One of the hottest debates in archaeology is how and when humans first arrived in North America. Archaeologists have traditionally argued that people walked through an ice-free corridor that briefly opened between ice sheets an estimated 13,000 years ago.
But a growing number of archaeological and genetic finds-including human footprints in New Mexico dated to around 23,000 years old-suggests that people made their way onto the continent much earlier. These early Americans likely travelled along the Pacific coastline from Beringia, the land bridge between Asia and North America that emerged during the last glacial maximum when ice sheets bound up large amounts of water causing sea levels to fall.
Now, in research presented on Friday, December 15 at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting (AGU23) in San Franciso, paleoclimate reconstructions of the Pacific Northwest hint that sea ice may have been one way for people to move farther south.
The idea that early Americans may have travelled along the Pacific Coast isn’t new. People were likely south of the massive ice sheets that once covered much of the continent at least 16,000 years ago.
Given that the ice-free corridor wouldn’t be open for thousands of years before these early arrivals, scientists instead proposed that people may have moved along a “kelp highway.” This theory holds that early Americans slowly travelled down into North America in boats, following the bountiful goods found in coastal waters. Archaeologists have found evidence of coastal settlements in western Canada dating from as early as 14,000 years ago. But in 2020, researchers noted that freshwater from melting glaciers at the time may have created a strong current that would make it difficult for people to travel along the coast.
Praetorious’ presentation is part of a session on the climate history and geology of Beringia and the North Pacific during the Pleistocene, the current ice age, at AGU23. The week-long conference has brought 24,000 experts from across the spectrum of the Earth and space sciences to San Francisco this year and connected 3,000 online attendees. (Phys Org)
The post North America’s first people may have arrived by sea ice highway… appeared first on DailyNews.