Settlement of the Americas
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Available scientific evidence indicates that humanity emerged from Africa over 100,000 years ago, yet did not arrive in the Americas until less than 20,000 years ago. Current understanding of the settlement of the Americas derives from advances in four interrelated disciplines: archaeology, Pleistocene geology, physical anthropology, and DNA analysis. While there is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration, its timing, and the place(s) of origin in Asia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. In the 2000s, researchers sought to use familiar tools to validate or reject established theories, such as Clovis first. The archeological evidence suggests that the Paleo-Indians' first dispersal into the Americas occurred near the end of the last glacial period or, more specifically, what is known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), around 16,500–13,000 years ago.
The settlement of the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists. Modern biochemical techniques, as well as the accumulation of archaeological and geological evidence, have shed progressively more light on the subject; however, significant questions remain unresolved.
See also
- Bluefish Caves
- Dené–Yeniseian languages - proposed family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples of Asia and North America
- Early human migrations
- Historical migration
- History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian)
- List of countries and islands by first human settlement
- Making North America (2015 PBS film)
- Norse colonization of the Americas
- Olmec alternative origin speculations
- Origins of Paleoindians
- Pendejo Cave
- Paleo-Indians period (Canada)
- Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
- Recent African origin of modern humans
