Ancient Chesapeake site challenges timeline of humans in the Americas

[wnylib]

13. Sounds like it was interesting work.

Last edited Sun Jun 23, 2024, 10:39 PM - Edit history (1)

The problem with the theory of crossing a land bridge past Alaska into North America on foot is that, by the time that the Beringia land bridge was fully formed where the Bering Straight exists now, there was no land access into the interior of North America because 2 miles thick Alaskan and Canadian glaciers completely blocked off a land route.

We know that people did live on that land bridge, called Beringua, for a couple thousand years and formed a genetic cluster of traits and traceable DNA mutations. The Clovis theory is that they stayed on the Beringia land bridge until part of the glaciers melted leaving an ice free corridor for people to travel inland into North America past Alaska.

But the dates for when glaciers opened up enough to pass into North America are only about 12,000 years ago and we have sites dated now at 20,000 to 23,000 years ago. So the first people in the Americas came long before the glaciers opened up a land route. The only possible way for that to happen is by boat. One possibility is what I posted earlier, that glacial formation gradually caused more land to be exposed so that new islands formed in the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands got larger with less distance between them. Then people could island hop from Asia into North America, bypassing the land glaciers. Or, once enough land was exposed to form Beringia, people followed the southern shore of Beringia all the way to the Pacific coast of North America, bypassing the land glaciers by taking the sea route.

Or, it's possible that geologists have the timing of the Last Glacial Maximum wrong. It might have occurred later than they think, and therefore it was possible for people to take an open land route. Or the glacial melting might have occurred earlier than they think, leaving an open land route.

But, given the current estimated timing of maximum glaciation, and the fact that we know that people in other parts of Asia were using boats for short distances between land masses that long ago, I favor the water route entry. It matches the dates of glaciation and later melting and matches what we know about coastal people using boats that long ago.

It helps to picture what happened if you look at a map if the Bering region today and at a map of the region when Beringia existed.

https://images.app.goo.gl/aht8GPsitQ6BYhQF8


https://images.app.goo.gl/JABjfVxk6Xfat6PH8