Ancient World Review

New Genetic Study Of America's First Settlers

"This finding demonstrates that the initial human settlement of the Americas was not a single migration process -- regardless of whether it took place through the Bering Strait -- but rapid peopling, followed by long periods of isolation in small tribal groups." Source: Science Daily.

Note: The article asks the question "Which was the earliest well-established culture in America?" and then proceeds to not answer it.

Comet Didn't Wipe Out Clovis Culture?

"Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series." Source: Science Daily.

Note: The "comet explosion" referred to in this story is known as The Younger Dryas Impact Event (aka The Younger Dryas Event or the Clovis Event). The impact of a large comet or asteroid is thought to have wiped out several Stone Age species and ended the Clovis Culture, but if this new research is correct, it never happened. In fact, it sounds like these researchers don't even believe that there was an extraterrestrial impact at all and the whole theory is starting to look kind of shaky. (The comet theory is summarized in the excerpt from a National Geographic documentary below. Sound quality isn't the greatest).

First Evidence Of Ice Age Wolves Found In Nevada

"A University of Nevada, Las Vegas research team recently unearthed fossil remains from an extinct wolf species in a wash northwest of Las Vegas, revealing the first evidence that the Ice Age mammal once lived in Nevada." Source: Science Daily.

Ancient Bronze Artifact Discovered In Alaska

Native Americans And Northern Europeans More Closely Related Than Previously Thought

"Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern European populations -- including British, Scandinavians, French, and some Eastern Europeans -- descend from a mixture of two very different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans." Source: Science Daily.

The First Americans - The Windover Bog People

Part 5 from the documentary The First Americans:

Part 6 - DNA of the Windover Bog People:

More on the Windover site here.

Stone Age Europeans In America 20,000 Yrs Ago

"When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: a dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp." Source: Washington Post.

"Forty years later, this rediscovered prehistoric slasher has reopened debate on a radical theory about who the first Americans were and when they got here.

"Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

"But the mastodon relic found near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting that the blade was just as ancient."

Grand Canyon Archaeological Sites

Note: OSL dating, i.e., Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating, is a method used (in the absence of material suitable for carbon dating) to find out when minerals were last exposed to sunlight.

Early Man Shared Florida With Mammoths

"Not far from West Palm Beach in southern Florida, people once lived alongside giant ground sloths, mammoths, tapirs, mastodons and other enormous creatures." Source: Discovery News.

Lamb Spring Dig Could Rewrite Human History

"Molly the Columbian mammoth lived, grazed, and died, about 13,000 years ago near a spring in what is now a fast-developing chunk of Douglas County. Five thousand years later, early North American humans spent time at the same spring, where they killed and butchered bison." Source: Denver Post.

"We don't know if humans visited the spring at the same time as Molly, but if the Lamb Spring site produces evidence that they did — and it tantalizes with hope — the site could rewrite the scientific and cultural history of North America."