Early Human Migration: The Journey to America

Introduction

People arrived in North America around 14,000 BP (BP = Before Present). Evidence for the arrival of Homo sapiens is found throughout the Bering Strait (then Beringia), Siberia, and Alaska. Homo sapiens arrived through Beringia, most likely through the boat, despite the lack of evidence. Homo sapiens are said to have originally rooted in Africa; from Africa, Homo sapiens migrated north into Europe and Asia over the course of 10,000 years and then over to North America followed by South America. Along the time that Homo sapiens were moving into Eurasia, there was also proof of Homo sapiens moving into Australia (Choi, 2014) showing that they had a good idea of marine travel, something that will be important when considering the

It took 12,000 years for people to cross the Bering Strait, an 85 km long area from Serbia to Alaska (Hall D, 1997). The reason it took people 12,000 years to cross the Bering strait was mostly weather conditioned. The cold and unsurvivable conditions made it impossible for people to attempt crossing into Alaska. After crossing into Alaska though, it only took people 2000 years to travel down the west coast from Alaska to Chile. Other hypotheses may suggest that people came to North America to South America, however there is no particularly useful proof for this. An already discussed proof shows that people may have come across the Atlantic Ocean to the east coast and even if this did happen, there is no proof of survival there. The proof of migration from the Bering strait lies in the Haplogroups, skeletal proof, tools and disturbances in the environment of North America pre-native people. The Arlington Man, Prince of Wales Island Man and Kennewick Man are all examples of people who have been found while migrating across America. These examples, however are not the only examples of people who have been found during excavations. There have also been situations where human remains have not been found but instead, remains of animals and tampering with the natural balance of the environment are visible. An example of this would be the Cross Creek, which shows the use of marine life for survival, something that is also backed up by many other findings across the