When Were the Americas Populated?

evil agent passes along an article in Scientific American reporting that new radiocarbon dating techniques have cast doubt on the accepted story of how the Americas were populated. In the traditional view, "[M]igrants out of northeast Asia slipped into the Americas bearing finely shaped stone projectiles, so-called 'Clovis points,' after the town in New Mexico where they were first uncovered. This Clovis culture rapidly spread throughout the empty continents and by 1,000 years after their arrival had reached the southernmost tip of what is now South America, making them the original ancestors of indigenous Americans." The new dating of Clovis sites suggests that "Clovis" was not a people, but rather a technology. That is, a new and more efficient method of making arrowheads for hunting spread rapidly through a pre-existing population in both North and South America, over at most 350 years.

Comments

Re:old news

[mrvan]

I can recommend http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Socie ties/dp/0393317552 :

His main answer has to do with food production: North America had hardly any good domesticable crops, so the most populous and advanced North American civilization (in the Mississipi valley) could only emerge after the slow spread of Mexican corn and beans across the deserts north of the Aztec homeland, which gave them very little time to 'prepare' for the European invasion.

Re:Time to get over the 'land bridge'

[mrvan]

There is now more than enough evidence to support the idea of a pre-clovis population in America. Due to the timing of glaciation, this requires these populations to have traveled via the ocean, either along the glaciated Alaskan coast, or along the edge of the arctic ice cap from Europe. Possibly both.

That is true, but if you look at the date of 'colonization' by Austronesian people of these pacific islands, you will notice

1. Sailing large distances is difficult. It took them until 3000/2000 BC to get their island-hopping act together and start colonizing these islands. By this date America was well populated
2. Sailing large distances takes time. While it took a couple centuries up to one millenium to fill America, it took about 4000 years to colonize all islands from Indonesia to Easter Island / Hawaii

Combined: this proves that sailing between continents is quite possible but also very difficult, and cannot explain the people living in America around 10,000 BC.

Nova Program on this Topic

[tealwarrior]

There is a PBS Nova show on this topic which discusses several alternative theories to the Clovis first one. America's Stone Age Explorers http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/ It was recently airing (again) so you may be able to catch it again.