american-holocaust

APPENDIX IOn Pre-Columbian Settlement and PopulationUntil the 1930s, it generally was believed that the earliest human inhabitantsof the Americas had moved from the Alaskan portion of Berengia towhat is now known as North America no more than 6000 years ago.Following the development of radioactive carbon dating techniques in the1940s and 1950s, this date was pushed back an additional 6000 years tothe end of the Wisconsin Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago. During thistime the most recent interstadial, or regional dissipation of the massivecontinent-wide glaciers that previously had blocked passage to the south,opened up an inland migratory corridor. Once settled in what is now theupper midwestern United States, it was supposed, these migrants branchedout and very slowly made their way overland, down through North, Central,and South America to the Southern Andes and Tierra del Fuego atthe southernmost tip of the southern continent.Some scholars had long suspected that even this projected date of firstarrival was too recent, but it wasn't until the latter 1950s and early 1960sthat they began being taken seriously. 1 For it was then, slowly but steadily,that human habitation dates of 12,000 B.C. and earlier from the mostsoutherly parts of the hemisphere began turning up in the archaeologicalrecord. In addition, dates of 20,000 to 30,000 B.C. were being placed onsites to the north of these, while more problematic dates of 30,000 B.C.in Chile and Brazil and 40,000 to 50,000 B.C. for skeletal remains discoveredin southern California were being claimed. 2 By the late 1970s it wasbecoming clear to many archaeologists that regions throughout all of Northand South America were inhabited thousands of years earlier than traditionallyhad been believed, with some scholars suggesting a date of 70,000B.C. as the possible time of first human entry into the hemisphere. 3