Paisley Caves

While we visited several sites over the weekend, Paisley Caves is easily the most significant of them. The five rock shelters set into a basalt cliff face are the site of the oldest confirmed human occupation of North America- human coprolites were found and dated to fourteen thousand years ago. 

The calcined artiodactyl toe bone I’m holding below could be that old. It’s more likely that it’s only a couple thousand years old, but that’s still pretty dang old.

This is the oldest DNA evidence for the date of the earliest human arrival in North America, although this probably isn’t the oldest site. After all, the land bridge was between Alaska and Russia, not Russia and Oregon.

While this site definitively answers a question about how long this continent has been inhabited by humans, it does leave a few questions unanswered. One of these is the question of human dispersal. There are a couple of theories about the way we peopled the continent. One is the costal theory; the idea that after we showed up in Alaska, we trickled down broad areas the west coast of Canada and the northwest corner of the United States until we hit California and then headed east. We would have done this to avoid crossing over the bulk of the glaciers, which is very difficult traveling with poorer hunting opportunities and little availability of edible plants. However, proximity to the edge of the glaciers would have allowed ample chance to hunt the cold-loving megafauna. The other theory is the ice corridor theory, which has people moving along the spaces between glaciers and while still staying in the west, the coastal regions and their unpredictable weather patterns and fault lines were avoided. The Paisley site is located in an ice corridor and is close enough to the coast (relatively speaking) that it could be used as evidence to support either theory.


Aside from evidence of human activity, the faunal record here is rich. The area is heavily utilized by raptors; signs of owl, falcon, and eagle activity were heavily present. The golden eagles were the most obvious birds of prey at the site; they use the cliff face as a nesting site. By now, the chicks have fledged and we could see at least part of the population hunting in the far distance. We saw one of them on a phone pole coming in.

This meant that nobody was home and we could get a really good look at the nest without upsetting anybody too much.

We found many remains of the eagles’ past dinners, including rabbit parts and a pocket gopher skull. We also found the remains of larger animals, such as young pronghorn that the eagles could also have eaten.

The gopher skull

The area was also rich with reptiles. The lovely earring you see below is a long-nosed leopard lizard. She was incredibly bitey and irritated about being picked up.

The lady above was not the only leopard lizard we found that day. Later on, we also found a male in his breeding colors. See the orange spots? That's how you know.

 

Not all lizards were so non-compliant. The desert horned lizard, however, did not care about the cuddling. He was a handsome little fella and was very compliant with our attempts to identify him.