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North and South America were the last inhabited continents to be settled by modern humans thousands of years ago, but when and how they arrived there remains a mystery.
“We don’t know who these first people were,” Todd Braje, director of the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, told Business Insider, adding that we don’t know “where they came from, when they arrived, or what technology they had.”
Archaeologists have long believed that the first humans set foot on the Americas were around 13,000 years ago, but new discoveries have recently called that theory into question and pushed the date back even further.
A series of recent discoveries on Parsons Island, Maryland, may be another step back in time — and are raising some difficult questions about early human migration across North America.
Out of the mainstream
Darrin Rowley has been hunting for artifacts on the Maryland Islands around the Chesapeake Bay since he was 9. Now, more than 40 years later, he has amassed an extensive collection of tools believed to have been used by early Americans.
He found about 300 tools on Parsons Island that he says date back to about 22,000 years ago — thousands of years before many scientists believe humans first traveled to North America.
If Lawrie’s hypothesis is correct, it could significantly change our ideas about when and how people began arriving in the region.
But Rowley, who works primarily as an independent geologist, has not published his latest research in a peer-reviewed journal, and other experts have grown skeptical of the theory, which is already a bit outside the mainstream.
But Lawley isn’t worried about the criticism. “If I’m wrong, that’s fine,” he told Business Insider. “Prove me wrong.”
When did the first modern humans arrive in North America?
Darin Lowry has discovered about 300 artifacts on Parsons Island, some of which he has dated to about 22,000 years ago. Darin Lawrie
About 13,000 years ago, a significant event occurred in northern North America: the glaciers that had covered parts of the continent for thousands of years began to melt.
Archaeologists believe that migration across this region would have required waiting for the glaciers to melt, otherwise travel through what is now Canada would have been impossible. right There was very little food on the way and it was extremely dangerous.
For most of the 20th century, the theory The first Americans arrived from Asia about 13,000 years ago, crossing the now-submerged Bering land bridge that connected Siberia with what is now Alaska. These people and their ancestors then migrated across parts of the Americas that were less glaciated.
But in the second half of the 20th century, older sites were discovered, such as the 14,500-year-old site at Monteverde, Chile, which suggests that if people were living that far south at the time, they must have been migrating from North to South America well before 13,000 years ago.
“This discovery completely changes our understanding of how and when humans arrived in the Americas,” Braje said of the Chilean site. Another theory is that humans made their way along the Pacific coast, where there was less ice, and then began to move east.
Although individual sites are often subject to debate, the area that is generally accepted as the site of first human arrival in the Americas is According to Braje, the discovery occurred between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago.
but Lawrie said his artifacts date back even further than that.
Dating 22,000-year-old artifacts
Parsons Island has undergone significant erosion and many of the artifacts are no longer in their original locations. Darin Lawrie
During his 93 visits to Parsons Island, Lawrie and other volunteers found a mixture of broken rock fragments, hammer stones and knives.
Due to erosion, largely Many of the artifacts fell off the embankments that once held them.
but, Nine of them are still buried in the banks, three of which date back about 22,000 years.
Dating such ancient artifacts is difficult and these sites are often the source of controversy that calls into question our understanding and timeline of ancient human history.
For example, most dates Method They need organic material, and stone tools won’t work: instead, scientists test charcoal, pollen, and other materials found near the stone tools.
However, if the tools have been dislodged from their original position – if they have fallen off the bank that was holding them – it can be difficult to date them accurately.
As a result, only a small portion of Raleigh’s remains could be examined.
Rowley said he did not want to have the paper go through peer review – a process he called “outdated” – but that he had taken great care in dating the artifacts.
He used a variety of methods to date the remains still in place, and also sent samples to an independent laboratory for verification.
Using radiocarbon dating, which measures the amount of carbon in charcoal fragments, an independent lab estimated the artifact’s age to be between 20,563 and 22,656 years ago.
If the artifacts are as old as lab analysis suggests, Lowry’s discovery could rewrite our understanding of human history in ancient America.
Traveling from Alaska to Maryland
About 21,000 years ago, much of Canada was covered by glaciers. NOAA Climate.gov
About 21,000 years ago, Almost All of Canada was covered by glaciers, so one of the biggest questions in Lowry’s theory is how humans could have traveled from Alaska to Maryland 22,000 years ago when there was a vast ice field between them.
But Rowley said that about 26,000 years ago, wolves in the Bering Sea migrated through a temporary passage between ice sheets, and that humans may have used the same route.
“I think it’s mostly a misconception that ice is an obstacle,” Rowley says. “It’s difficult, but humans are really clever.”
Lawry acknowledged that this is what he called a “story,” but some experts are hesitant to accept it. One archaeologist said: The Washington Post Researchers we spoke to declined to comment on the paper, which has not been peer-reviewed.
For Braje, Lowry’s research evokes past debates in which new discoveries pushed back the date of Americans’ first arrival.
Bragier didn’t completely dismiss Rowley’s ideas, but he thinks they need to go through a peer-review process. “I think these are all valid ideas and they should be debated,” he said. “But then the scientific evidence needs to be looked at.”
“Making such big claims requires a lot of work, a lot of evidence and a lot of persistent criticism, but that’s part of the scientific process,” Braje said.