There are always other stories: At Least 15,000 Years of Habitation in North America, Part 1 Early Human Habitation

Today’s archaeologists understand that human migration to the Americas occurred by many different means and over a vast period of time. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania, 19,000 B.P.?

Some radiocarbon (C 14) dates are even older. Monte Verde, Chile, 30,000 B.P.?

Very much older… Pedra Furada in Brazil is extremely controversial and has dates and rock art as much as 50,000 years B.P.

Most of the early dates are extremely controversial, and should be. Why? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof! So what do we really know with reasonable certainty? That the ancestors of contemporary Indians were here by at least 12,000 years ago.

Even that used to be controversial… Aleš Hrdlička …until the Folsom, New Mexico find in Left: first Folsom point, found with extinct bison rib Folsom points

According to the archaeological stories, how did the first people get here? The migrations began during the last glaciation, that is, the Wisconsin advance of the Pleistocene epoch, some 100,000 years ago.

Massive ice sheets as much as 1.5 kilometers thick covered much of the northern hemisphere. There were profound changes in climate including compression of the earth’s climate zones toward the equator.

With so much of the earth’s water locked up in the glaciers, sea levels dropped nearly 100 meters. Lowered sea levels exposed vast areas of the continental self, including Beringia, an unglaciated “land bridge” nearly 1500 miles wide.

One route allowed early hunters to pass through an ice-free corridor from Siberia into the rest of the North American continent. There may have been as many as three “waves” of people starting about 15-16,000 years ago.

The migrations were slow, with people following herds of game, the Pleistocene “megafauna” such as mammoth, most now extinct. They probably didn’t know they were entering a new land.

We know now that they also followed the coastlines in boats, which have been used by modern humans for 40,000 years. Evidence that some people used boats has recently been found on several of the islands off the NW coast and Alaska.

By 12,000 years ago, Clovis peoples were hunting mammoth and other megafauna. The PaleoIndian Tradition: Was Clovis first?

The hunting weapons of choice were the speathrower (atlatl) and dart or spear. Rock art images of atlatls are common

As populations grew and people settled into their environments, the range of projectile points expanded. While the earlier Clovis peoples hunted mammoth, Folsom and Plano cultures were extraordinary bison hunters from around 10,000 years ago until around 8,000 years ago. Clovis, Folsom and Plano points

Pleistocene Extinctions? Did PaleoIndian overkill contribute to the demise of the megafauna? More realistically it probably was a combination of: Hunting pressure Climatic change Diseases Shifting breeding seasons

As the glaciers melted… …the seas approached contemporary levels, closing off the land route to North America.

For all we now know, we still have lots of questions, and recent discoveries still have us asking… Major controversy began in 1996 with the discovery of the ‘Ancient One,’ Kennewick Man.

Kennewick Man, or the Ancient One, as the Umatilla nation of Washington calls him Unfortunately James Chatters’s descriptions of him as “Caucasoid” got confused with “Caucasian.”

Is repatriating such remains a ‘crime against science’? Is not repatriating them an echo of the 1890s Moundbuilder myth?

Found: 1940, in Spirit Cave near Fallon, Nev. Age: 9,400 years His mummified remains are very similar to Kennewick in physical features Spirit Cave Man

Luzia died in her early 20s. Although flint tools were found nearby, hers are the only human remains in Vermelha Cave. The anatomy of her skull and teeth - including a narrow, oval cranium, projecting face and pronounced chin - likens Luzia to Africans and Australasians. Brazilian anthropologists propose that Luzia traveled across the Bering Strait, perhaps following the coastline by boat, from northeast Asia, where her ancestors had lived for tens of thousands of years since exiting Africa. Found: 1975, in Lapa Vermelha, Brazil Age: 11,500 years Luzia

A direct European connection? Archaeologists Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley have suggested that there might be a link between Clovis and the Solutrean culture in Europe.

Archaeologists have suggested many possible routes for the early inhabitants of the Americas.

The controversy has lead to a wide range of books … Even novels...

So who are these anomalies and why did they disappear? They could be statistical anomalies, and just extremes in a highly diverse Indian population. They may have been different, but here in such small numbers that they didn’t affect the gene pool— traders, explorers, wandering hunters. They were here in sufficient numbers, but died out before becoming part of the gene pool.