The first Americans

[Adrian]

For a while it was thought that the Clovis people, about 13.500 years ago were the first human inhabitants of the Americas but it seems like those theories will have to be re-written:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12851772
The long-held theory of how humans first populated the Americas may have been well and truly broken.
Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of stone tools that predate the technology widely assumed to have been carried by the first settlers.
The discoveries in Texas are seen as compelling evidence that the so-called Clovis culture does not represent America's original immigrants.
Details of the 15,500-year-old finds are reported in Science magazine.

This is not just a small readjustment for some archaeologists to make:

"This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head of the archaeological community to wake up and say, 'hey, there are pre-Clovis people here, that we have to stop quibbling and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas'," Michael Waters, a Texas A&M University anthropologist, told reporters.

Others consider it old news:

But anthropologist Tom Dillehay, who was not involved with the latest study, commented: "The 'Clovis first' paradigm died years ago. There are many other accepted pre-Clovis candidates throughout the Americas now."

[JimD]

Fascinating stuff - but questions of this nature are likely to always be open to speculation, particularly considering that these migrations occurred during the last ice age, when much of the current continental shelf was exposed. As a result, much of the evidence that might otherwise exist may be buried on the sea floor.

Oh, for a time machine......

[nrf]

i think there is one for sale on ebay.