Who's On First - Correcting History of North America

Clovis People Not First Americans, Study Shows

The so-called Clovis people, known for their distinctive spearheads, were not the first humans to set foot in the Americas after all, a new study says.

The find supports growing archaeological evidence found in recent years that disputes the notion that the Americas were originally populated by a single migration of people from Asia about 13,000 years ago. [See new DNA evidence linking Clovis to modern Native peoples].

New radiocarbon dating of Clovis-culture materials shows that this group inhabited the Americas a little later and for a shorter period of time than previously believed. [Learn how radiocarbon is saving elephants].

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/native-people-americans-clovis-news

New evidence may change timeline for when people first arrived in North America

An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago—nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought.

Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that were collected from the cave in the 1960s as part of the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project. The dates for the bones suddenly took Somerville and his colleagues in a different direction with their work.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-evidence-timeline-people-north-america.html

Ancient stone tools suggest first people arrived in America earlier than thought

Three deliberately-shaped pieces of limestone — a pointed stone and two cutting flakes — may be the oldest human tools yet found in the Americas.

Pieces of limestone from a cave in Mexico may be the oldest human tools ever found in the Americas, and suggest people first entered the continent up to 33,000 years ago – much earlier than previously thought.

The findings, published Wednesday in two papers in the journal Nature, which include the discovery of the stone tools, challenge the idea that people first entered North America on a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and an ice-free corridor to the interior of the continent.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/ancient-stone-tools-suggest-first-people-arrived-america-earlier-thought-n1234578

Humans arrived in North America at least 15,000 years earlier than we thought, discoveries show — which suggests they came by boat

New evidence suggests people have been living in North America twice as long as archaeologists previously thought.

Stone tools and artifacts discovered in a remote cave in Zacatecas, Mexico, offer evidence that humans were on the continent as far back as 32,000 years ago, during the last ice age.

That upends the idea that the first people arrived in North America between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago after continent-hopping from modern-day Siberia via the Bering land bridge. The new finding, described in a study in the journal Nature on Wednesday, pushes that timeline back at least 15,000 years.

https://www.businessinsider.com/people-in-north-america-15000-years-earlier-than-archaeologists-thought-2020-7?op=1