The story concerns new evidence that the Americas weren’t colonized by a single wave of migration, but several, and that those waves probably occurred some time before 13,000 years ago. It’s a topic that fascinates me.
At the time we’re talking about, Earth — especially North America — was still a frigid place. To reach the present-day lower 48 states, consider the hazards wandering groups would have faced. They likely came one of two ways:
1. Land route: This would have involved walking across a narrow land bridge from Siberia to Alaska, some of which was ice free. But only by about 13,000 years ago was an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains finally opening up. So anyone coming before this time would have had to cross massive ice fields, very likely devoid of game. This sort of thing killed Robert F. Scott a century ago in Antarctica.
2. Coastal route: This would have required long spells in boats on the Pacific Ocean, passing little but ice cliffs for long stretches as the travelers rowed along the Alaskan and Canadian coasts. This could not have been an easy path in what likely were dugout boats.
These would have unquestionably been long, harrowing ordeals. My question is, why did they come? And really, how did they survive such an ordeal?
I think the answers partly come from understanding that early homo sapiens, and their immediate ancestors, were more hardy, resilient and intelligent than we give them credit for.
There’s evidence of early humans living in Siberia more than 260,000 years ago, using stone tools, and surviving in an incredibly inhospitable climate. There are also clues from millions of years ago that primates — direct ancestors to hominins — may have lived in cooperative rather than competitive societies. If primates were human-like more than 7 million years ago, is it a stretch to believe that homo sapiens living 15,000 or 20,000 years ago were capable of great feats?
I think it is not. And, yet, it is amazing.
Consider that the Romans, for all their brilliant engineering, never reached the new world. The Vikings almost certainly did, albeit tentatively. It took Europeans nearly 600 years from the time of Charlemagne, sometimes called the father of Europe, to Columbus before the first steps toward colonizing the new world began.
And to think small bands of humans probably did the same thing, possibly even in less time, 15,000 years ago.