Updated

Bones and tools found at an archaeological site near the city of Tres Arroyos, Argentina, lend more evidence to the idea that prehistoric people lived in the Americas before another group called the Clovis, researchers have reported.

Some of the bones found had signs that they had been butchered by people with stone tools.  And dating the bones they discovered reveals that they were roughly 14,000 years old. That’s more ancient than when the Clovis people lived in North America, around 13,000 years ago, according to PLOS Research News.

Details in the study include the fact that about 14,064 years ago, ancient people “hunted/scavenged an extinct horse (Equus neogeus) and giant ground sloth (Megatherium americanum), probably along the border of the temporary lake (or another body of water) located near the site,” they wrote in the study, which was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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And in a sign that there may have been a designed butchering area, the researchers found a concentration of animal bones in a specific spot.

The scientist behind the study acknowledge that some of their findings could be explained without the presence of humans, but that it’s most likely that ancient people were in fact involved.

Ultimately, the researchers conclude in the study that “the arrival of Homo sapiens into the Southern Cone at 14,000 years ago represents the last step in the expansion of modern humans throughout the world and the final continental colonization.”