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- SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) -- The bones of an early American
woman found off the coast of California may rewrite the history books on
how the earliest visitors arrived in North America.
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- The three bones were discovered 40 years ago on the Channel Islands,
on a ridge called Arlington, just off the California coastline.
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- Now, technological advances are offering
new clues into just how far back in history the bones may reach.
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- Using radiocarbon dating to analyze the
bone protein at the molecular level, scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum
of Natural History say they've dated the remains at 13,000 years old.
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- If that's accurate, the bones precede
by several hundred years the oldest previously known remains, discovered
in Montana and the Midwest.
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- "This woman probably belonged to a band of people that were
not necessarily hunting mammoths, but were living along the coasts, hunting,
fishing, gathering shellfish," says John Johnson, the museum's curator
of anthropology.
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- The bones were found 40 years ago on an island off the
coast of California
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- The fact that the woman was found on
an island indicates the earliest Paleo-Indians had watercraft necessary
to cross the Santa Barbara Channel
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- If that's so, the find offers an alternate
theory to the long-held belief that the first visitors to North America
came from Asia and walked from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge,
now covered by the Bering Straight.
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- But exactly where the woman came from
may forever remain a mystery.
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- "We can't tell what genetic background
this woman had, because there's no DNA present," Johnson says.
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- The newly-established age of the so-called
Arlington Springs Woman lends credence to the coastal migration theory
that ancient peoples first entered North America by boat down the Pacific
Coast from Alaska, according to a museum statement.
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