Shelter and tools from Ice Age discovered in Peru

Researchers report that the southern Andes settlement is the oldest and highest yet.

Shelter and tools from Ice Age discovered in Peru
In the southern Andes of Peru, where temperatures drop as low as the altitude rises, researchers have discovered artifacts that date back to the Ice Age. Evidence found suggests ancient people lived at an unbelievably high altitude just 2,000 years after arriving to South America.

Two rocky alcoves, located in the Pucuncho Basin, had been hiding tools, animal bones, primitive artwork, and a rock shelter, as reported by Reuters. At 14,000 feet above sea level, the evidence has caused researchers to believe humans inhabited high-altitude environments much earlier than previously thought.

“What this tells us is that hunter-gatherers were capable of colonizing a very extreme environment, the high Andes, despite the challenges at the end of the Ice Age,” said archaeologist and team leader Kurt Rademaker of Germany’s University of Tübingen.

Numerous challenges were presented to the inhabitants, not to mention the “cold temperatures that required them to eat many more calories to survive and less than 60 percent of the oxygen at sea level, as stated in the Science report.

According to the research team, the shelters found are small and would likely have accommodated only a few families. Thus, it is assumed that the community consisted of only a few dozen members.

Despite the lack of fuel presented in the landscape, such as trees, the ceilings of the shelters are charred black from apparent fires.

“We look at the challenges and we say, ‘Why would you do that when you could just live somewhere else?’” Rademaker said. “Whatever reason they initially went up there, there were reasons to stay despite the challenges.”

But the cave dwellers were not short on creativity, as the rock walls are decorated with red ochre pictographs of animals.

An open-air “workshop” not far from the rock shelter stored axes and spears, among other tools.

“We don’t know if people were living there year round, but we strongly suspect they were not just going there to hunt for a few days, then leaving,” says archaeologist and participating researcher Sonia Zarrillo of the University of Calgary.

Source: Peru This Week / Photo: El Comercio
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