Who Were the First Americans?

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Who were the first Americans?

Throughout history, some of the biggest questions in life have always been “Who am I?” and “Where do I come from?” The answers to these questions can be found by looking into the past, and discovering who our ancestors were, and where they came from. For many, that answer is known; they can trace their familial lineage back to the Old World. But for those who can trace their genealogical tree to the native peoples of the Americas, the answer is not quite as clear. While a few archaeological discoveries were made before the discovery of the Clovis site in Clovis, New Mexico, the debate as to who the first Americans were, how they got here, and where they originated, was really sparked between 1929-1932. An excavation led by Edgar Billings Howard in Clovis, New Mexico, lasting five years from 1932 to 1937, revealed evidence of a Clovis tool-complex (e.g. fluted spear points) (See Figure 1).

The discovery of the Clovis spear points and the ensuing “Clovis First” theory (Clovis peoples were the first American inhabitants), led to other theories. The most popular, up until recently, is the Beringia Land Bridge theory, which suggests a passage through the Bering Strait, from Siberia into what is now Alaska. This coastal migration of ancient Siberians supposedly occurred towards the end of the Pleistocene Era (Ice Age: 2.5mya – 11,700ya) when lower sea levels formed a bridge across the Bering Sea, connecting the two continents (See Figure 2).

The most noted artifacts are the aforementioned fluted projectile points, or Clovis points, which were flaked flint speak-points with a notched flute. These fluted points could then be inserted into a shaft to make arrows (See Figure 3).

The Clovis peoples were big-game hunter-gatherers and are thought to have crossed the land bridge in pursuit of mastodons, mammoths, and bison (See Figure 6).

The theory asserts that after crossing the land bridge, the new inhabitants of the Americas made their way south, east of the Rocky Mountains. This would have occurred during the time of retreating glaciers, through areas not affected by ice/snow. The window of time for this migration is actually quite short, between 11,050 to 10,800 years ago (most precise), and suggested by Thomas Stafford & Michael Waters of Texas A&M University, based on new radiocarbon dates. The validity for the idea of a Siberian migration is supported by the genetic similarities – discovered by the Human Genographic Project 2.0 – between Native Americans and Central Siberian and Mongolian populations. The method of analysis infers ancestral source populations, and has found – at frequencies of 2-3% – that Native Americans share this part of their genome only with central Siberians and Mongolians.

In recent decades, older sites than the original Clovis, have been found, such as those found in Monte Verde, Chile (14,800 BP), the Paisley Caves in Oregon (14,300 BP), and Taima-Taima, Venezuela (14,000 BP). Regardless, the generally accepted hypotheses that are collectively called “Pre-Clovis”, still point towards an Asian migration as the source for the original settlers of the Americas. These older sites call the Bering Strait Land Bridge method into question, but newer theories have arisen that include rafting along kelp highways (See Figure5) across the Pacific Ocean directly to South America or along the North Western coast and then south.

Over the years, flint tools older than the Clovis points, known to be part of the Solutrean industry due to their original discovery site of Solutré in Eastern France, a part of ancient Iberia, have been found along the eastern coast of North America (See Figure 6).

Iberia is a peninsula located in the South Western edge of Europe and contains parts of Spain, Portugal, and France (See Figure 7).

The discovery of this new evidence has given rise to the Solutrean hypothesis which suggests that the first peoples to come to the Americas were from Europe rather than Asia. This new hypothesis (1999) has garnered a debate amongst archaeologists as to who exactly were the first Americans. Comparisons of the Solutrean and Clovis industries indicate a similar method, and it has been hypothesized by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian and Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter, that the Solutreans were the predecessors of the Clovis peoples.

In addition to the numerous points and tools found along the Eastern coast in the last decade or so, is a discovery made in back 1970 by a boat near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Virginia. A scallop trawler, hauled up onto their deck, a mastodon tusk that had a spear point that had been lodged in it from an ancient hunt. At the time of its discovery, no real evidence had been found to question the, at that time, established fact of an initial Asian migration, so the tusk and the spear point that penetrated it were left sitting for over forty years. The tusk was dated to be around 22,000 years old, suggesting that the spear point found with it, in association, is also that old; nearly ten thousand years older than any Clovis site.

Supporters of the Solutrean theory, individuals such as Stanford and Bradley, suggest that during the last Ice Age (Upper Paleolithic), that peoples from Europe, Iberia in France specifically, crossed over on an ice-edge corridor that ran along the North Atlantic from the Atlantic coast of France to North America. This dangerous crossing, it has been suggested, was enabled by the use of small boats, much like how the Inuit travel from ice block to ice block. Support for this theory of watercraft comes from the discovery of fine needles that are associated with Solutrean finds in both Europe and North America (See Figure 8).

Stanford has found further support for his theory in the mid-Atlantic on islands that lie within or near the Chesapeake Bay. This support is made up of more stone tools that match the Solutrean industry method, and had led Stanford to conclude that Solutrean settlers may have settled in Delmarva, an island in the Chesapeake Bay, first.

Though it has been long held that Native Americans are genetically linked with Siberian and Mongolian ancestry, which is still valid, some geneticists have claimed that some Native Americans also possess genes that can be traced back to Europe. The presence of a definite pattern of haplogroup X within tribes that populate the most North Eastern parts of America, has been viewed by some as evidence of a Caucasian or European population, as original founders of the tribal populations that exist today. It is this aspect of the Solutrean theory that has had the staunchest of criticizers. Two different studies (2008 & 2011) have both attempted to debunk a possible genetic connection between North Eastern Native American tribes and ancient Europeans. The 2011 study, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, explains the presence of haplogroup X as “parallel genetic histories” much like how African Homo Erectus/Ergastor and Asian Homo Erectus evolved in a separate but parallel fashion.

Until more evidence is collected and a new paradigm shift occurs, the Solutrean debate against the established Asian migration of both Clovis and Pre-Clovis via land bridge and/or raft, will not gain the necessary support needed to become widely accepted (See Figure 9). Individuals like Bruce Bradley and Dennis Stanford know perfectly well that they are fighting an uphill battle. Stanford himself described the Solutrean hypothesis as a “skeletal idea” primarily due to the minimal amount of evidence available at this present time. Whether or not the first Americans were of Asian descent or European, the full extent of what the first human to set foot on these bountiful shores thought and felt will never be known.

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