The Very First American Settlers Arrived Much Earlier Than We Thought

a reply to: Harte

Whales are seasonal and their migrations take them far out to sea. Even the "whaling cutlures of the Pacific N/W only hunt whales seasonally, and lived off of the more mundane sea mammals, such as seal, sea lions, sea otters, porposies and the like.
Whales are also an extremely risky hunt for small communities, its much easier to get seals and otters, catch some fish and dive for shell fish. The sites on the channel islands(CA) are showing the earliest inhabitants were diving to depths of 60' for shellfish found in the kelpbeds, as well as exploiting open ocean waters(200 miles out).
One current model for long term movements of paleocoastal people is that they moved to follow shellfish beds. Once they settled a coastline, they would fishout the shellfish beds in short order and would move down the coast to the next best beds. Once you get into north america, the rugged and irregular coast line made for big jumps to the next beds, where you had a coastline the humans could live along, that had access to resources.
This model was somewhat confirmed, by recent finds in BC and the local oral traditions. These people lived this way until fairly recently, and their historic movments can be traced and compred to what is found in the arch. record.
In this area, which was very productive, a small social group(villiage) would work the clam beds of a cove until it didnt produce, that would take a couple three years, then they would move down the coast to a new cove, so on and so forth. Since the coast of BC is a vast inland waterway, there were plenty of coves and remote beaches, so they didnt have to move completely on, they could do a "lap" and come back to the same sites every 20-25years. Local arch. has backed up this pattern.

originally posted by: grey580


Maybe it was easier for sea going people to island hop?

Aye, every time I look at a map of the world during the last glacial maximum my eyes are drawn to the Aleutian island arc. IMO a possible access route for coastal travelers at the time

a reply to: AndyMayhew

I think South America still has many secrets to give up.

a reply to: grey580

Yes. Colder, obviously, but there'd have been many more islands, and the coast would have been farther out, as well.

Many of the more "cherished" ideas of archaeology are, as any theory should be, challenged by new evidence.

a reply to: AndyMayhew

During the last Ice Age, it wouldn't have been an island chain, Beringia would have been a land bridge allowing all sorts of migration across from Siberia, or from Alaska, to the other. Though it could have been since it swings a bit further south than the Beringia is thought to have been.

Probably Beringia existed more than once.

Even after the ice began to recede, the remaining islands would have allowed easy, or fairly easy, access from Asia to North America, and the other way, as well. With the Pacific current providing warmer, if not exactly tropical, weather, the ice generally stays north of the Aleutians. Today, anyway...at the end of the last Ice Age, who knows what the weather was truly like. Uncomfortable, would be my guess.

So, yeah, the Aleutians are very much the gateway to North America from Asia. It'd be more surprising if people didn't use it, than did, for many thousands of years.