with relative consistency. (not all that evidence has met with approval or consensus, but that's science) The evidence presented here seems to be fairly solid - or at least great effort has been made to shore it up. We'll see what the community has to say.

Back in the dark ages (roughly coinciding w/ my schooling) they were still teaching Clovis - and that's water long passed under the bridge.

Thanks, JudiLynn. Interesting stuff as always.

Ty!

In his 1957 book "Traces of Early Man in the Northeast," NYS archaeologist William Ritchie stated humans had been in North America for 5,000 years. By the 1960s, he went with the generally accepted post-Wisconsin glacier theory of 12,000 years. By the 1970s, others had put forth three other theories, of 20,000, 40,000, and 60,000 years. Very few professionals thought these theories had merit. But now there is rock-solid evidence.

Just absolutely fascinating!

were careful not to wear their Nikes!

North America as early as 21,000 years ago, and possibly 30,000 years ago, I wonder if any Neanderthals, or even Homo Erectus ever made it from Asia to the Americas. There is no evidence that either one did, but I wonder if it's possible and we just haven't found the evidence yet.

Leaky thought that he had found evidence of stone tools in Montana going back more than 100,000 years. His finds were rejected as natural rock formations and the idea that there were human-made tools that long ago in America was ridiculed. But could it have happened? The only evidence that would be acceptable would be if there was a scraper with animal residue on it that could be dated, or actual human remains.

almost every human being whose ancestors left Africa all those many years ago.

Those whose ancestors stayed in Africa, have no Neanderthal in their DNA.

Apparently, Neanderthals made their way east, and people in the far east, meaning China, have even more Neanderthal in their DNA than the rest of us.

outside of sub Saharan Africa, but I wonder what your source is for saying that there is more Neanderthal DNA in the east than elsewhere.

Denisovans were closely related to Neanderthals and existed primarily in the east. The people of southeast Asia have more Denisovan DNA than any other region. Is that what you're referring to? Southeast Asians have a mix of Neanderthal, Denisovan, and Sapiens DNA. Although Neandethals and Denisovans were related, they were not the same.

But I was wondering if any Neanderthals or Homo Erectus had made it to Notth America prior to the evolution of Sapiens, or at least prior to the spread.of Sapiens into Asia.

I honestly don't know enough about Denisovans to make a sensible comment on them.

My statement about Neanderthal DNA is based on various thing, which you can readily research on Google. Here's one:

But I am still wondering about the same thing as my original post - whether they ever made it to North America prior to the evolution of Sapiens (us) or at least prior to the arrival of Sapiens in Asia.

as in several decades ago, that researchers looking into people coming into this continent were discourage very strongly from looking at all past the Clovis level, given that it was established that supposedly there were no humans before that point. The piece I heard on NPR suggested very strongly that the claim was very strong that no one had gotten here before the accepted dates. Except, as this piece made very clear, there was a lot of evidence that humans had made their way onto this continent a very long way before the officially accepted dates.

Humans have been roaming around this planet since day one, meaning at the very beginning of our being homo sapiens.

A lot of our ancestral migration is currently unknown. But it's real. We are all descendants of that migration. Except, perhaps, those whose ancestors never left Africa, our collective and important ancestral homeland.

told us that the reason why the Clovis theory was so strongly, even rigidly, held onto was to discourage the fantasy origin beliefs about Native Americans being descendants of the lost tribes of Israel or survivors from Atlantis. They wanted to adhere to only what could be established by strict scientific methods.

That was back in the mid-1980s, before DNA analyses and the knowledge of haplogroups, before the human genome had been mapped. At that time, though, the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter site in Western PA had already shown reliable dates back to 14,000 years ago and possibly earlier, so he told us that future findings were likely to upend the Clovis theory. He also believed that we would someday find evidence of Neanderthal and Sapiens interbreeding.

He passed away before the discoveries of evidence that he anticipated.

I try to follow findings as they develop, but miss some of them, which is why I was unaware of the higher incidence of Neanderthal DNA in east Asia until you mentioned it.

So I looked up more articles on it and one of them mentioned some of the hypotheses proposed for explaining it. Today's eastern Asians in Japan and China show lower levels of Denisovan DNA than southeast Asia, but have higher levels of Neanderthal DNA than elsewhere. Yet the Philippines have the highest level of Denisovan DNA in the world.

So one hypothesis was that, since Neanderthal and Denisovan were related and likely shared a common ancestor, the higher rates of Neanderthal DNA in Japan and China might have come into the population from traits that Neanderthal and Denisovans shared, in addition to Neanderthal/Denisovan crosses as well as from Neanderthals themselves.

What surprised me in that article was that it said that there was a high degree of Denisovan DNA in Iceland! Who knew? Denisovan Vikings? Talk about our ancestors traveling!