WASHINGTON — Some of the earliest Americans turn out to have been artists.
A bone fragment at least 13,000 years old, with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon, has been discovered in Vero Beach, Fla., a new study reports.
While prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been found in Europe, this may be the first in the Western Hemisphere, researchers reported Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
“It’s pretty exciting. We haven’t found anything like this in North America,” said Dennis Stanford, curator of North American Archaeology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, who was a co-author of the report.
Cave paintings showing animals have been found in Texas, but those were dated to about 4,000 years ago, much more recent than the newly found carved bone.
