Pushing back human entry into the Peruvian Andes by approximately two millennium, a campsite littered with obsidian tools in the southern Peruvian Andes' Pucuncho Basin is being hailed as the highest Ice Age settlement in the world.
Up at an elevation of over 14,000 feet, the newly discovered camp site was reported in a study published in the journal Science. The area is believed by geologists to have thawed approximately 15,000 years ago and archaeologists believe the site was settled roughly 2,000 years later.
"These are some of the highest known examples of human occupation," says anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. "But it is not a great surprise, because we find people expanded widely wherever we look across South America."
Kurt Rademaker, of the University of Tübingen in Germany, discovered the Peruvian campsite, a find that suggests that Paleo-Indians in South America chased the game as the land thawed instead of settling in the most accommodating regions.
"It was a land rush, a free-for-all," says Rademaker. "People were much more capable and adaptable than we ever thought."
That land rush up to the earth's ceiling also evidences mankind's ability to adapt to new environments in a short time, a point that has been a contentious one in the scientific community. Despite the thin air, which was given a bitter bite by nearby icebergs, the early Andeans prospered at the campsite where the temperatures were 37 degrees Fahrenheit, 3 degrees Celsius, on average. They believe the group traveled seasonally to the camp, from March through November.
The campgrounds were filled with tools crafted from obsidian, andesite and jasper that was quarried nearby. Under the rocky overhangs and inside the caves where the people took shelter, campfire soot lined the ceilings and art, not narcissistic graffiti, decorated the walls.
"They were drawing the important animals of their lives - wild deer and vicuña and camelids," says Rademaker. "It is kind of amazing. They painted entire walls."
Full carcasses of vicuña and camelids, relatives of the alpaca and camel, respectively, were found at the Andean settlement, which brought scientists to the conclusion that herds of the animals roamed close to the campsite. The study's authors used the term "oasis" to describe the high-up homestead, but life way up in the Peruvian Andes was not without it hardships.
"Wet-season storms and the risk of hypothermia, as well as maintenance of extended social networks and collection of edible plant resources, may have encouraged regular descents to lower elevations," stated the study on the campsite.
