The discovery was one for the pages of an archaeology classic, something with a title like “Gods, Graves and Scat.”

Some people, coming into new country long ago, stopped at a cave for years perhaps, or only a day's rest. Time enough, in any event, for them to relieve themselves — you know, answer nature's call, if they bothered with euphemism. The cave was their in-house outhouse.

Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America.

Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin also appears to support the earlier arrivals, and a campsite in Chile indicates migration deep into South America by 14,600 years ago.

The coprolite find was published online Thursday by the journal Science, www.sciencexpress.org.

The cave explorations in 2002 and 2003 were led by Dennis L. Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon. The primary DNA analysis was conducted by Eske Willerslev and M. Thomas P. Gilbert of the Center for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Willerslev said in a statement, “Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained, mostly because no human organic material had been recovered.”

The researchers reported that 14 coprolites from the cave sediments were identified as being from humans. The laboratory studies showed that six samples had genetic signatures associated with American Indians and not shared by other groups.

Michael R. Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who was not part of the team, said, “Paisley Caves adds to the growing body of archaeological evidence that people were here prior to Clovis.”

The Clovis culture, named for the town in New Mexico where some of the first artifacts were uncovered, began sometime between 13,300 and 12,000 years ago, according to a new study in which Waters participated.

Traces of its distinctive fluted projectile points have been found throughout the Americas.

Few artifacts were found at the cave, the discovery team reported, which suggested that the occupants' visits were brief. This also made it impossible, the scientists said, to determine “the cultural and technological association of the early site occupants, and their relationship to the later Clovis technology.”

An archaeologist not affiliated with the research team, Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt University, noted that some questions persisted over the dearth of artifacts at the site and a possibility of serious contamination of the coprolites. “The cave needs to be understood a little better,” Dillehay said.

But Dillehay, whose excavations at Monte Verde in Chile also contradict Clovis-first ideas, added, “If the coprolites are indeed human, this is exciting information, and the dates fall in the same period as Monte Verde.”

An article being published in the journal reports that a few Clovis-first partisans cited the presence of animal DNA in three coprolite samples as grounds for skepticism of the findings. But the geneticists on the team explained that human proteins found in several samples and further tests ruling out significant contamination gave them confidence in their conclusions.

The mitochondrial DNA extracted from coprolites linked the cave dwellers to two genetic groups of early Americans that arose 14,000 to 18,000 years ago, the scientists said. Other research indicates that these people from Eastern Asia most likely migrated in several waves across the Bering land bridge and down the West Coast of the Americas.

So more than old bones, stone tools and hearths can establish the presence of early people making themselves at home. Like the animals they hunted, they also left their scat.

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