An American soldier has unearthed remnants of a prehistoric campsite at an air force base in New Mexico, where the first Americans may have settled around 8,200 years ago.
Members of the 49th Civil Engineer Squadron (CES) made this discovery alongside a team of geologists near a cut road on Holloman Air Force Base, located 260 kilometers southeast of Albuquerque. This base is adjacent to the White Sands National Park, famous for its ivory gypsum sand dunes and home to the oldest known human footprints in North America, dating back 23,000 years.
Matthew Cuba, cultural resources manager of the 49th Civil Engineer Squadron, brushes sand off the remains of a Paleo-Archaic hearth at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. (Photo: Pilot Isaiah Pedrazzini)
The dunes of White Sands National Park formed at least 1,000 years after the archaeological site at the air force base and may have helped preserve prehistoric artifacts at that location.
Buried by White Sands?
Matthew Cuba, the cultural resources manager of the 49th CES and participant in the excavation, stated: “The formation of the white dunes inadvertently buried this site, with windblown silt protecting the delicate archaeological remains.”
The excavations at this site, named Gomolak Overlook, have uncovered various artifacts indicating that this location may have once been a seasonal campsite for the “Ancient Ancestors” in what is now New Mexico.
According to the National Park Service, these ancient peoples are descendants of the first individuals to set foot in the Americas and are among the earliest cultures in the New World to cultivate and domesticate plants.
Archaeologist Cuba remarked: “This site marks a significant moment in understanding the history of the region and its earliest inhabitants.”
Among the artifacts discovered buried several feet beneath the ground, Cuba and his colleagues found evidence that the early settlers made fires and burned mesquite—a spiny shrub in the legume family (Fabaceae) native to arid regions of the Southwestern United States and Mexico. According to the announcement, this campsite is one of 400 archaeological discoveries made within the boundaries of Holloman Air Force Base.
The broader Tularosa Basin, covering an area of 16,800 square kilometers in southwestern New Mexico, hosts some of the oldest archaeological sites in the Americas. Excavations over the past decade have uncovered 11,000-year-old fossilized human footprints following a giant sloth, footprints of a 10,000-year-old woman and a toddler, as well as evidence of Ice Age children playing in the mud.
