How could there be people on every continent a long time ago?

Question

This is a really broad question but I'm interested in how anthropologists think humans got on different continents. If our origins are in Africa and if Pangea split billions of years before the dawn of man, how did you get guys in Mexico building pyramids? Do they credit the land bridge? Just throwing this out there.

Answer 1

Humans almost certainly evolved in Africa and then especially in the Ice Ages when seas were low went along the lower part of South Asia to Australia and then Melanesia while another mob went up through West Asia across the North of that Continent and spread through East Asia. We're talking maybe 50,000 years ago. Europe was probably populated by homo sapiens sapienensis as recently as 20,000 years ago where he superseded Neanderthal man. The Bering sea at this time was dry land and as few as one family went, probably around the East of the Rockies and populated all of the Americas. The islanders of the Pacific and the people of Iceland and Greenland go to their places by sailing. Blood types and archaeology are evidence for much of this. I don't  claim certain knowledge but I would bet on it!

In Ice Ages there are land bridges and distant shores become closer.

Answer 2

ever heard of rodinia? this refers 2 one of the oldest known supercontinents, which contained most or all of Earths landmass.... paleomagnetic evidence provides clues to the paleolatitude of individual formations, but not to their longitude, which geologists have pieced together by comparing similar strata, often now widely dispersed.

Answer 3

It's believed that they migrated from where humans originated from through Asia.  When some of these primitive humans came to the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska there was an ice age going on, so enough water was frozen that the rather shallow sea floor was exposed, which created a land bridge between the two land masses.  This bridge was called the Bering land bridge, or Beringia.  It enabled human migration through the Americas.

Answer 4

Continents were closer together...

Answer 5

The land bridge is the conventional answer, based on the evidence that modern Native Americans spread southwards through the Americas about 11000 years ago.

The problem is that there is a little evidence in Brazil and in Tierra del Fuego that there were ancestral Natives in the Americas before modern Natives arrived. The alternative possibilitiy therefore is that the abororiginal Americans arrived by sea from Africa, pretty much the same way as the Portuguese did 500 years ago. It's totally plausible, the only vital assumptions are that the Africans of long ago (I mean anywhere between 15 and 70 or even conceivably 100 thousand years ago) knew how to build ocean-going boats and were interested in exploration. And we know that people were interested in exploration and can infer that they had boats because they migrated to India. It's not proven.

As for the pyramids, yes there is sufficient resemblance to raise questions. There is also the inconvenient evidence of soem drug, I think it's cannabis, that before Columbus only grew in the New World, being found in use by the Ancient Egyptians. The simple explanation of the drug and the Mexican pyramids is that there wass trade (and therefore also exchange of ideas) between the Americas and the Old World in ancient times (anywhere between 1000 and 10000 BCE perhaps). Nothing except European prejudice to naysay it. Just because knowledge of how to cross the Atlantic was absent in the period 0-1492AD doesn't mean it wasn't known earlier. After all, the ancient Greeks and Indians knew the world was round.

Answer 6

Humans probably evolved in Africa and Asia in spite of common thinking on this matter.  People have been inhabiting Asia for over 50 thousand years and probably far before that.  People in Tibet evolved special features and culture to deal with the harsh Tibetan highlands.  These features included the black hair and eyes typical of Chinese and special features of their teeth.  Because of distinctive features of their teeth, it can be shown that native Americans arrived in the New World in successive waves.  The latest are the eskimoes and Navaho as well as South American Indians.  I suspect they came by boat during the warm periods but may also have came during the ice ages when there was a land bridge.  Pangea did indeed split 65 million years ago and during the span of human kind, the continents have not appreciably shifted.  There is evidence that the early Phoenecians and possibly Egyptians visited the New World with boats.  I suspect that is where the concept of Mexican pyramids came from.  It is interesting to note that the Mexican pyramids are very similar to early Egyptian pyramids.

Answer 7

The land bridge theory to date is the strongest one.. which seems to be supported...

so my vote is for the Land bridge.

Answer 8

First off Pangea split in the Triassic period 65 million years ago.

Secondly the first original humans came from Africa.

They got places by walking. Even in this time one can see that all the continents accept Australia(Aborigines most likely boated from Asia) and Antarctica, all other continents are connected. Their is a land bridge thats under twenty feet of ice between Russia and Alaska. Thats how everyone got spread out.

Answer 9

The land bridge was one means. The evidence for migration that way is very strong. There is also good evidence that the Pacific islands and possibly South America were populated by boat. Look up the voyage of the con tiki.

Answer 10

Most scientist do credit the Bering Straight. It is thought that humans evolved in Africa. From there some went to Europe and others to Asia, from Asia they eventually crossed the land bridge and spread through out the Americas. You can see this is true because if you look at Native Americans most have the slightly almond shaped eyes you see in people from Asia, so they must have been living in Asia for a while and evolved to have eyes like that.

I don't think they would have crossed on boats even if they had boats that could cross that far because they didn't know how far they would be crossing or what would be there once they got there. Land they knew was secure so they would cross land.