The first Americans

People reached the Americas from Asia during the last Ice Age. When is one of archaeology’s great arguments: footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, have been dated to about 23,000 to 21,000 years ago, far earlier than the old “Clovis first” idea.

Date: At least 23,000 to 13,000 years agoII · Our species and the Old Stone Age
Place: White Sands, New Mexico · Monte Verde, Chile · Clovis, New MexicoThe Americas
Laid out as: A migrationPeople on the move: where they set out from, where they went, and what they found.
Lessons: 5 planned, none written yet
Themes: Human origins and evolution
Exploration and migration
Environment, climate and disasters

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

From White Sands, New Mexicoto Clovis, New Mexico

IBeringia, the land bridge
IIClovis first?
IIIMonte Verde
IVThe footprints at White Sands
VDown the coast or through the ice?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

Tom Dillehay
Matthew Bennett

Objects

The White Sands footprints
Clovis points

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestry Our species and the Old Stone Age Farming and the New Stone Age First cities and the Bronze Age The Iron Age and growing states The classical world After the empires Medieval networks and empires Oceans crossed Revolutions and the first factories Industry, empire and world war The world since 1945

25,000 years ago to 13,000 years ago. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?