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Arrival of the First Americans
Introduction Thousands of years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers, thousands of years before the arrival of European “vikings”, the very first people to live in North or South America arrived. The questions of when, where and how the first people to step into North and South America have puzzled scientists for many years. As archeologists study remains of people who lived in the Americas thousands of years ago, they find information which answers many questions, but also helps ask new questions. So, who were the First Americans? When and where did they enter what are now called North and South America?
Traditonal Explanation For many years, school textbooks explained the arrival of the first Americans as a trip from Asia across a land bridge which connected Asia to the Americas. According to these beliefs, the first people who came to the Americas traveled through an opening in the glaciers which developed as the Earth warmed. People traveled from present day Siberia to present day Alaska, likely by foot. Scientists who believe in this theory also think it very likely that these people were bands of hunters searching for food. This migration of people from Asia to North America is believed to have happened about 13,000-15,000 years ago. These “first Americans” and their early decendants are often referred to as Paleo-Indians.
Map A, shown above, shows the approximate location of the “Beringia” land bridge and the routes that the Paelo Indians took as they populated areas of the Americas. Most historians and scientists believe that some Asians indeed took this route to the Americas, thousands of years before Columbus ever traveled to what was a “new world” to Europeans.
New Theories For several decades, the land bridge theory was written into history textbooks as they way the Americas were first populated by humans. Generations of Americans learned this theory in school and many teachers taught the land bridge theory as “fact”.
While most historians agree that the routes shown in Map A were traveled by Paleo Indians, there is new evidence which questions whether these people were actually the first Americans. Some scientists discovered new artifacts in areas of central and South America which they believe were there before the first land bridge crossers traveled from Siberia to North America. Scientific dating tests seem to give support to these claims, though no theory is 100% provable. Still, many scientists now estimate that the first Paleo Indians arrived from Asia, or even from someplace else, many years before the first crossing of the land bridge. Some scientists and historians who argued in favor of the land bridge theory for many years have even changed their minds on the answer to the question: Who were the first Americans?
These new theories include the idea that hunters traveled on the coast or by boat along the coast from Asia to North America. Other theories include the first Americans traveling from another part of Asia, or even Austrailia by boat, possibly stopping at islands along the way. There is some belief that some of these possible islands are now under water, as sea levels rose since the time of the arrival of the first Americans.
Map B, shown above shows possible locations of travel routes of the first Americans. Notice that Map B shows both the Land Bridge route and others; most scientists who think the land bridge people were not first, still believe some people traveled that way.
Michael Waters, director of the Center for the study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University said, “We need to, once and for all, stop thinking of the peopling of the Americas as a single event,” he added, “and instead I think we need to start thinking of the peopling of the Americas as a process with people arriving at different times, taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia.” Clearly, the answer to the question “who were the first Americans?” is complicated.
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