Ice Age Child Found in Prehistoric Alaskan Home

Ice Age Child Found in Prehistoric Alaskan Home
Cremation site hints at how first Americans lived—and where they came from.

A team works in an excavation trench at the Alaskan site where an Ice Age child's remains were found.

In what's now central Alaska, one of the first Americans—only three years old at the time—was laid to rest in a pit inside his or her house 11,500 years ago, a new excavation reveals.

The ancient home site and human remains—the oldest known in subarctic North America—provide an unprecedented glimpse into the daily lives of Ice Age Americans, scientists say.

What's more, if the remains yield usable DNA, the child could help uncover just who was living on the North American side of the land bridge that likely still connected the Americas to Asia at the time, experts added.

One thing that apparently isn't a mystery is how the child was memorialized.