Arrival of Man to America

All of us were educated under the theory that human beings had arrived to America by crossing the Behring Strait during the last glaciations, that is some 14,000 years ago. They had been following the great mammals on which they feeded.

This hypothesis was based in the finding of projectile points made with a very sophisticated techique. They were named Clovis Points because were found for the first time in a New Mexico town of that name.

The reasoning was that, if nobody had found earlier points with a less elaborate technique, that meant that their builders had arrived from Asia, bringing with them already developed that technique.

However, this theory has been recently attacked by other findings both in North and in South America, dated much earlier than the Clovis points.

We have, for instance, that in the Pedra Furada site in Brasil, some paintings on rock were found which have been dated from 32,000 years ago. This is the earliest human presence in America discovered so far, although it hasn´t been totally accepted by researchers.

However, also in Southern Chile, in the Monte Verde site (Wikipedia article) were also found remains of a settlement that has been dated from 14,700 years ago. The archaeological community didn´t totally accept this dating until 1997, when an article on the site was published in Science.

Also in Brasil, in Lapa Vermelha, some human remains were found that have been dated at 13,500 years ago. This is the oldest human remain found yet in America.

Besides the fact that this early date for a man in the Southern Hemisphere would be almost impossible in the case that men had entered this continent through the Bering Strait, we also have the fact that this skeleton doesn´t have the racial characteristics of American Indians, but those of an African or Australian human being.

Today, there is certainty that there wasn´t really only one current of immigration to America, but that in the period of thousands of years, different human groups, from distinct origins, arrived at this continent, following different routes.

The most important of these theories is that human beings traveled since immemorial times in boats through the sea, and that way they advaced great distances which wouldn´t be possible to cover by following a land route. Many of these sites haven´t been found because they were inhabited during the glaciations, when the sea level was lower than today, so now they are underwater.

Also, some anthropologists and linguists suggest that one of these human currents, after populating Australia, crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived at America.

Some other US anthropologists also see similitudes between the primitive man of Eastern US and those of a culture from Southwest Europe, which dissappeared some 19,000 years ago.

All of these hypothesis prove that the human presence in America is not, as previously thought, a single happening, but a complex of human currents that used one or another possibility of subsistence and, without knowing it, arrived to a new continent, populating it gradually in many different waves.