Summary
Highlights
200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged on the African landscape. Today, there are seven billion of us living across Earth. This is the story of our journey from continent to continent, how we left Africa, crossed Asia, reached Australia, and colonized Europe. The final frontier was America, the last continent to be conquered. It's one of the great mysteries of archaeology: who first set foot on American soil, when, and how did they get here?
In the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, 13,500 years ago, a young woman named Eva was buried in a cave. Her remains, discovered underwater, are the oldest found in the Americas, predating many theories about the first humans. Her discovery challenges the idea that early humans entered North America much later, through an ice-free corridor.
For decades, it was assumed the first Americans arrived from Siberia by foot during the Ice Age, when a land bridge existed at the Bering Straits. They were thought to have moved south through an ice-free corridor in Canada, appearing about 13,000 years ago. These people, known as 'Clovis people' after the distinctive spearheads they left behind, were considered the first hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths.
Jacqueline Gill studies fungal spores from ancient lake beds to track the population of large grass-eating animals. Her research indicates a significant decline in these animal populations before the Clovis people arrived, suggesting that humans were hunting them much earlier. Further evidence, like a mastodon rib bone with an embedded spearhead dated 800 years before Clovis, supports the idea of earlier, non-Clovis hunters.
John Erlandsson proposes that the first Americans arrived by boat as early as 16,000 years ago, navigating the Pacific coast along a 'kelp highway.' This route would have provided abundant resources and allowed for migration much earlier than the opening of the ice-free corridor, potentially explaining how people like Eva reached the Yucatan so early.
Kennewick Man, a skeleton discovered in Washington State, is another crucial piece of evidence. Despite controversy with Native American tribes, forensic analysis of his bones, particularly his isotope signature, suggests a diet rich in marine mammals, indicating he was a coastal migrant, possibly from as far north as Alaska. This supports the 'kelp highway' theory.
Despite claims that Kennewick Man was not related to modern Native Americans due to skull shape differences, genetic sequencing of his DNA by Eske Willerslev's team reveals a direct ancestral link to contemporary Native American populations. This groundbreaking discovery suggests a single wave of migration and unites Eva, Clovis people, and Kennewick Man within the same genetic lineage as today's Native Americans.
John Hawkes explains that changes in lifestyle, such as the shift from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture and urban living, have led to changes in human biology, including skull shape. This explains why ancient remains might look different from modern populations, but doesn't negate ancestral connections. The 'explorer genes' that drove the first peoples to populate the Americas are still present in our DNA today.