Drowned land holds clue to first Americans
Combining the skills of the late Jacques Cousteau and Louis Leakey, two Canadian researchers have gone off the deep end to address one of the biggest questions in anthropology: How did people first make their way to the Americas? Using sophisticated underwater techniques, the scientists have mapped out a now-flooded route that could have provided an entry point into the New World during the last ice age.
“What they’re doing is very pioneering. It’s a beautiful bit of science,” comments archaeologist E. James Dixon of the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Canadian research adds weight to the idea that maritime Asians migrated down the coast of North America instead of hoofing it overland, as anthropologists have traditionally believed.