5G

FIRST PEOPLES: THE AMERICAs

1. What new species emerged on the African landscape 200,000 years ago?

2. Where was Eva, a young woman, discovered?

3. How old are Eva's bones?

4. At first, how did people think the first Americans arrived in North America?

5. What covered Canada during the Ice Age, blocking a route south?

6. What were the first Americans' spearheads called?

7. What tool did Clovis people use to throw their spears with more power?

8. What large animal did early Americans hunt?

9. What is the "kelp highway" and what did it provide for early coastal migrants?

10. What did the DNA analysis of Kennewick Man show about his relationship to modern Native Americans?

200,000 years ago

About 200,000 years ago, a new kind of human called Homo sapiens, which means modern humans like us, appeared in Africa.

Today, there are 7 billion people on Earth.

This is a story about how humans journeyed from continent to continent, leaving Africa, crossing Asia, reaching Australia, and finally settling in Europe.

The last continent to be explored was America, which makes the story of how people got there a big mystery for archaeologists.

Early Discoveries in Mexico

In Mexico, specifically on the Yucatán Peninsula, archaeologists found something amazing in an underwater cave system: the bones of a young woman they call Eva.

Eva lived about 13,500 years ago and was a hunter-gatherer. Her bones are the oldest human remains found anywhere in the Americas.

During the Ice Age, the caves where Eva was found were dry because so much of the world's water was frozen in ice, making sea levels much lower. This meant people could enter the caves to bury their dead.

Mexican archaeologists have been working in these caves since 2008 and have found eight skeletons, which is the most prehistoric human skeletons found at one site in North America.

Eva was a small woman, about 4 feet 7 inches tall, and she was in her 20s when she died. Archaeologists believe Eva was buried in a special ceremony, which is the earliest sign of people having spiritual beliefs in North America.

Some people think the deepest parts of the caves were seen as ways to connect with a spirit world.

The Bering Land Bridge and Clovis People

For a long time, people thought the first Americans came from Siberia by walking across a land bridge where the Bering Strait is now, during the Ice Age when sea levels were low.

However, once they got to Alaska, they couldn't go any further because two giant sheets of ice covered Canada.

It was only about 13,000 years ago, when the world got warmer and the ice melted, that a path opened up to the south. This path is marked by large rocks called "erratics" that were left behind by the melting ice sheets.

As people moved south through this ice-free area, they entered a land where no humans had ever been before. This new world had many large animals, like the Columbian Mammoth, which weighed up to 9 tons.

Evidence shows that early Americans hunted mammoths using special spearheads called "Clovis points". These Clovis points were incredibly sharp and could be attached to spears, making them powerful weapons for hunting large animals.

Archaeologists call the people who made these spearheads "Clovis people".

Clovis people were hunter-gatherers who were very active and ate a lot of protein. They had to be smart and observe the land to find food and pathways, similar to how modern trackers and hunters understand nature.

New Ideas About When People Arrived

Eva's discovery in Yucatán, dating back 13,500 years ago, caused a problem for the idea that Clovis people were the first, because she lived hundreds of years earlier than the Clovis evidence.

This suggests people arrived in North America much earlier than 13,000 years ago.

One new idea about when people arrived comes from studying ancient animal dung. Scientists can find tiny fungal spores called Sporormiella in ancient lake beds that grow in the poop of large plant-eating animals.

By counting these spores, they can tell how many large animals, like mammoths, were around long ago.

One scientist noticed that about 15,000 years ago, there were many spores, meaning many animals, but by 14,800 years ago, the number of spores started to drop, and by 13,500 years ago, they were gone.

This suggests that animals were being hunted a long time before Clovis points appeared, meaning people were in America much earlier than previously thought.

Further evidence for earlier arrivals came from a mastodon rib bone found in Washington state, which had a man-made spearhead made of bone embedded in it.

This bone spearhead was hurled at the mastodon and got stuck in its rib.

Radiocarbon dating showed the bone was 13,800 years old, meaning this animal was hunted by humans almost 800 years before Clovis people appeared in North America.

The Coastal Route Theory

Because of discoveries like Eva and the mastodon bone, many scientists now believe the first Americans came by boat, as early as 16,000 years ago.

At that time, while much of the land was covered in ice, the Pacific Northwest coast was mostly ice-free, making a coastal route south possible.

This idea suggests people traveled down a "kelp highway" because kelp forests along the Pacific coast are full of food like fish, shellfish, and marine mammals. Traveling by boat along the coast would have been faster and easier than walking over land.

These early coastal travelers would have set up temporary camps, fishing and hunting marine animals, and then moved on, staying close to the shore.

From the coast, they might have followed large rivers inland, using them as "detours" on their journey to explore the continent. This explains how people like Eva could have reached places deep inside the continent long before the ice-free land corridor opened.

Kennewick Man & DNA Evidence

One of the most complete ancient human skeletons in North America belongs to a man known as "Kennewick Man," found in 1996 near the Columbia River in Washington.

He was buried over 8,500 years ago. Local Native American tribes wanted his bones to be reburied, as they believe he is an ancestor and his journey is interrupted if his body is taken from the ground.

However, scientists believed Kennewick Man was too important to rebury and wanted to study his bones.

Studies on Kennewick Man showed he was about 5 feet 7 and a half inches tall, weighed about 160 pounds, and was around 40 years old when he died.

He was a very strong man, with a much stronger right arm, suggesting he used a spear thrower called an atlatl. Interestingly, he also had an embedded spear point in his right hip bone and five broken ribs, suggesting he was injured but survived for about 20 more years.

Chemical analysis of his bones showed he ate a lot of marine mammals, like seals, which means he likely came from the coast, possibly as far north as central Alaska, and only moved inland later in his life.

Scientists initially thought Kennewick Man's skull shape was different from modern Native Americans, appearing more like Polynesian-looking people called the Ainu from northern Japan, who also had long, narrow skulls.

This led to a theory that there were two separate waves of migration into the Americas: first people like Kennewick Man and Eva with long, narrow skulls, and then later, people with wide, round skulls who became today's Native Americans.

If this were true, it would mean modern Native Americans weren't directly related to Kennewick Man.

However, DNA testing provided a different answer.

Scientists were able to get DNA from Kennewick Man's bones. The DNA analysis showed that Kennewick Man is more closely related to today's Native American people than to any other groups in the world.

This means there was likely only one main wave of migration into the Americas, and people like Eva, the Clovis people, and Kennewick Man are all from the same family group as modern Native Americans.

The differences in skull shape are normal changes that happen over thousands of years as humans adapt to new lifestyles, like eating different foods or living in settled communities instead of hunting and gathering.

The first peoples were amazing explorers who were driven to discover new places, and this spirit of exploration is still a part of human DNA today.

• Archaeologist – A scientist who studies people from the past by looking at bones, tools, and other old things.

• Hunter-gatherer – A person who lived by hunting animals and collecting wild plants.

• Nomad – Someone who moves from place to place and doesn’t live in one home.

• Ritual – A special action or ceremony, often related to religion or culture.

• Radiocarbon dating – A scientific way to find out how old something is, like bones or fossils.

• Ice Age – A time when much of the Earth was covered in ice and snow.

• Clovis point – A type of stone spear tip made by early Americans.

• Excavation – The process of digging up ancient sites to learn about the past.

• Mastodon – A large animal, like a mammoth, that lived a long time ago.

• Controversy – A big disagreement that people care a lot about.

• Repatriation – Returning something, like bones or cultural objects, to the people they belong to.

• Forensic – A type of science used to study evidence, like bones, often to solve mysteries.

• Isotope – A tiny part of an atom that can tell scientists things like what someone ate long ago.

• Geneticist – A scientist who studies DNA and genes.

• Genome – All the DNA inside a living thing.

• Ancestor – A person from your family who lived a long time ago.

• Species – A group of living things that are similar and can have babies together.

• Cave system – A group of connected caves, often underground.

• Solvent – A liquid used in science to break down substances or separate parts.

• Explorer genes – A fun name for the idea that some people are born wanting to explore new places.

► COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

— please answer with complete sentences

1. What new species emerged on the African landscape 200,000 years ago?

2. Where was Eva, a young woman, discovered?

3. How old are Eva's bones?

4. At first, how did people think the first Americans arrived in North America?

5. What covered Canada during the Ice Age, blocking a route south?

6. What were the first Americans' spearheads called?

7. What tool did Clovis people use to throw their spears with more power?

8. What large animal did early Americans hunt?

9. What is the "kelp highway" and what did it provide for early coastal migrants?

10. What did the DNA analysis of Kennewick Man show about his relationship to modern Native Americans?

► From EITHER/OR ► BOTH/AND

► FROM Right/Wrong ► Creative Combination

1. THESIS — Argue the case that scientists need to study all ancient human skeletons to learn all they can about our Homo sapiens.

2. ANT-THESIS — Argue the case indigenous peoples should always determine how ancient human skeletons are to be treated.

3. SYN-THESIS — Imagine you are asked to mediate between groups A and B. Group A consists of scientists who want to commit an ancient skeleton to rigorous analysis. Group B consists of indigenous people who want the bones immediately returned to the earth. What would you do?