Compared to the rest of the world, the American continent welcomed its first humans relatively later. You’d think that this (relative) proximity to modern times should make it easier to study—but reality isn’t so straightforward, it seems.
At least, that’s one takeaway from a recent review of genomic research on the arrival of humans in the Americas based on a collection of relevant papers and datasets. From the analysis, the University of Kansas (KU) researchers outlined three migration models for when humans started to occupy the American continent: before, during, or after the last glacial maximum, or LGM (which the authors date to between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago, though it is commonly dated to about 26,000 and 19,000 years ago).
The evidence pointed to human arrival no earlier than 21,000 years ago—at the height of the last ice age—although archaeological evidence may be consistent with an earlier date. Based on this research, it appears that humans living in Siberia or Beringia split into different groups during the last glacial maximum and possibly again roughly 16,000 years ago. For context, the last ice age ended about 11,700 years ago.
“The results of this genomic synthesis align closely with our most reliable archaeological evidence,” noted David Kilby , an archaeologist at Texas State University uninvolved in the new work, to Gizmodo.
Source link
