A new study published on July 22nd in Nature suggests that humans may have lived in North America up to 33,000 years ago. That’s more than 10,000 years earlier than what was previously thought. 

The study is based around stone artifacts that were found in a cave in Mexico. 

“A paper like this one is really stirring up the pot,” says co-author Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge. It “will no doubt get a lot of arguments going.”

For decades archaeologists thought that Americas’ first residents were the Clovis people. 

These were the folks you probably learned about in school; big game hunters who crossed the famous land bridge between Asia and Alaska about 13,000 years ago.

However, over the past few years, there have been heated debates among scientists about the accuracy of this. 

In 2011, the first study was released that challenged the status quo when archaeologist Michael Waters found evidence of humans dating back over 15,000 years. 

Since then, DNA analysis and other discoveries have further suggested that the Clovis people were not the first ones in North America. 

The new study published last week is the first to suggest that the arrival of humans in North America could be much, much earlier than we originally thought. 

To learn more about the discoveries, click here. 

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