posted on Nov, 2 2008 @ 02:58 PM
There is a great documentary dealing with this exact subject.
America’s Stone Age Explorers
NOVA investigates the evidence for and controversies surrounding who the first Americans were, where they came from, and how they arrived in the
Americas.The program:
• reports how a type of prehistoric spearhead—known as the Clovispoint—was found in 1933 in Clovis, New Mexico, and later discoveredin all 48
contiguous states, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica.
• notes that mammoth bones found near the Clovis point were dated at13,500 years ago, coinciding with the end of the last great Ice Age and mass
extinction of some 35 genera of big animals, or megafauna.
• presents the conventional, so-called Clovis-first theory—that Clovispeople crossed a now-submerged land bridge spanning the BeringStrait and
then made their way south via an ice-free corridor between the great ice sheets that covered most of Canada.
• reviews controversial archeological evidence indicating the entry ofpre-Clovis people, and reports on a possible Ice Age migration route along the
Pacific coastline of Alaska.
• explains how mitochondrial DNA was used to strengthen the casethat people migrated to the Americas at least 20,000 years ago.
• relates the search for the origins of the Clovis point and recountsthe findings of similar spear points made by the Solutreans of Ice Age France
and Spain.
• reports on evidence from a site in Virginia that some scientists claimbridges a 5,000-year gap between Solutrean and Clovis points.
• examines Inuit survival strategies to understand how prehistoric European travelers could have made an Ice Age Atlantic Ocean crossing.
• voices criticisms of the transatlantic theory, for instance, that manytypes of Solutrean artifacts and personal ornaments are not found inNorth
America.
• reports on an emerging new portrait of the first Americans as people who arrived by various routes 20,000 years ago, spread throughout thecountry
and eventually started making the Clovis point—perhaps the first great American invention—13,500 years ago.
[edit on 2-11-2008 by IvanZana]