When people first arrived in the Americas

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; KFI; MSN; LiveScience; PS; NS

Humans reached the Americas 15,000 years earlier than thought (newscientist.com, 2020)

(Conway Crew, iHeart, 9/27/21) Scientists have determined that fossilized footprints found in New Mexico in 2005 were left between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago -- meaning there were humans in North America several thousand years before experts previously thought. [But science knows that Black/aboriginal people were here 50,000 years ago.] More

These footprints could push back human history in the Americas

(Philip Kiefer, Popular Science via MSN, 9/27/21) A set of footprints buried in the dunes of New Mexico’s White Sands National Park has landed in the middle of an ongoing reevaluation of the human history of the Americas. The prints were left over thousands of years by humans who walked among giant sloths, camels, and mammoths on the grassy shores of a lake 23,000 years ago, as determined by radiocarbon dating of grass seeds found around the footprints. That’s in stark contrast to the conventional hypothesis in archeology, which holds that the first people in the Americas crossed over between 16,000 and 12,000 years ago, when the glaciers still covered North America, and Siberia and interior Alaska were part of the same grassy subcontinent called Beringia. More

Here's how people first arrived in the New World…maybe

(Laura Geggel, LiveScience, 8/9/18) Humans had a population boom around 16,000 years ago as they neared or reached the Americas after traversing the temporary Bering Strait land bridge. Did the first people to inhabit the Americas hug the coast after crossing the Bering Strait or travel farther inland, between two massive ice sheets?

This question has dogged researchers for decades. Now, a review of archeological, geologic, anthropological, and genetic data argues for both, but especially for the latter: It appears that prehistoric humans favored the inland route, although some traveled along the so-called coastal Kelp Highway later on, the new review says. But not everyone is convinced this is the case. Some recent studies have suggested that the coastal route was the preferred path.

That's because inland conditions were far too harsh until the ice sheets receded, which some research suggests did not happen until after the first settlements in America were founded. Incredible journey: The first Americans began their journey in northeast Asia and southern Siberia. Then, between 25,000 and 20,000 years ago, the ancestors of today's Native Americans split off from East Asians, according to the new review. More