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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe 1st Americans were not who we thought they were
For decades, we thought the first humans to arrive in the Americas came across the Bering Land Bridge 13,000 years ago. New evidence is changing that picture.
Fossilized human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico date to around 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. (Image credit: National Park Service)
During the last ice age, humans ventured into two vast and completely unknown continents: North and South America. For nearly a century, researchers thought they knew how this wild journey occurred: The first people to cross the Bering Land Bridge, a massive swath of land that connected Asia with North America when sea levels were lower, were the Clovis, who made the journey shortly before 13,000 years ago.
According to the Clovis First theory, every Indigenous person in the Americas could be traced to this single, inland migration, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University.
But in recent decades, several discoveries have revealed that humans first reached the so-called New World thousands of years before we initially thought and probably didn't get there by an inland route.
So who were the first Americans, and how and when did they arrive?
Genetic studies suggest that the first people to arrive in the Americas descend from an ancestral group of Ancient North Siberians and East Asians that mingled around 20,000 to 23,000 years ago. They crossed the Bering Land Bridge sometime between then and 15,500 years ago, said David Meltzer, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and author of the book "First Peoples in a New World, 2nd Edition" (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
But some archaeological sites hint that people may have reached the Americas far earlier than that.
For instance, there are fossilized human footprints in White Sands National Park in New Mexico that may date to 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. That would mean humans arrived in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred between about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago, when ice sheets covered much of what is now Alaska, Canada and the northern U.S.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/the-1st-americans-were-not-who-we-thought-they-were
TheProle
(2,199 posts)Rec and thank you.
msongs
(67,453 posts)wnylib
(21,615 posts)the Clovis First theory was crumbling.
The Meadowcroft Rockshelter site in western PA, just north of Pittsburgh, dates back to 14,000 years ago and earlier. So the Rockshelter was in use during the LGM, before glacial melting allowed people from Beringia to enter North America.
The location of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter would have been just south of the glacier that then covered what is now the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Erie. That suggests the possibility that people followed the southern edge of the glacier inland from the Pacific Northweat area. Meantime, other people from the earlier pre Clovis period went southward into New Mexico apparently.
Igel
(35,359 posts)Earlier transversals of the Bering crossing or coastal canoing.
Sparse population, dispersed, but pre-Clovis.
There are genetically aberrant pops in some bits of the Amazon, utterly distinct from the "First Nations". And necessarily earlier.
We have a Zeroeth Law of thermo..Stated and deemed necessary after laws 1-3 were established. Are those Amazonian pops "Zeroeth Nations"?
wnylib
(21,615 posts)people still cling to it.
I first learned about the sea entry idea around 30 years ago when I visited the offices of the archaeologist who did the Meadowcroft excavation and talked with his staff. It was then a hypothesis that was gaining only a little ground in light of the pre Clovis dates turning up at different sites. There was a lot of initial resistance to the Meadowcroft dates from the Clovis Firsters.
Do you have more specific details about people in the Amazon region being utterly different from other Native Americans? Are you referring to different DNA types? There are some people in Peru and nearby areas of South America who have Polynesian DNA sequences, but that is fairly recent compared to the DNA of founding populations in the Americas.
scipan
(2,359 posts)Here's a story about it in the Newshour (about 6:45 long):
So cool.
NJCher
(35,746 posts)And posted the link.
Watching this brings it home in a way that my imagination couldnt.
Who wants to time travel back there with me? Even if its for only 15 minutes?
scipan
(2,359 posts)Imagine the earth without any pollution. The stars would be so magnificent!
demosincebirth
(12,543 posts)years ago
niyad
(113,581 posts)Seriousky, though, thank you for this fascinating information.
Sky Jewels
(7,146 posts)See, Bronze Age goat herders making up stories can't be wrong!