The debate over people’s pathway into the Americas heats up
An inland route was likely, though a coastal route was possible, researchers claim
By Bruce Bower
Despite recently getting a cold shoulder from some researchers, a long-standing idea that North America’s first settlers entered the continent via an ice-free inland corridor boasts more scientific support than any other proposal, an international team says.
New World colonizers from Asia may also have traveled by canoe down the Northwest Pacific Coast and perhaps much farther, as critics of the ice-free corridor hypothesis have argued. But less evidence supports that possibility, archaeologist Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and colleagues argue in a research review published online August 8 in Science Advances.