Did the original Americans come over to North America by the Bearing straight in one mass or in waves?

Question

Did they come over in successive waves? If so, what was the gap between the waves of immigration? Did the people in the latter waves displace the people from previous waves through warfare?

Answer 1

In at least 4 waves (Haplogroups A, B, C & D), and possibly a 5th (Haplogroup X)...

Answer 2

Wow, so I can only paraphrase your first answer as they answered correctly and concisely.

Waves. The first people were following the food sources and the animals were moving depending on local weather conditions and the like.

There is also some idea that Chinese settlers came over later, but there is little physical evidence to support this idea. Although it IS true that the Chumash tribe of California has features that look more asiatic then other tribes.

Answer 3

It appears to have been at least three waves. This is based on the theory is that Native American language familles can be placed in three groups. That these groups represent successive migrations of people into the Americas.

Some years ago the explanation of the entry of humans into the Americas was simple. About 11,500 years ago an ice free corridor opened between Alaska and Southern Canada. The humans that moved through the corridor were the Clovis big game hunters. They created a "bow wave" spreading throughout both continents, causing the megafauna animals to go extinct. Their spread was so fast humans reached the tip of South America within 500 years. Language wasn't given much consideration.

This was the "Clovis First" theory. It explained the extinction of the large mammals, such as the mammoth and the mastodon, as being killed by the Clovis. Clovis sites were the earliest found in the Americas and most clustered around 11,500 years ago. It was also known that the glacial ice retreated about the same time. Here were mighty hunters taking procession of a land teeming with game.

Along with the Clovis First theory came the so called 11,500 year barrier. Sites dated older then that had to be wrong. Either the site was contaminated, or the excavation techniques were poorly done or the interpretation was wrong.

Over time, new discoveries and new sites broke the barrier. The Monte Verde site in Chile (and a long way south) has firm dates of 12,500 years ago. The meticulously excavated Medowcroft site had dates at least that old and some several thousand years older. Cactus Hill broke the 15,000 barrier with samples dated 15,070 ± 70, 16,670 ± 730, and 16,940 ± 50 BP. It's now valid to state that humans have been in the Americas probably for the last 20,000 years. Several sites make claims for even older occupations but have yet to be accepted.

Today, some 700 Native American languages are known. At contact in 1492 it's estimated that there were more then 1,000. Those that studies the diverse languages agreed that it would have taken many thousands of years for such a diversity of speech to have developed. The dates given for the waves and the time required for diversity to develop, match well the archaeological findings.

In the 1980s studies proposed that there were three major language families. That this represented three different migrations into the Americas. The language groups were Amerid thought to have diverged about 11,000 BP, Na-Dene, dated at 9,000BP and Eskimo-Aleut dated about 4,000 BP. These dates were approximate and thought to mark the entry of the original group into the Americas. Later studies pushed the dates back the Amerid to 30,000 years ago, followed 20,000 years later by the Nadene and then the Eskimo-Aleuts, within the last 7,000.

DNA studies have been mixed. While some support the three wave theory of languages, others suggest between one and four migrations.

The issue of the oldest human remains found in North America is still undecided. Kenniwick Man is dated to 9,000 years ago and is physically different from remains that are more recent. This could be a separate wave of settlement that died out.

Answer 4

Are you looking for an explanation of the recent data in DNA analysis or just curious about the prehistory of North American peoples?

All of the humans who existed in the New World prior to exploration and exploitation by Europeans arrived there from someplace.  There is no evidence of Humans before 75,000 years ago.

The classical explanation is groups arriving by walking from somewhere in Siberia, but this is just a guess.  There is no trail of villages or campsites to support this theory.

Whether they walked on the ice or a land bridge or rode in watercraft, they did arrive over a very long time period and this would support successive waves and not a one time event.

The implications of the sparse DNA evidence is still being considered.  It might be decades before the dust settles and a single theory can explain the growing amount of data.  It is premature to draw conclusions based upon a very limited study of Haplogroups of mitrochrondrial DNA considering the relatively small number of people studied.

The loss of linguistic data hampers current efforts.  Over half of all languages spoken in the Americas as of 1500 AD have been lost without ever being recorded or studied.

Answer 5

the original americans were already here - that's why they're considered the originals.