Παρασκευή 14 Μαρτίου 2008

τό είδαμε στήν WORLD SCIENCE

Estimates for peopling of Americas getting earlier

March 13, 2008
Courtesy Science
and World Science staff

Arche­ol­o­gists are pre­sent­ing what they call the lat­est ev­i­dence that a tra­di­tion­al ac­count of the peo­pling of the Amer­i­cas is wrong.

The mainstream view pre­vail­ing in the past sev­er­al dec­ades holds that hu­mans en­tered the con­ti­nent about 12,000 years ago us­ing a tem­po­rary land bridge from north­east­ern Asia to Alas­ka. These mi­grants would have giv­en rise to a cul­ture of mam­moth hunters known for their un­ique stone pro­ject­ile-points and dubbed Clo­vis, af­ter re­mains found near Clo­vis, N.M., in the 1930s.

Excavation of the Schaefer mammoth in Wisconsin, thought by archaeologists to date to about 14,500 years ago. (Image courtesy D. Joyce)


But in re­cent years ev­i­dence has turned up that the first Amer­i­cans might have been con­sid­erably old­er, some ar­chae­o­lo­gists ar­gue.

A new re­view pub­lished in the re­search jour­nal Sci­ence con­tends that that the first Amer­i­cans had their roots in south­ern Si­be­ria, ven­tured across the Ber­ing land bridge probably around 22,000 years ago, and mi­grat­ed down in­to the Amer­i­cas as early as 16,000 years ago.

In the pa­per, Ted Goebel of Tex­as A&M Uni­ver­s­ity and col­leagues ar­gue that the lat­ter date is when an ice-free cor­ri­dor in Can­a­da opened and en­abled the migra­t­ion.

The new ac­count is bol­stered by ge­net­ic ev­i­dence and the dis­cov­ery of new ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites and more ac­cu­rate dates for old sites, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers.

Ge­net­ic ev­i­dence, they wrote, points to a found­ing popula­t­ion of less than 5,000 peo­ple at the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond migra­t­ion in Can­a­da.

Moreover, they added, ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ev­i­dence sug­gests the Clo­vis cul­ture may have been rel­a­tive late­com­ers to the Amer­i­cas or de­scen­dants of ear­li­er Paleo-Indian popula­t­ions rep­re­sented at ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites such as Mon­te Verde in Chil­e. That site is thought to have been oc­cu­pied 14,600 years ago.

The re­search by Goebel and col­leagues ap­pears in the jour­nal’s March 14 is­sue.

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