And that’s a good thing. In case your latest memory of the theory of human migration into North America is the Clovis First model, you’re out of date. American Archaeology editor Michael Bawaya writes in the Editor’s Corner column of the Winter 2016 issue (article offline only):
Source: National Geographic
The subject of the Americas’ colonization had long been the exclusive purview of archaeologists, but then some geneticists dared to butt in. … If the first Americans arrived roughly 16,000 years ago, as geneticists seem to think, how could they have occupied a site in South Carolina that an archaeologist claims is 50,000 years old? …
… fashioning all this disparate information into a model, even a remotely plausible model, is beyond the most nimble of minds. The Clovis First model is dead, but now what?
So if you happen to run into a Paleo-Indian archaeologist, don’t even bother to ask.
[typos mine] For a scientist, questions are better than answers! So this lack of consilience is really a positive, giving impetus to future archaeologists.
Coincidentally, my Arts Editor and I once wrote a novel (unpublished) in which the demise of the Clovis First model plays a small part.
