Peopling of the Americas

The people of Poverty Point were the ancestors of modern American Indians, but people lived in North America long before Poverty Point. For many years, archaeologists thought the Clovis culture was the oldest in the Americas, with sites dating to about 11,000 BC and distinctive stone points often found with the bones of extinct animals, especially mammoths. Genetic studies show that American Indians descended from the people of northeast Asia, and based on the rate of genetic change, the two groups may have separated around 23,000 BC. Most scientists think people moved from Asia into the Americas by either an inland path or a coastal path, including a route from northeast Asia across the Bering Land Bridge and through an ice-free corridor, or a route along the West Coast of North America. The timing of the earliest migration into America remains unsettled, but the peopling of America did not happen in a single migration event, as multiple groups descended from a northeast Asian population moved into this new land at different times.

Pioneer, Louisiana · United States