Scientists Find, Earliest Definitive Evidence, of Humans in the Americas.
The topic of when the Americas were first settled has been controversial for decades.
The BBC reports that a team in New Mexico has now found human footprints dating back to between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago.
The discovery suggests there could have been great migrations completely unknown until now.
The footprints were formed in soft mud
on the edge of a lake which now forms
part of Alkali Flat in White Sands.
According to the BBC, scientists think the tracks were primarily made by teenagers and younger children.
The age of the discovery is key because there have been countless disputed claims of early human settlement in the Americas.
However, the BBC points out, virtually all of those claims have been disputed and largely ignored since the "Clovis First" idea was widely accepted. .
One of the reasons there is so much debate is that there is a real lack of very firm, unequivocal data points. That's what we think we probably have, Prof Matthew Bennett, first author on the paper from Bournemouth University, via BBC.
According to the BBC, in the 1980s, evidence
was found of a 14,500-year-old
human presence at Monte Verde, Chile.
According to the BBC, in the 1980s, evidence
was found of a 14,500-year-old
human presence at Monte Verde, Chile.
Since the 2000s, other sites, such as the 15,500-year-old
Buttermilk Creek Complex in central Texas...
... and the 16,000-year-old Cooper's Ferry site
in Idaho, have become widely accepted.
The new footprint evidence suggests
humans reached the North American
interior by the height of the last Ice Age