Ancient Migration and the Americas

First Contact

“Land!” That blessed four-letter word rattles you awake in the middle of the night. For a moment you wonder if this is a dream. Have you really found it? The Atlantic trade route to Asia? The scurry of your fellow sailors quickly puts any notion of a dream out of your mind as they frantically make their way up to the top deck. In the dark of night, 2am to be exact, you can just make out a coastline sparsely lit with campfires. The sight of land brings a huge sigh of relief to everyone aboard the Pinta. Though you have only been at sea for a little over five weeks, it feels like an eternity. Not even three days ago you and your fellow crew-mates had threatened mutiny. Now you are staring at the finish line, about to go down in history as one of the first sailors to find the westward trade route to Asia.

As you row towards the beach the next morning, you notice a crowd beginning to form on the shoreline. They must be responsible for the fires from the night before. Once disembarked you walk towards the crowd along with the voyages captain, the arrogant Christopher Columbus. These people speak a language you are unfamiliar with, so you rely on the captain to handle the negotiations. Knowing your experience with Columbus… this should be fun. Most of the conversation is done with hand signals, but from what you can gather these people are not from Asia. They have darker skin and speak with a dialect different from what you are expecting. So if you are not in Asia where are you? Who are these mysterious people?

Welcome to the Americas

So here’s the thing about good old Columbus: the guy was not a good explorer. Sure he did technically discover the new world, something I will give him props for, but until his death some 15 years later he thought it was Asia. On top of that, in order to get his voyage funded in the first place he sold King Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain on an insane idea that the distance to Asia was much shorter than what their advisors had calculated. There was also that whole thing about killing and enslaving hundreds of people. Fortunately, people have started coming around to the idea of Columbus being a pretty bad guy.

Putting my rant about Columbus aside, the first question facing the explorers was where they were. Funny enough it actually took a few trips for them to realize they hadn’t actually reached Asia. I’ll cut them a little slack though as I can imagine that when you’re going off of nothing but word of mouth the South Pacific probably looks somewhat like the Caribbean Sea. It wasn’t until another explorer named Amerigo Vespucci came along and sailed around Brazil that the Europeans realized they had stumbled upon an entirely new continent.

The Origins of the ‘Indians’

Remember how I was talking about Columbus not being a good guy? Well, you can thank him for the use of the term ‘Indian’ when describing Native Americans. Upon landing in the Caribbean, Columbus initially thought he was in India thanks to the darker skin of the natives and began calling them Indians. The term unfortunately stuck.

Theories about Native American origins quickly began to form after Columbus discovered the Americas. Today, with the help of archeology and radiocarbon dating, there are two predominant theories that try to explain the origins of the peoples of the Americas, the Interior Migration Theory and the Kelp Highway. These theories place humans migrating to the Americas from the Asian steppe / Siberia about 16,000 years ago. They continued traveling south to find more hospitable land and eventually wound up as far south as Chile about 14,000 years ago. Similar to much of early human history, and my daily routine, both theories revolve around food.

The Great Migration

The Interior Migration theory has long been the most widely accepted answer for how humans arrived in the Americas. Towards the end of the last ice age, lower sea levels allowed humans to hunt large animals across a landmass known as Beringia (think modern-day Alaska). Animals such as bison and mammoths attracted hunter-gatherer groups, who followed them across the land bridge and into North America. Why you would ever want to hunt a mammoth, especially with a stick, is absolutely insane to me, but hey if early humans were able to hunt them to extinction, who am I to judge? Once they were across the bridge, humans continued to migrate south along the continental divide, arriving as early as 13,000 years ago in Clovis, New Mexico. From here they spread throughout the Americas. Fun fact about this theory is that we really started putting the pieces together thanks to the Russians who discovered Alaska in 1741.

A more recent theory proposed by scientists is known as the Kelp Highway. Basically, early humans would have used primitive boats to sail along the coast of modern-day Alaska all the way down the coast to Peru. At the time the coast was believed to be lined with extensive kelp forests and had become de-glacierized around 16,000 to 15,000 years ago. These kelp forests were populated by large schools of fish which enticed tribes to follow the shoreline and navigate around any impassable terrain, all for their next meal. Can you imagine building a canoe out of rocks, looking at enormous walls of ice sitting on the ocean, and saying “Yeah, I can sail around that”. These people had balls of steel. Aside from explaining how courageous these migrants were, the Kelp Highway theory also provides a solution to how these tribes had extensively colonized southern South America some 14,000 years ago.

What Happens Now?

Regardless of how they arrived in the Americas, the Native Americans were here and had developed distinct civilizations the likes of which the Europeans had never seen. Over the thousands of years since crossing the Bering Strait, these hunter-gatherer groups had slowly transformed into incredibly diverse and complex civilizations. Over time they developed distinct languages, cultivated crops, and built empires that still have a substantial influence on the world today. And to think this is all thanks to some crazy hunters who wanted to eat a hairy elephant. Next, lets dive into the pre-Columbian Americas to see what was going on before Columbus set sail.

History Highlights

• Humans arrived in the Americas around 16,000 years ago.

• European Expeditions
  • Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in 1492 and technically discovered the Americas.
  • Columbus thought he was in India because of the skin and language of the natives.
  • Columbus was a bad explorer who got extremely lucky.
  • Amerigo Vespucci discovered that the Americas were not India. Got the continents named after him.
• Two Primary Migration Theories
  • Interior Migration
    • Followed large game to Alaska via a land bridge (Beringia) during the ice age and continued south through an ice-free corridor in Canada.
    • Spread out through the remainder of the Americas and quickly reached as far south as Chile around 14,000 years ago.
    • Were present in Clovis, New Mexico about 13,000 years ago.
  • Kelp Highway
    • Sailed in primitive boats around the coast of Alaska following large schools of fish down the de-glacierized coast.
    • Reached Peru around 14,000 years ago.
    • The theory is difficult to confirm because most coastal evidence from the time was submerged by the sea due to melting glaciers.