Earliest known American settlers had beachcomber tradition

by Rich Bowden - May 8 2008, 21:17

Latest evidence to emerge from the Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile, has confirmed the earliest known Americans migrated down the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago and had a tradition of existing on marine life.

A team led by Tom Dillehay, Professor of Anthropology at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University, found 14,000 year-old seaweed and marine life at the site, situated around 500 miles (800 kms) south of Santiago, suggesting the use of coastal resources by the earliest known Americans was a familiar routine.

“Finding seaweed wasn’t a surprise, but finding five new species in the abundance that we found them was a surprise,” says Dillehay. “There are other coastal resources at the site. The Monte Verdeans were really like beachcombers: The number and frequency of these items suggests very frequent contact with the coast, as if they had a tradition of exploiting coastal resources.”

Debate over the first colonisation by the first Americans has continued in the scientific community with an earlier theory suggesting that people first migrated to the new world at the end of the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago. However the Monte Verde site, first discovered in 1976 and now confirmed as the oldest known site of settlement of the Americas, has thrown the migration period back in time to the existence of the Bering land bridge from Asia to Alaska more than 16,000 years ago.

However it has remained unknown which route the immigrants took after entering the American continent. Dillehay's team's discovery suggested strongly they followed the Pacific coast southwards, however evidence of other inland foods suggests this was a slow,deliberative migration.

“It takes time to adapt to these inland resources and then come back out to the coast. The other coastal sites that we have found also show inland contacts. If all the early American groups were following a similar pattern of moving back and forth between inland and coastal areas, then the peopling of the Americas may not have been the blitzkrieg movement to the south that people have presumed, but a much slower and more deliberate process,” Dillehay observes.

The previous lack of physical evidence of coastal communities as the settlers worked their way south is because sea levels were 200 feet (61 meters) lower than today, leaving many of the settlements underwater.

The team's findings are reported in the May 9 edition of the journal Science.

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