reference # | 14000708 |
| Added to NRHP | September 24, 2014 |
The Paisley Caves complex is a system of four caves in an arid, desolate region of south-central Oregon, United States. One of the caves may contain archaeological evidence of the oldest definitively-dated human presence in North America. The site was first studied by Luther Cressman in the 1930s.
Scientific excavations and analysis since 2002 have uncovered substantial new discoveries. These include materials with the oldest DNA evidence of human habitation in North America. The DNA, radiocarbon dated to 14,300 years ago, was found in fossilized human coprolites uncovered in the Paisley Five Mile Point Caves in south-central Oregon. The caves were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.
A field school from the University of Oregon has been examining the site since 2002 and analyzing its pre-Clovis artifacts. In the summer of 2007, they identified the oldest human DNA yet discovered in the American continents. This assertion is based on analysis of several samples of coprolite (fossilized excrement) found in the Paisley Caves complex, between Lakeview and Bend, Oregon, on the eastern side of the Cascade mountain range. Since then, other authors have questioned the authenticity of these findings by arguing about the relevance of the evidence gathered from ancient DNA and stratigraphy on the one hand, and from the morphological assignment of the coprolites to humans on the other.
...
Wikipedia