October 18, 2011

1 min read

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On the Trail of the First Americans [Interactive]

New discoveries have focused researchers on two possible migration routes

By Kate Wong

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In the traditional view of human colonization of the Americas, big-game hunters from Asia —the so-called Clovis people —swept quickly across a now submerged landmass called Beringia into North America around 13,000 years ago and hastened south into warmer climes. Over the past decade, however, evidence against this "Clovis First" scenario has mounted, as this article in the November issue describes. The latest geologic and archaeological research indicates that humans entered the New World thousands of years before the Clovis people left behind their distinctive stone tools and suggests two possible migration paths: a coastal route and an early ice-free corridor.

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Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

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