Ancient site with bones and stone tools sheds light on first Albertans
Posted Mar 23, 2015 1:01 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A new way of dating ancient bones and stone tools is shedding light on the lives of some of the first Albertans.
Brian Kooyman (KOY’-man) of the University of Calgary is co-author of a paper that says a prehistoric site where people hunted horses and camels in what is now southern Alberta is older than previously thought.
That means the 13,000-year-old bones, along with the stone choppers and knives used to butcher them, pre-date the first identifiable ancient culture in the New World.
Kooyman says the site is unique because of the number of animals and tools all found together.
The spot is normally submerged in the reservoir of the St. Mary River and only surfaces when water levels are very low.
