'There was this cultural stereotype that mountains are just impediments, that they get in the way,' Pitblado told Live Science. People in modern culture, perhaps because of stories of pioneers going west and getting trapped in the mountains (and eating each other), tend to see the highlands as poor living environments, said Bonnie Pitblado, an archaeologist at the University of Oklahoma, who was not involved in the study. 'They were going back and forth between the coast and this high-altitude site.' 'People were really settled in and using this environment at the end of the ice age around 12,400 years ago,' said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the study. The findings suggest people were living at high altitudes earlier than previously thought. It's still not clear whether the people living along the coast and in the highlands were the same individuals, or whether they maintained trading networks across large distances, Rademaker said. The researchers also found large mammal bones from vicuña, the wild ancestors to alpacas, similar animals called guanacos, and taruca deer.

The workshop contained hundreds of ancient tools, from spear points to scrapers to bifaces, or hand axes, some of which dated to 12,800 years old. The coastal obsidian point likely came from a nearby outcropping, near what would've been an ancient open-air workshop at the time, the researchers said. The rock shelter was used for thousands of years, starting around 12,400 years ago, and may have been a temporary base camp where herders sheltered from the rain, Rademaker said. The site also showed evidence of burnt detritus from ancient people's campsites.

Rademaker and his colleagues analyzed the obsidian and determined that it likely came from around the Pucuncho Basin, an arid, cold plateau ringed by 21,000-foot-tall (6,400 meters) volcanoes, Rademaker said.Īfter years of searching around the plateau, the researchers found a rock shelter with two alcoves, ceilings blackened with soot and walls decorated with rock art. 'This obsidian told us that early on, Paleoindians must have gone to the highlands,' Rademaker told Live Science. There were no rivers or other geologic forces to carry the volcanic rock to the coast, and the closest volcanoes were in the Andes Mountains, roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away, said Rademaker, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany. There, they found tools made of obsidian, a volcanic rock. At that time, Rademaker and his colleagues were studying a 13,000-year-old Paleoindian fishing settlement on the coast of Peru called Quebrada Jaguay. The recent discovery of these high-altitude artifacts was made possible by work that started in the 1990s. In follow-up work, the team plans to look for more evidence of occupation, such as human remains.

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