COLLOQUIUM: In Search of the First Americans

For over a century, archaeologists have been searching for the clues of the first people who entered the Americans during the last ice age.  We still do not know the answers to many questions such as: When did these Ice-Age colonists arrive?   Who were these people and from where did they originate?  Which route did they take into the Americas?  How did they settle North and South America so quickly?  It has long been believed that the first people to arrive in the Americas were the Clovis hunters with their lanceolate and fluted spear points about 13,000 years ago.  This concept is now being revised.  Current archaeological evidence suggests that first people arrived into the New World around 15,000 years ago.   Genetic data confirms this and indicates that these early people arrived from northeast Asia.  These hunter-gatherers could have arrived by boat along the Pacific Rim or through an inland passageway.  Many recent discoveries are shedding a new light on our understanding of the first Americans.