Indigenous People Have Been Here Forever. Why Won't Archeologists Believe It?

[wnylib]

13. I remember when Louis Leakey

proposed dates as old as 100,000 years and older for rock tools he examined in Montana. Despite his renown for his discoveries in Africa, he was immediately discredited for his claims about rock tools in North America. He was called senile by some people. Others said that he did not have sufficient background in American prehistory to correctly evaluate rock findings here. The shapes that Leakey attributed to human creation of scrapers and cutters were called "natural formations" which could not have been human made because there were no humans in North America that long ago.

However, there has been a land bridge between northeastern Asia and Northwestern North America more than once in the geological and history of earth.

There were Homo erectus ancestors of Homo sapiens in eastern Asia 900,000 years ago. We know that Homo erectus had developed the use of fire long before Homo sapiens evolved. So is it impossible that some ancient Homo erectus made their way into North America?

A land bridge like Beringia does not develop overnight. It happens in a decades or centuries long process of lowering sea levels. At some point, there would have been a period when Asia and North America were nearly connected, separated only by shallow "straits" or lakes that could be easily crossed on foot or on rafts. The Western shore of North America would not yet have been solidly covered in glacial snow and ice right up to the Pacific Ocean. The spread of glaciers takes time, too, and does not happen instantly.

So Homo erectus and later Homo sapiens could have crossed into North America and followed the coast. Once past the southernmost reach of the Canadian glaciers, they could easily have traclveled inland from the Pacific Coast along the southern edge of the glaciers. The edges of glaciers are rich with water sources from melting that creates rivers and lakes. Grass and plant life flourish there, drawing herds which draw people to hunt them.

I think that it is possible that there were Homo sapiens in North America 50,000 years ago and perhaps also their (and our) ancestral Homo erectus relatives 100,000 or more years ago.