How Did Humans Come to the Americas?

[left-of-center2012]

THE FERTILE SHORE

For more than half a century, the prevailing story of how the first humans came to the Americas went like this: Some 13,000 years ago, small bands of Stone Age hunters walked across a land bridge between eastern Siberia and western Alaska, eventually making their way down an ice-free inland corridor into the heart of North America. Chasing steppe bison, woolly mammoths and other large mammals, these ancestors of today’s Native Americans established a thriving culture that eventually spread across two continents to the tip of South America.

In recent years, however, that version of events has taken a beating, not least because of the discovery of archaeological sites in North and South America showing that humans had been on the continent 1,000 or even 2,000 years before the supposed first migration. A subsequent theory, known as the “Kelp Highway,” came closer to the mark: As the massive ice sheets covering western North America retreated, the first humans arrived on the continent not only by foot but by boat, traveling down the Pacific shore and subsisting on abundant coastal resources. Supporting that idea are archaeological sites along the West Coast of North America that date back 14,000 to 15,000 years.

or more than half a century, the prevailing story of how the first humans came to the Americas went like this: Some 13,000 years ago, small bands of Stone Age hunters walked across a land bridge between eastern Siberia and western Alaska, eventually making their way down an ice-free inland corridor into the heart of North America. Chasing steppe bison, woolly mammoths and other large mammals, these ancestors of today’s Native Americans established a thriving culture that eventually spread across two continents to the tip of South America.

In recent years, however, that version of events has taken a beating, not least because of the discovery of archaeological sites in North and South America showing that humans had been on the continent 1,000 or even 2,000 years before the supposed first migration. A subsequent theory, known as the “Kelp Highway,” came closer to the mark: As the massive ice sheets covering western North America retreated, the first humans arrived on the continent not only by foot but by boat, traveling down the Pacific shore and subsisting on abundant coastal resources. Supporting that idea are archaeological sites along the West Coast of North America that date back 14,000 to 15,000 years.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humans-came-to-americas-180973739/

[dchill]

1. Or, it could have been a stork.

[wnylib]

2. Interesting article, although the only

really new information was the method an archeological team is using to locate likely ancient sites in former Beringia and along the Pacific NW coast of N. America.

It's basically an expansion of the "kelp highway" hypothesis and the location of evidence to support it.