For nearly 100 years, archaeologists knew how North and South America were populated by humans. They crossed over from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge about 13,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower. From there, they slowly sent their descendants southward through the two continents. But more recent archaeological discoveries, paired with genome studies, have sent the question back into the realm of “we don’t know.”
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One of the most intriguing artifacts is a collection of human footprints at White Sands National Park, once thought to be around 10,000 years old, then maybe up to 13,000 years old, but have recently been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. Other sites have artifacts that date prior to the previously-accepted Beringia crossing, although the oldest ones are questionable. Could humans have arrived in boats? After all, humans reached Australia in boats 50,000 years ago. Read about the oldest human artifacts in the Americas and what they mean to the story of human migration at LiveScience. -via Digg
(Image credit: National Park Service)
Source: neatorama