Peopling of the Americas

It is believed that the Peopling of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (Paleo-Indians) entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago). These populations expanded south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and spread rapidly southward, occupying both North and South America no later than 14,000 years ago, and possibly even before 20,000 years ago. The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians. Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to Siberian populations by proposed linguistic factors, the distribution of blood types, and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA.

While there is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration and the place(s) of origin in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. The traditional theory is that Ancient Beringians moved when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation, following herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile. Any archaeological evidence of coastal occupation during the last Ice Age would now have been covered by the sea level rise, up to a hundred metres since then.

The precise date for the peopling of the Americas is a long-standing open question. While advances in archaeology, Pleistocene geology, physical anthropology, and DNA analysis have progressively shed more light on the subject, significant questions remain unresolved. The Clovis First theory refers to the hypothesis that the Clovis culture represents the earliest human presence in the Americas about 13,000 years ago. Evidence of pre-Clovis cultures has accumulated and pushed back the possible date of the first peopling of the Americas. Academics generally believe that humans reached North America south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at some point between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. Some new controversial archaeological evidence suggests the possibility that human arrival in the Americas may have occurred prior to the Last Glacial Maximum more than 20,000 years ago.

wikipedia/en/Peopling%20of%20the%20Americas

Interdisciplinary synthesis of archaeology, genetics, climatology, and Indigenous knowledge systems on human migration into the Americas.

1. Beringia, Bering Strait theory

   • Mechanism: Sea-level drop during the Last Glacial Maximum (~26,000–18,000 BCE) exposed a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska

   • Environment: “Mammoth Steppe” ecosystem supported by grasslands and megafauna

2. Human migration to the Americas

   • Pre-Clovis Evidence (24,000–16,000 BCE):

     • Bluefish Caves (Yukon), White Sands footprints (~23,000 BCE)

   • Clovis-first model (16,000–13,000 BCE):

     • Clovis culture, Ice-Free Corridor hypothesis

   • Coastal migration hypothesis:

     • “Kelp Highway” model – migration via Pacific Rim coastlines, marine foraging

3. Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas

   • Founding populations: Ancient Beringians → Ancestral Native Americans

   • Genetic markers: Mitochondrial haplogroups A, B, C, D, X; Y-DNA Q-M3

   • Key study: Raghavan et al. (2014) – Mal’ta–Buret’ culture DNA link to Native ancestry

4. Dyuktai culture and Nenana Complex

   • Archaeological transitions from Siberia to Alaska

   • Clovis point technology dissemination (~13,400–12,800 BCE)

1. Pre-Clovis archaeological sites

   • Notable examples: Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pedra Furada, Cerutti Mastodon site

   • Challenges the Clovis-first paradigm

2. Solutrean hypothesis

   • Claims European migration via North Atlantic ice shelf

   • Largely discredited due to genetic and archaeological gaps

3. Oral traditions

   • Examples: Tlingit Kwaan stories, Hopi emergence narratives

   • Emphasizes integration of traditional knowledge with archaeological models

4. Beringian Standstill hypothesis

   • Genetic bottleneck in population isolated in Beringia (~20,000–15,000 BCE)

• Primary Location:
  [[Pre-Columbian Americas]] → [[Peopling of the Americas]]

• Cross-links:

  • [[Human migration]]

  • [[Pleistocene extinctions]]

  • [[Decolonization of knowledge]] (aligns with critiques of Eurocentric archaeology)

  • [[Indigenous archaeology]]

• Books & Studies:

  • Hopkins, Bering Land Bridge (1967)

  • Meltzer, First Peoples in a New World (2009)

  • Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018)

• Web Archives:

  • Reich Lab – Native American Genomics

  • Smithsonian Native Knowledge 360°