Humans reach the Americas

c. 21,000 BCETurning pointContested

Footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, suggest people were in North America at the height of the last Ice Age.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Modern humans leave Africa → Humans reach the Americas

Contested history

Consensus: People crossed from Siberia into the Americas during or before the last Ice Age.

Clovis First (about 13,000 years ago)Debunked

Sites like Monte Verde in Chile showed people arrived earlier than the Clovis culture.

Arrival by 21,000 to 23,000 years ago (White Sands footprints)Debated by scholars

Seeds and pollen in the footprint layers support this date; some researchers still question it.

A coastal route along the Pacific kelp highwayDebated by scholars

Many archaeologists favor a coastal route, but rising seas have drowned most evidence.

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Documentusgs.gov

Fossilized footprints reveal human habitation of North America thousands of years earlier (USGS) ↗