Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract

Early footsteps in the Americas Despite a plethora of archaeological research over the past century, the timing of human migration into the Americas is still far from resolved. In a study of exposed outcrops of Lake Otero in White Sands National Park in New Mexico, Bennett et al . reveal numerous human footprints dating to about 23,000 to 21,000 years ago. These finds indicate the presence of humans in North America for approximately two millennia during the Last Glacial Maximum south of the migratory barrier created by the ice sheets to the north. This timing coincided with a Northern Hemispheric abrupt warming event, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2, which drew down lake levels and allowed humans and megafauna to walk on newly exposed surfaces, creating tracks that became preserved in the geologic record. —AMS

A palaeoecological perspective on the transformation of the tropical Andes by early human activity

“…The known entry of people into the Americas is being steadily pushed back as new sites are discovered and better dating applied [68]. At Monte Verde, Chile, ages for coastal occupation of South America are widely accepted at ca 18-15 kcal BP [69], while the earliest ages in the Andes are more contentious.…”

Towards an interdisciplinary perspective for the study of human expansions and biocultural diversity in the Americas

“…Linguistic data has the advantages of ready access and recoverability, often with very good coverage and consistency, from most languages still spoken or documented; and it can yield accurate diachronic descriptions of descent and interaction among languages. The thorough coverage and detailed maps now available of language and language family ranges 28,29 make it possible to estimate, with good accuracy, large‐scale structural patterns, and times of first settlement such as the age of the Indigenous American linguistic population (linguistically based dates of at least ~24,000 years BP have recently been confirmed archeologically 4,30,31 ).…”

“…Some of them are common to all endeavors to reconstruct and study past human societies across the planet, and some are unique to the history of research in the Americas. As a result, it is not uncommon to find significant reevaluations of current models and hypotheses, either through new findings and new methodological innovations (see, e.g., the most recent findings of early footprints in New Mexico 4 ), by the reanalysis of radiocarbon data accumulated over decades of research, 5 or due to new theoretical framings of available data (see Reference 6 as a good example). While these constant reevaluations of the origins of early inhabitants of the Americas are related to all aspects of this process (e.g., chronology, cultural diversity, adaptation, and biological diversity), here we focus on recent discussions about the origins of Native American biological diversity, which by itself has been the focus of a vast and prolific literature.…”

Comment on “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum”

“…Bennett et al (1) use radiocarbon dating of Ruppia cirrhosa seeds associated with buried human footprints from Lake Otero in New Mexico to claim that people lived in North America at between ~23,000 and 21,000 calendar years before the present (~23 to 21 ka). Although we agree that the initial human occupation of the Americas may ultimately date to the early part of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (2, 3), we are not convinced that their radiocarbon chronology is definitively reliable.…”