Introduction:
The origin of anatomically modern humans and the method of their arrival to the Americas is a topic which has been studied as far back as 1590 when the Jesuit Friar Jose de Acosta suggested that the populations of America emigrated from Asia via land (Mangan, 2002). This theory was simply based on Acosta’s observations of Mexican populations and had no other evidence to back up his theory. Later, it was suggested that the first anatomically modern humans to arrive in the Americas did so by crossing a land bridge that existed between northeast Asia and northwest North America (Geobel et al., 2006; Sanchez et al., 2014; Haynes, 2005). It was first suggested by Hopkins (1967), that this land bridge formed during the last glacial maximum (~50kya-15kya) and that the first migrants arrived ~13.5 kya. The earliest evidence for modern humans in the Americas is said to belong to that of the Clovis complex populations (Waters and Stafford, 2007; Sanchex et al., 2014). However, this is debated by a number of authors who suggest there must have been human populations in the Americas before Clovis. Clovis culture archaeological sites are widely distributed around North America and are dated back to shortly after the last glacial maximum (Goebel et al, 2008). The timing of the colonisation and the geographical locus have led to the assumption that Clovis were the first …show more content…
Understanding the dispersal patterns and identifying when modern humans first appeared is an important step when trying to understand the origin of Clovis and whether there were earlier populations of modern humans there before them (Waters and Safford, 2007). The underlying question is whether Clovis were the first humans to colonise the Americas or whether there were humans already there from earlier
The origin of anatomically modern humans and the method of their arrival to the Americas is a topic which has been studied as far back as 1590 when the Jesuit Friar Jose de Acosta suggested that the populations of America emigrated from Asia via land (Mangan, 2002). This theory was simply based on Acosta’s observations of Mexican populations and had no other evidence to back up his theory. Later, it was suggested that the first anatomically modern humans to arrive in the Americas did so by crossing a land bridge that existed between northeast Asia and northwest North America (Geobel et al., 2006; Sanchez et al., 2014; Haynes, 2005). It was first suggested by Hopkins (1967), that this land bridge formed during the last glacial maximum (~50kya-15kya) and that the first migrants arrived ~13.5 kya. The earliest evidence for modern humans in the Americas is said to belong to that of the Clovis complex populations (Waters and Stafford, 2007; Sanchex et al., 2014). However, this is debated by a number of authors who suggest there must have been human populations in the Americas before Clovis. Clovis culture archaeological sites are widely distributed around North America and are dated back to shortly after the last glacial maximum (Goebel et al, 2008). The timing of the colonisation and the geographical locus have led to the assumption that Clovis were the first …show more content…
Understanding the dispersal patterns and identifying when modern humans first appeared is an important step when trying to understand the origin of Clovis and whether there were earlier populations of modern humans there before them (Waters and Safford, 2007). The underlying question is whether Clovis were the first humans to colonise the Americas or whether there were humans already there from earlier