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Ainu like tribes could have (and probably did) come into America via the ice bridge. It also seems Australian Aborigines also populated South America before the arrival of Asian ice bridge peoples.

That does not mean the Amerian ancestors were Europeans or anything like that if Ainu-like.

"It also seems Australian Aborigines also populated South America before the arrival of Asian ice bridge peoples. "

Yes. It's starting to look like the Aborigines from Oz could be some of the earliest if not the first. (Luzia)

"That does not mean the Amerian ancestors were Europeans or anything like that if Ainu-like."

I agree. The question of the origins of Ainu-Jomon, as far as I'm concerned, is still unsettled. James Chatters has proposed the most palatable (to me) scenerio. That is, that who-ever the Jomon-Ainu ancestors were, they are likely to be the ancestors of present day Europeans, Polynesians and Asians. I think there was a lot of back and forth mixing going on in Siberia >100,000 years ago in a multiregional scheme. The Ainu may have gotten a genetic 'refresh' as early as 5-6,000 from the Euro-Asian steppes. There is limited (some) genetic support for this scenerio.

Now, there does seem to be some evidence of (more recent) Europeans on the east coast of the US, probably arriving in fits and starts themselves.

well, most Europeans have Ancestors from Asia (well, a couple of millenia older) -- the most recent before the 1900s were the Gypsies from Western India, before them, the Mongols, Turks, Avars, Bulgars, etc. in the early Middle ages from Central Asia / the Far East, before them, the Huns from the same area accompanied by the Alans, the Scyths, the GErmans, the Slavs etc, before that, the Celts, Latins, Baltics etc. -- all Indo-Europeans/Aryans. Probably the only Europeans whose ancestors were there before 2000 B.C. would have been the Basques -- even the Magyars are probably from Northern Siberia / the URals