The fact that multiple independent laboratories detected consistent haplogroup identifications in multiple different specimens from the Paisley pre-Clovis layers is among the strongest aspects of the DNA evidence’s credibility.

It is the kind of independent replication that distinguishes robust scientific findings from laboratory artifacts.

The Landscape That Shaped a People

The coprolites and artifacts from Paisley Caves document not just the presence of people in the Oregon Great Basin before Clovis, but the specific adaptations those people had developed to the specific landscape they inhabited.

Understanding the landscape — its resources, its hazards, its seasonal rhythms — helps explain why the Paisley evidence looks the way it does.

The northern Great Basin at 14,000 years ago was a productive but demanding environment.