Speaking of genetics, a 2014 study of the DNA of natives on the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, found a fair amount of Native American genes in the mix. Either way, it suggests that about the same time Nordic sailors were cutting trees in Canada, someone in Polynesia was trying sweet potatoes from South America for the first time. So how did it get there?īy comparing the DNA of Polynesian and South American sweet potatoes, scientists think it's clear that someone either brought them back to Polynesia after visiting South America, or islanders brought them from South America when they were exploring the Pacific Ocean. And yet, there have been sweet potatoes on the menu in Polynesia as far back as 1,000 years ago. This humble pinkish-red tuber is native to South America. The sweet potato, native to South America was around in Polynesia 1,000 years ago. What about arrivals from the east? Was Columbus the first European to glimpse the untamed, verdant paradise that America must have been centuries ago? So for now, the Clovis and the Pre-Clovis peoples, long disappeared but still existent in the genetic code of nearly all native Americans, deserve the credit for discovering America.īut those people arrived on the western coast. But the science on this is far from settled. Perhaps as far back as 20,000 years or more. We call them, for lack of a better name, the Pre-Clovis people.Īnd to make things more complicated, recent discoveries are threatening to push back the arrival of humans in North America even further back in time. states of Texas and Virginia, and as far south as Peru and Chile. Today, it's widely believed that before the Clovis people, there were others, and as Bawaya says, "they haven't really been identified." But there are remants of them in places as far-flung as the U.S. And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all indigenous people in the Americas.īut there's more. They get their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over 11,000 years ago. Up until the 1970s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples. Once here, humans dispersed all across North and eventually Central and South America. Birds, fish, and marine mammals established migration patterns that continue to this day."Īnd archaeologists say that humans followed, in a never-ending hunt for food, water and shelter. Many species of animals - the woolly mammoth, mastodon, scimitar cat, Arctic camel, brown bear, moose, muskox, and horse - to name a few - moved from one continent to the other across the Bering land bridge. National Park Service, "the land bridge played a vital role in the spread of plant and animal life between the continents. But despite its relative inhospitality, life abounded there.Īccording to the U.S. The area would have looked much like the land on Alaska's Seward Peninsula does today: treeless, arid tundra. Fifteen-thousand years ago, ocean levels were much lower and the land between the continents was hundreds of kilometers wide. They walked across the Bering land bridge that back in the day connected what is now the U.S. He told VOA that they came here from Asia probably "no later than about 15,000 years ago." So who were the people who really deserve to be called the first Americans? VOA asked Michael Bawaya, the editor of the magazine American Archaeology. It's also safe to say that he paved the way for the massive influx of western Europeans that would ultimately form several new nations including the United States, Canada and Mexico.īut to say he "discovered" America is a bit of a misnomer because there were plenty of people already here when he arrived. It is commonly said that "Columbus discovered America." It would be more accurate, perhaps, to say that he introduced the Americas to Western Europe during his four voyages to the region between 14. It has been a national holiday in the United States since 1937. It's an annual holiday that commemorates the day on October 12, 1492, when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus officially set foot in the Americas, and claimed the land for Spain. Americans get a day off work on October 10 to celebrate Columbus Day.
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