It has been held for over 80 years that an Asian people called "Clovis"-- named after a flint spear point found in Clovis, Ca. -- were the first inhabitants of North America. American anthropology is built on a foundation of Asian descent from Siberia across Beringia ca. 13,000 years ago. This is now challenged.
Human DNA from coprolites excavated from Oregon's Paisley Caves has lengthened dates to 14,300 years ago, 1,200 years pre-Clovis (Jenkins, Willerslev, 2008[1]).
Genetic Fingerprint of Early Americans
Genetic research over many years has established the genetic blueprint of early Americans within A B C D haplogroups. However, the same tests recently revealed a new type (X) in some Indian groups, such as the Sioux, Yanomamö of Brazil, and especially the Algonquian peoples of the Great Lakes Region. The significance of the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup X gene mutation is that it is present in France and Spain.
The American Clovis Spear Tip
Clovis-style flint napping, with its two distinct flanges, defines an entire first culture of America. This material culture has been traced back through archaeological sites in Alaska to Siberia in the hope of tracing the migration of tool cultures. American Clovis-style tips stop in Alaska and are unknown in Beringia, Siberia or Eastern Asia where a completely different style of tooling occurs (small flint chips set as cutting knives).
Clovis Discovered Elsewhere
A study of cast-off napped flints in museum basements, rather than more dramatic finished objects displayed in viewing cases, has revealed a cultural similarity between Clovis spear points and Solutrean artifacts from France and Spain where the mtDNA X haplogroup predominates (Stanford, Bradley, 1998 [2]).
Inuit Sailing
Ancient Inuit (Eskimaux) boat sailing techniques defeat even modern craft in frigid arctic conditions. Inuit still hunt the edge of the pack ice and their craft can undertake lengthy journeys over long periods of time. They are easily hauled onto the ice and used as shelter [3].
Sailing to America
Rolling nomadic European hunters could have sailed along the edge of the pack ice, as Inuit still do, following protein-rich marine mammals just as Siberian hunters followed terrestrial mega -fauna (mammoth and bison) into Alaska from Siberia. Greenland is only 1500 miles from the French coastline. Sailing in a curve north and north-westward, Ice-Age Europeans could have entered the Americas following arctic coastlines. In 2000 Navy Seals Rune Gjeldnes and Torry Larsen walked unsupported across the entire Arctic Ocean coastline from Siberia to Canada in 109 days [4].
Mixed Heritage of Ancient America
The absence of Clovis-style culture northwest of Washington state, it's similarity to European Solutrean culture, and the presence of European mtDNA X in NW Indian groups, South American Indians, and especially the Algonquian (25%), supports the case for European infusion alongside Asia into early America.
Sources:
[1] Dennis Jenkins, senior archaeologist, University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History
and Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen, 2008.
[2] key proponents include: Dennis Stanford, Smithsonian Institute, and Bruce Bradley, Exeter University, 1998.
[3] See throughout The Fatal Passage: the story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot.
[4] Blizzard, Race To The Pole, 2006.
Further reading:
Bordes, Francois, The Old Stone Age, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1968.
Haynes, Gary, The Early Settlement of North America: the Clovis Era, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2002.
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