As it turns out, some of the earliest Americans were artists. A bone fragment some 13,000 years old, with images carved on it of a mammoth or mastodon was discovered down in Florida.
Similar prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been unearthed in Europe, however, this is the first in the Western Hemisphere. The bone fragment contains an incised image roughly 3 inches long from head to tail and about 1 3/4 inches from head to foot.
The only other ancient bone found in North America carved with the image of a mastodon was found in Mexico in 1959.
The newly found North American image is similar somewhat to a few found in Europe.
Stout suggested the similarities between this and ancient European art could imply certain cultural contact or movement of people across the Atlantic is quite controversial. This idea has erstwhile been proposed by Stanford and others, though, has attracted a lot of skepticism and criticism from other archaeologists.