Four Theories Of Migration To The New World

Theories on Migration to the New World Since the beginning the question of when the first humans reached the Americas has been an ongoing study for anthropologist and archaeologist. All agree that the one thing we are sure about is the first inhabitants were Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The question of when and how humans first entered the "New World" is still a mystery. A number of theories have been proposed however there are three leading theories which try to explain the origin of humans in the New World.
The Land Bridge Theory holds that the first to enter the Americas were Clovis people, the “big-game" hunters. The Atlantic Crossing suggests that Stone Age mariners journeyed from Europe around the southern fringes of the great ice sheets in the North Atlantic and were genetically connected to the Solutrean people, and the last possible entryway is the Pacific Route down the west coast.
The Land Bridge Theory was the first theory and was constructed over seventy years ago. This theory is known as a standard view of humans coming to the New World. The Land Bridge theory holds that people first migrated from Northern Asia less than 12,000 years ago crossing to North America over a temporary land bridge between Asia and Alaska. The 1,000 kilometer-wide land bridge known as Beringia appeared as a result of the drop in the sea
It is generally accepted that Clovis people hunted mammoth, mastodons and bison’s as Clovis points are found mixed in with their remains. There is also a hypothesis suggesting that the Clovis people may have driven the mammoth to extinction via overhunting. The rarity of points and the absence of other artifacts or signs of settlement suggest that they were moving long distances. It was probably because of their dependence on migrations of big mammals that they were dependent on (Hadingham 2004, Schwimmer