Single Migration Theory Report

The first nations of the Americas arrived thousands of years ago and spread to all corners of the continents, but exactly how and when remains a matter of question. It was previously accepted that the Clovis were the first culture to arrive in the Americas 13.5 kya (Goeble et al. 2008: 1497). The Clovis were characterised by quick migrations and the hunting of large game such as mammoth. This however, has been revised with the discovery of remains in both North and South America that pre-date 13.5 thousand years. (Goeble et al. 2008: 1497) Modern arguments include a single population, and a single migration from Beringia, multiple migrations of multiple populations as a theory that combines the previous two.
One possible origin of the First Nations is that the Americas were settled via multiple migrations of at least two different populations. This idea was proposed in response to the cranial morphology of remains …show more content…
Chatters combines both the physical and biological evidence. Unlike previous two theories this combines two types of evidence that seem incompatible. Chatters argues that the discrepancies between the skulls of modern first nations and Paleocolumbians can be attributed to a dual migration by a single population, something that takes into account the mtDNA and Y chromosomal DNA (Chatters 2010). Chatters (2010) proposes that a single group of people moved into Beringia from East Asia where there was a second split with one section moving south. He explains that the differences in facials and cranial features could be the result of the selective pressures of the arctic climate over thousands of years and that the people who migrated at a later time would “have differed morphologically from the people who proceeded them” Chatters 2010: 53) However, an idea like this was criticised by Neves et al. (2007) as unlikely as it would imply that the population living in Asia was changing along with those living in the new