by

Clyde Winters

Up until recently it was believed that the first humans crossed the Bering Strait between 16,000-12,000 B.P., to enter the North American continent.(Begley 1991, p.15) This view was never accepted by physical anthropologists who have found skeletal remains far older than 12,000 B.P.

Today archaeologists have found sites from Canada to Chile that range between 20,000 and 40,000 years old. There are numerous sites in North and South America which are over 35,000 years old. These sites are the Old Crow Basin (c.38,000 B.C.) in Canada; Orogrande Cave (c.36,000 B.C.) in the United States; and Pedra Furada (c.45,000 B.C.) Given the fact that the earliest dates for habitation of the American continent occur below Canada in South America is highly suggestive of the fact that the earliest settlers on the American continents came from Africa before the Ice melted at the Bering Strait and moved northward as the ice melted.

The appearance of pebble tools at Monte verde in Chile (c.32,000 B.P), and rock paintings at Pedra Furada in Brazil (c.22,000 B.P.) and mastodont hunting in Venezuela and Colombia (c.13,000 B.P.), have led some researchers to believe that the Americas was first settled from South America.

The early presence of ice-age sites in South America suggest that these people probably came from Africa. Africa would have been the best source for this population because the trip from Africa to the americas was shorter and the most ancient population of the Americas did not resemble Asians or Native Americans according to WALTER A. NEVES