Excavator Finds 40,000-Year Old Tools in Mexico

A researcher from the Peabody Museum has excavated ancient weapons which may mean that man has been in the New World more than 40,000 years.

The finding more than doubles the generally accepted date for man's arrival in America - 10-13,000 B.C.

Since 1962, archaeologists Cynthia Irwin Williams, of the Peabody Museum, and Juan Camacho of the University of Puebla, Mexico, have been excavating man-made stone tools and weapons found with the remains of long-extinct animals in Central Mexico.

Using carbon-14 dating techniques, the team concluded that the early Americans may have used primitive tools -- more primitive than any others discovered in the New World -- and hunted ice age mammoths and mastodons, as well as early forms of the camel and horse.

The technique was used on volcanic ash and the ash yielded two dates, 19,600 years and 40,000 years. The team believes the older date is correct, but is now trying to resolve the discrepancy.