Excavations show hunter-gatherers lived in the Amazon more than 10,000 years ago
Foragers may have laid the groundwork for farming’s ascent thousands of years later
By Bruce Bower
Hunter-gatherers occupied the southwestern Amazon rainforest by around 10,600 years ago — at least several thousand years earlier than previously thought.
Excavated food remains and human burials at several locations in Bolivia support a scenario in which hunter-gatherers regularly occupied those spots for large parts of the year. The unearthed evidence also indicates that the hunter-gatherers were living in the southwestern Amazon until around 4,000 years ago, anthropological archaeologist José Capriles of Penn State University and colleagues report online April 24 in Science Advances.