i:\doc\web\99\14\firstam.txt
History Channel
In Search of the First Americans


Australian Aborigines first setted on continent 
by boat 60,000 ya
1927
Folsom bison arrowhead artififacts 10,500-11,500 ya


1933 Clovis NM find, more bones, arrowheads

Clovis culture, arrowheads. These were mammoth
hunters with really big arrowheads, mammoths
have been extinct for 11,000 years
Clovis took about 800 yrs to go from coast to coast


One theory is there was an ice free corridor, others
are that there was a coastal route to S. America,
possible there were several migrations according to
language and DNA evidence


25,000 years ago seas started to lower in ice age
and expose land bridge, but glaciers blocked off
access to rest of continent, down to central Ohio


39,000 mongolians homo sapiens dated in Northern
China Siberia


Meadowcroft PA site has carbond dates back to 
14,000 


Thomas Jefferson believed that the nearly thousand
native american languages must have taken thousands
of years to develop.


Classified down to six, and later 3 major language
groups, Eskimo-Aleut, Amerind, and Nadimec, indicates
3 major migrations.


Genetic evidence basedon divergence in living populations
is 40,000 years apart from Asian peoples.


Monte Verde site in Chile at 12,500 ya