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Americas Settled 15,000 Years Ago, Study Says Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic NewsMarch 13, 2008 A consensus is emerging in the highly contentious debate over the colonization of the Americas, according to a study that says the bulk of the region wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed both archaeological and genetic evidence from several dozen sites throughout the Americas and eastern Asia for the paper. "In the past archaeologists haven't paid too much attention to molecular genetic evidence," said lead author Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "We have brought...

Does skull prove that the first Americans came from Europe? By Steve Connor Science Editor 03 December 2002 Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City. Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and...

Constructing the Solutrean Solution Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley Smithsonian Institution University of Exeter At the 1999 Clovis and Beyond Conference held in Santa Fe, we presented a hypothesis, now known as the "Solutrean Solution", to explain the origin of Clovis technology. The hypothesis is based on the fact that there is little commonality between Clovis and Northeast Asian technologies on the one hand, while on the other, there are many technological traits shared between Clovis and the Solutrean culture of Paleolithic Europe. In the past, scholars have rejected the idea of a historical connection between the two cultures because...

The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed. Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago. That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about...

Penon WomanPenon WomanScientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City. Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and Oxford's Research Laboratory of Archaeology have dated the skull to about 13,000 years old, making it...

The Smithsonian archaeologist pursuing the contentious claim that ancient Europeans fleeing the Ice Age settled in America says artifacts unearthed in the Chesapeake Bay region support his theory. Smithsonian Institution curator of archaeology Dennis Stanford argues that about 18,000 years ago, Solutrean hunters from the coasts of France, Spain and Portugal followed seals and other marine mammals for their fur, food and fuel across a partially frozen north Atlantic Ocean to the New World... "Pre-Clovis is a fact in North and South America," archaeologist Michael Collins of the University of Texas at Austin said this year at a symposium on...

Who were the first people in North America? From where did they come? How did they arrive? The prehistory of the Americas has been widely studied. Over 70 years a consensus became so established that dissenters felt uneasy challenging it. Yet in 2001, genetics, anthropology and a few shards of flint combined to overturn the accepted facts and to push back one of the greatest technological changes that the Americas have ever seen by over five millennia. The accepted version of the first Americans starts with a flint spearhead unearthed at Clovis, New Mexico, in 1933. Dated by the mammoth...

Years of research in eastern Asia and Alaska have produced little evidence of any historical or technological connection between the Asian Paleolithic (Stone Age) and Clovis peoples. Also, the southeastern United States has produced more Clovis sites than the West, and a few radiocarbon dates suggest some of them may predate those in the western states. If correct, that hardly fits the notion that Clovis technology originated in northeast Asia or Alaska. Over the years, various scholars have noted similarities between Clovis projectile points and "Solutrean" points, the product of a Paleolithic culture on the north coast of Spain between...

Special Report 2/23/04 Island Hopping To A New World The first Americans may have arrived not on foot but by boat from Asia, even Europe By Alex Markels Digging in a dank limestone cave in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands last summer, 21-year-old Christina Heaton hardly noticed the triangular piece of chipped stone she'd unearthed in a pile of muddy debris. But as her scientist father, Timothy, sifted through the muck, he realized she'd struck pay dirt. "Oh my God!" he yelled to her and the team of other researchers scouring the remote site off the coast of British Columbia. "It's...

IBERIA, NOT SIBERIA?A Look at the Evidence Supporting a Late Pleistocene Migration to the New World from Europe Michael A. Arbuthnot ANT 5152 Paleoindian Archaeology Dr. Michael Faught December 6th, 2000 Perhaps the most provocative question facing North American paleo-archaeologists is the origin of the Clovis complex. Traditional models have placed Clovis origins in Asia, though one controversial theory contends that Clovis progenitors may have migrated from Iberia (Spain, France, and Portugal). This theory suggests that the descendants of an Upper Pleistocene culture known as Solutrean were the first unquestionable inhabitants of the New World. The recent revitalization of a...

Rediscovering AmericaThe New World may be 20,000 years older than experts thought BY CHARLES W. PETIT Late in the afternoon last May 17, a tired archaeological team neared the end of a 14-hour day winching muck to the deck of a Canadian Coast Guard vessel. It was in water 170 feet deep in Juan Perez Sound, half a mile offshore among British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. For four days, team members had fruitlessly sieved undersea mud and gravel. Then, in the slanting light of sunset, a deckhand drew from the goop a triangular blade of dark basalt. Its sharp edge...

A contentious theory that the first Americans came here from Europe - not Asia - is challenging a century-old consensus among archaeologists, and a dig in Kenosha County is part of the evidence. The two leading proponents of the Europe theory admit that many scientists reject their contention, instead holding fast to the long-established belief that the first Americans arrived from Siberia via a now-submerged land bridge across the Bering Sea to Alaska. The first of the Europe-to-North America treks probably took place at the height of the last Ice Age more than 18,000 years ago, said Dennis Stanford, ...

Greenland ice core analysis shows drastic climate change near end of last ice age Caption: The North Greenland Ice Core Project camp. Credit: NGRIP Temperatures spiked 22 degrees F in just 50 years, researchers say Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation. The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just...

Although researchers have long known that the last two interglacial periods experienced warming in the Arctic... Just beyond the northwest edge of the vast Greenland Ice Sheet, Northwestern University researchers have discovered lake mud that beat tough odds by surviving the last ice age. The mud, and remains of common flies nestled within it, record two interglacial periods in northwest Greenland. Although researchers have long known these two periods -- the early Holocene and Last Interglacial -- experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in Earth's orbit, the mix of fly species preserved from these times shows that Greenland...

It's like the underside of the island got a good roasting in the distant past and still has the big scar to prove it. That hotspot, by the way, is the one which today is building Iceland in the middle of the North Atlantic. The plume of broiling rock rising from deep inside the Earth has broken through the thin ocean floor at Iceland's location and is now creating new land with regular eruptions of lava. Greenland's warm NW-SE band is reported by a team of researchers led by the US space agency (Nasa) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)....

A meteor hit Earth and exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force in July, but the Air Force has made no mention of the event. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed an object of unspecified size traveling at 15.1 miles per second (54,360 miles per hour) struck the ground in Greenland, just 27 miles north of Thule Air Base, on July 25. The base is mainly used to detect missile launches. Director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists Hans Kristensen tweeted about the impact, but the US Air Force has not reported the event. Kristensen argues it’s...

The Air Force said Friday that there was no damage to Thule Air Base in Greenland after a large meteor fell nearby last week. The fireball incident occurred just miles from the remote military base on July 25 and entered the atmosphere with a 2.1 kiloton force, according to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. The Air Force 21st Space Wing monitors missile launches and space activity via sensors at Thule, and directed any questions to NASA, which did not immediately provide a statement.

A meteor hit the earth and exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force last month, but the US Air Force has made no mention of the event. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed an object of unspecified size travelling at 24.4 kilometres per second struck earth in Greenland, just 43 kilometres north of an early missile warning Thule Air Base on the 25th of July, 2018. Director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, Hans Kristensen, tweeted about the impact, but America’s Air Force has not reported the event.Mr. Kristensen argues it’s concerning there was no public warning...

Around 13,000 years ago, the Earth burned. A swarm of comet debris from the Taurid meteor stream had blasted the Americas and parts of Europe; the worst day in prehistory since the end of the ice age. Many species of large animal were exterminated by the conflagration and ensuing cataclysms. And those that survived the initial onslaught could do little against the floods, acid rain, and starvation that followed.

A bird that had previously gone extinct came back to life thanks to a rare evolutionary process known as "iterative evolution." The white-throated rail bird can presently be found on the island of Aldabra. Early fossils of the bird suggest it lived there thousands of years ago and died out because it could not fly to higher ground when rising sea levels threatened its safety. But thanks to "iterative evolution," which evolves similar body parts due to genetics from a similar ancestor, the bird came back from the dead. **SNIP** In order to make the determination that the extinct bird...