Sunday, January 22, 2017

This tends to screw with the standard narrative

Researchers have found that humans may have first arrived in America 10,000 years earlier than was originally thought. 

The researchers, based at Université de Montréal's Department of Anthropology (UdeM), analyzed animal bones which have marks on them from stone tools used by humans. 

The new research suggests that humans first entered North America 24,000 years ago through the Bering straight from Russia to Alaska.
Not up to date on all this, but over time I've read some on the "When/where did humans get here first, and how" argument.  It tends to concentrate on getting here first either over land bridge, or- later argument- by boat along the ice sheet, followed by slowly moving their way down through the Americas.

Only- at least by previous earliest date- there wasn't enough time for people to have spread all over in that much time.  Then someone said "Could've moved south along the coast by boat."  Which would cut a lot of time off the 'get there by' date. 

Of course that leaves out entirely the possibility of arrival from Europe by boat along the edge of the ice.  Last I heard that argument still tended to bounce back & forth between "Why not?" and "HERETIC!  FROM SIBERIA ONLY!"

Someday maybe we'll actually know.




1 comment:

Rob said...

In Sequim WA they found a mastodon bone with a spear point in it that was 14000 years old...