Stone tools, charcoal and other artifacts from Cooper’s Ferry, Idaho, are the latest evidence that the First Americans arrived more than 16,000 years ago — well before an overland route existed. It’s looking more and more likely the first people arrived via a Pacific Coast route.
Few debates in archaeology get as heated as the arrival date — and route — of the first humans to reach the Americas.
For years, based on archaeological evidence, researchers believed the New World wasn’t populated until about 13,500 years ago. That’s when, the thinking went, glaciers receded and opened an ice-free corridor in what’s now Alaska and Canada. (Some estimates put the opening of the corridor as early as 14,800 years ago; others, a mere 11,500 years ago.) The ice shrinkage allowed game, and the humans hunting it, to move east and south from Beringia, a massive land bridge that connected Asia to North America during the last Ice Age.
