Beringia is not the sole source of people in the New World

Author(s): Michael Faught

Year: 2016

Summary

I challenge the belief of biological and archaeological anthropologists that Beringia is the only place people have come into the Americas, even if along the coast. I show how researchers affirm their consequent, don't show direct historical continuity in areas where gene samples are modern, can't find any other than Dyuktai/Denali/Dene cultures archaeologically, nor have evidence of north to south, or west to east propagation after intrusion. In its place, I propose South America as the locus of the genomic stillstand, and that it could result from people displaced by sea level rise from the Sunda Shelf, or other SE Asian location, Monte Verde and Paisley Caves are near contemporaneous potential examples of propagation from a more central node, recent and robust genomic studies can be argued as consistent phylogenetically, and plant and animal domestication, settlement, and complex societies have earliest examples in South America. Speculative arguments will be made for an initial equatorial landing point from a full Pacific Ocean crossing. I propose that, SE Asia is the homeland of the stillstand Amerindians, and they met up with Beringian Amerindians at the end of the last Ice Age, but other, Holocene migratory histories are indicated as well.

Cite this Record

Beringia is not the sole source of people in the New World. Michael Faught. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 404141)

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