New archeological evidence shows that humans already reached America 33,000 years ago

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This is some groundbreaking news. The consensus had been that Siberians colonised the Americas around 15,000 to 14,000 years ago. This was not only supported by archaeology, but also but genetics, as the Q1a-M3 lineage of Native Americans was formed some 15,000 years ago. Pushing the date back to 33,000 years ago would mean that this first colonisation event, which reached as far south as Mexico, was conducted by a completely different group of people. Haplogroup Q did not even exist back then.

Evidence of human occupation in Mexico around the Last Glacial Maximum, Ardelean et al. (2020)


Abstract

The initial colonization of the Americas remains a highly debated topic, and the exact timing of the first arrivals is unknown. The earliest archaeological record of Mexico—which holds a key geographical position in the Americas—is poorly known and understudied. Historically, the region has remained on the periphery of research focused on the first American populations. However, recent investigations provide reliable evidence of a human presence in the northwest region of Mexico, the Chiapas Highlands, Central Mexico and the Caribbean coast during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. Here we present results of recent excavations at Chiquihuite Cave—a high-altitude site in central-northern Mexico—that corroborate previous findings in the Americas of cultural evidence that dates to the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500–19,000 years ago), and which push back dates for human dispersal to the region possibly as early as 33,000–31,000 years ago. The site yielded about 1,900 stone artefacts within a 3-m-deep stratified sequence, revealing a previously unknown lithic industry that underwent only minor changes over millennia. More than 50 radiocarbon and luminescence dates provide chronological control, and genetic, palaeoenvironmental and chemical data document the changing environments in which the occupants lived. Our results provide new evidence for the antiquity of humans in the Americas, illustrate the cultural diversity of the earliest dispersal groups (which predate those of the Clovis culture) and open new directions of research.


Here is the BBC's article on the topic. They explain that the North America before the Last Glacial Maximum would not be a welcoming place. But neither was Siberia where the migrants originated.

Between 26,000-19,000 years ago, sea levels were low enough for people to cross easily from Siberia to America via the Beringian land bridge. But what about during earlier times?"Before 26,000 years ago, the latest data suggest that Beringia might have been a rather unattractive place for humans to be. It might well have been boggy and very difficult to traverse," said Prof Higham.
"We still think the most likely scenario is for people to have come on a coastal route - hugging a coast - perhaps with some kind of maritime technology."
 
In any case if humans reached the American continent 30,000 to 33,000 years ago, they would have been dark skinned and would probably have carried Y-DNA haplogroups now extinct in the Americas (C, D or K are the most likely). They might have become extinct before the second wave 15,000 years ago, or entirely replaced after contact with the new migrants.

On the other hand I remember reading that many Amazonian tribes (including the Suruí, Karitiana and Xavante) carried a few percents of DNA that was similar to the Papuans and Aboriginal Australians. That might be the leftover of the first migration.
 
In any case if humans reached the American continent 30,000 to 33,000 years ago, they would have been dark skinned and would probably have carried Y-DNA haplogroups now extinct in the Americas (C, D or K are the most likely). They might have become extinct before the second wave 15,000 years ago, or entirely replaced after contact with the new migrants.

I guess that if they survived from 30 or 33 ka through LGM till 16 ka, they would have left more traces.
But of course, the shorelines were lower then.
 
The anthropologist Niède Guidon always maintained up to this day that her findings of bonfires and cave paintings in the beautiful Serra da Capivara area in the state of Piauí (Brazil) were a lot older than all the other archaeological findings with datings already uninamously accepted by the scientific community. AFAIK most scientists never gave much credit to her theory. Was she maybe onto something? I think her date estimates are far too early (50,000 years ago), but what if it's indeed an evidence of pre-Paleo-Amerindian human presence as far south as Brazil? That could explain the tiny Australasian admixture in a few Amazonian tribes today.
images

Pintura-simbolo-Serra-da-Capivara.jpg


capa.jpg

01-foto-abre-copy3.jpg


Serra-da-Capivara.jpg
 
nice paintings in a nice setting
but afaik no similar paintings in eastern Siberia or Asia
 
there is also C2b-L1373*
https://www.yfull.com/tree/C-L1373/
it split from C2b 16 ka
and there are 2 subclades
one in Texas and another in the northeastern Amazon forest area

C2b is found in the western half of North America from Alaska to Texas, including some Na-Dené, Algonquian-, or Siouan-speaking populations. American C2b is all C2b1a1a-P39 and apparently originated around Mongolia in the last few thousand years. The Na-Déné languages has been proposed to belong to the Déné-Yeniseian language family together with the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia. This late migration from Siberia may be related to the Arctic small tool tradition, which developed around the Bering Strait some 4500 years ago. According to Pavel Flegontov, ASTt may have originated in East Siberia about 5,000 years ago.
 
This makes sense to me.
After all this time interested in archeology, for me there's no such thing as "the discovery of America" or "the out of Africa".

Humans always knew of those lands and they occupy them, sometimes have to retreat. It's the cycle of human history and civilizations.

We keep coming back from time to time.
 
When I read news like that it's always interesting for me how many of things haven't been discovered yet.
And each year new info and theories appear.
 
The Bering Strait was flooded 10,000 years before the Last Glacial Maximum


https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2206742119

Significance

The Bering Strait was a land bridge during the peak of the last ice age (the Last Glacial Maximum, LGM), when sea level was ~130 m lower than today. This study reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait by tracing the influence of Pacific waters in the Arctic Ocean. We find that the Bering Strait was open from at least 46,000 until 35,700 y ago, thus dating the last formation of the land bridge to within 10,000 y of the LGM. This history requires that ice volume increased rapidly into the LGM. In addition, it appears that humans migrated to the Americas as soon as the formation of the land bridge allowed for their passage.

Abstract


The cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets can be reconstructed from the history of global sea level. Sea level is relatively well constrained for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 26,500 to 19,000 y ago, 26.5 to 19 ka) and the ensuing deglaciation. However, sea-level estimates for the period of ice-sheet growth before the LGM vary by > 60 m, an uncertainty comparable to the sea-level equivalent of the contemporary Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here, we constrain sea level prior to the LGM by reconstructing the flooding history of the shallow Bering Strait since 46 ka. Using a geochemical proxy of Pacific nutrient input to the Arctic Ocean, we find that the Bering Strait was flooded from the beginning of our records at 46 ka until [FONT=MathJax_Main]35.7[/FONT][FONT=MathJax_Main]+[/FONT][FONT=MathJax_Main]3.3[/FONT][FONT=MathJax_Main]−[/FONT][FONT=MathJax_Main]2.4[/FONT]35.7-2.4+3.3 ka. To match this flooding history, our sea-level model requires an ice history in which over 50% of the LGM’s global peak ice volume grew after 46 ka. This finding implies that global ice volume and climate were not linearly coupled during the last ice age, with implications for the controls on each. Moreover, our results shorten the time window between the opening of the Bering Land Bridge and the arrival of humans in the Americas.
 
Quite a while, I wrote about the millennium that begins with the last opening of the Bering Strait, It's a little baroque but in some extent it can also be applied to the millennium that ends with this closing of the Bering Strait ~36,000 years ago:

The article "Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans" says "We also show that after 11.5 ka [thousands of years ago], some of the northern Native American populations received gene flow from a Siberian population most closely related to Koryaks, but not Palaeo-Eskimos, Inuits or Kets" [1].
11.5 thousand years ago (Kya) the 'giant' of human migrations in Beringia had been dormant for millennia, the opening of the Bering Strait around that time made these migrations even more difficult and the flooding of Beringia was almost complete. It's not evident that the Northeastern Siberians at that time had cultural innovations or invented new techniques (for hunting, fishing or work the stone ...), that would give them decisive advantage to penetrate new territories in Northern America, where other populations were already entrenched in the strategic locations (of surveillance of the territory and the coast, of hunting and fishing, of flint veins ...) and with millennia of knowledge of the place, which the Northeastern Siberians as newcomers, were completely unaware.
Currently, even though we have driven marine mammals to near extinction and overexploited the remaining marine organisms, migrations of autumn and spring in the Bering Strait, alone in marine mammals (whales, seals, walruses and some polar bears) are estimated to be hundreds of thousands to millions, not to mention salmon, cod and other fish, that attract more than 10 million nesting seabirds (imagine the number of eggs) [2]. When the Bering Strait reopened ~11Kya, since the oceans were almost virgin and the cold defrost waters produce more biomass, they would be incomparably more numerous and easy to capture in this first point of communication of the Pacific and Arctic oceans, between the Southeast of Chukotka Peninsula and St. Lawrence island, near the plain of the Koryaks, due to the strait having little depth (increased one meter in height per century in the first millennium of this reopening) and width [3]. The first to pass were the fish, attracting, seals, walruses, whales (especially White whales, because are less than 1m tall), polar bears and other carnivorous mammals, fishing birds, the magnificent eagles of the Arctic and over all this feast, the Human flocks. One whale supports a group of Inuits almost a whole year, adding the other species and the many millions of bird eggs, the number of humans living from this channel should have been very high, even discounting the part of this abundant fountain of resources (food and preserved foods; skins and bones to make sleds , kayaks and other boats; baleen for making innumerous items; whale oil skins; walrus ivory for sculpting; ambergris; eagle or other birds feathers and teeth to make adornments; ...) which would be exchanged for terrestrial mammal skins (the skins of marine mammals except polar bears either have no fur or the fur is very short). But there would be no fur for such demand. As the behaviors of risk, aggression, exploitation and conquest induced by the consumption of this excess of animal protein from these large fisheries and eggs picking, do not favor negotiation and dialogue, besides the exchanges was very difficult at that epoch, harassed by the cold and encouraged by being more numerous, this inhabitants of initial Bering Strait would obtain the skins of caribou or other animal, also by warrior actions, till Alaska and Northeast Siberia. What started out as summer's plunders, taking advantage of the favorable weather and the temporary absence of animals in transit on the channel, may have become the powerful "demographic engine" behind that gene flow after 11.5 Kya, from Koryak related peoples to North America.

[1] Moreno-Mayar, J., Potter, B., Vinner, L. et al. Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25173
[2] Audubon Alaska. Bering sea, the ecological significance of the Bering Strait region is tremendous. https://ak.audubon.org/conservation/bering-sea
[3] INSTAAR - Institute of Arctic And Alpine Research - University of Colorado Boulder. Postglacial Flooding of the Bering Land Bridge: A Geospatial Animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8djMWy-A7E0
 

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