An ancient stone tool recently discovered in the high desert of southeast Oregon

has archaeologists raising their eyebrows.http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2692048/thumbs/oSTONE-SCRAPER-570.jpg?7

The tool, a hand-held scraper chipped from a piece of agate, was unearthed from
beneath a layer of volcanic ash near the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter outside Riley,
the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced on Thursday. Archaeologists
have linked the ash to a major eruption from Mount St. Helens that occurred
about 15,800 years ago.
When we had the volcanic ash identified, we were stunned because that would
make this stone tool one of the oldest artifacts in North America," Dr. Patrick
OGrady, anarchaeologist at the University of Oregon and the leader of the
excavation, said in a written statement. "Given those circumstances and the laws
of stratigraphy, this object should be older than the ash.

The scraper was found at an ancient rock shelter in the high desert of eastern
Oregon. It could turn out to be older than any known site of human occupation
in western North America.
The new finding may rewrite the story of early human migrations, as it was
previously thought that the first humans in the western hemisphere arrived about
13,500 years ago.
If humans arrived earlier -- more than 15,800 years ago, as the stone tool
suggests -- it would place humans in America's West around the end of the
Pleistocene era, when mastodons, mammoths, camels, horses, and bison roamed
the region, the Associated Press reported. But some scientists remain skeptical.

"No one is going to believe this until it is shown there was no break in that ash
layer, that the artifact could not have worked its way down from higher up, and
until it is published in a convincing way," Donald K. Grayson, professor of
archaeology at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the
excavation, told AP. "Until then, extreme skepticism is all they are going to get."
Archaeologists plan to continue excavations at the Oregon site this summer,
O'Grady said in the statement, adding "thats the next step."