[Robert A Cook PE]

I don't see what the 'emotional" fervor is about.

They're never really established any evidence for anything older than 12,000 years old - this only debates whether relatively close to Clovis were 13,000 - 13,500 or 14,000 years old.

The entire continent was crossed east-west regularly by families on foot in 9 months. Pretending that families (equally on foot!) could NOT cross equally hard terrain going north-south (only three times as far, with the weather getting better the farther south they go!) in 1000, 2000, or 3000 years is foolish.

[gardengirl]

Being a bright, inquisitive and sometimes sarcastic kid- I once asked a teacher why there were footprints in rock, clearly human, if there weren't any people here until 15000 years ago.
"There can't be."
OK. Well how long does it take rock to form?
"Milions of years."
Well, what about the footprints?
"There aren't any."
OK. How did the footprints get there?
"THERE ARE NO FOOTPRINTS!!!"
OK. I went back to the creek after school and happily played in my non existent footprints in rock. I decided real early that teachers didn't know half as much as they thoguht they did, and scientists knew less than that. If something didn't fit their theory, why then, it simply didn't exist! I still laugh about that and I've taught my kids to never take anything at face value. Question, question, question! And keep your eyes open!

[stockpirate]

There ar actually finds in the 50k years old area in N AMerica, and there are several threads on FR re: that issue.

[SunkenCiv]

I don't see what the 'emotional" fervor is about.

Since "'emotional' fervor" is only mentioned in your post, neither do I.

They're never really established any evidence for anything older than 12,000 years old - this only debates whether relatively close to Clovis were 13,000 - 13,500 or 14,000 years old.

"They've" established evidence for PreClovis human sites in the Americas.

The entire continent was crossed east-west regularly by families on foot in 9 months. Pretending that families (equally on foot!) could NOT cross equally hard terrain going north-south (only three times as far, with the weather getting better the farther south they go!) in 1000, 2000, or 3000 years is foolish.

No, pretending that the Monte Verde dates are younger than the Bering route is foolish.

[sig226]

As stockpirate noted, there have been other threads about this on FR recently. IIRC, I first saw it in Scientific American this fall. The sites they are examining seem to predate the clovis sites by tens of thousands of years, and the dna links they're studying seem more connected to southeast Asia than northeast Russia. That was from a study of South American Indians, comparing them to people from - I want to say Indonesia, but they were probably from the continent. I'll see if I can find a link.