Scientists have discovered what is by far the oldest evidence of human occupation at extreme altitudes: a rock shelter strewn with bones, tools and hearths 11,000 feet above sea level. People lived at the site, in the mountains of Ethiopia, as long as 47,000 years ago.

The research, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, contradicts the long-held view that high elevations were the last places on Earth settled by humans.

That notion was based more on assumptions than hard evidence, it now appears. In East Africa, paleoanthropologists have long focused their attention on the Rift Valley and other archaeological sites at lower elevations.

“We were simply the first to go higher,” said Götz Ossendorf, an archaeologist at the University of Cologne in Germany and lead author of the new study.