The Peopling of the Americas - Earlier Dates!

This is one subject that fascinates me - the peopling of the Americas - how it happened and when it happened. My home state, Wisconsin, figures in the picture too! Photo: Butchered mammoth - Excavation of the Schaefer mammoth in Wisconsin, thought by archaeologists to date to about 14,500 years ago. (Image courtesy D. Joyce)

Estimates for peopling of Americas getting earlier
March 13, 2008
Courtesy Science
and World Science staff

Archeologists are presenting what they call the latest evidence that a traditional account of the peopling of the Americas is wrong.

The mainstream view prevailing in the past several decades holds that humans entered the continent about 12,000 years ago using a temporary land bridge from northeastern Asia to Alaska. These migrants would have given rise to a culture of mammoth hunters known for their unique stone projectile-points and dubbed Clovis, after remains found near Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s.

But in recent years evidence has turned up that the first Americans might have been considerably older, some archaeologists argue. A new review published in the research journal Science contends that that the first Americans had their roots in southern Siberia, ventured across the Bering land bridge probably around 22,000 years ago, and migrated down into the Americas as early as 16,000 years ago.

In the paper, Ted Goebel of Texas A&M University and colleagues argue that the latter date is when an ice-free corridor in Canada opened and enabled the migration. The new account is bolstered by genetic evidence and the discovery of new archaeological sites and more accurate dates for old sites, according to the researchers.

Genetic evidence, they wrote, points to a founding population of less than 5,000 people at the beginning of the second migration in Canada. Moreover, they added, archaeological evidence suggests the Clovis culture may have been relative latecomers to the Americas or descendants of earlier Paleo-Indian populations represented at archaeological sites such as Monte Verde in Chile. That site is thought to have been occupied 14,600 years ago. The research by Goebel and colleagues appears in the journal’s March 14 issue.
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Related story: Indian DNA links to 6 'founding mothers,' March 13, 2008.