How did the paleo indians come to america??

Question

how did they get here??????????????????!

Answer 1

Depends on which ones? The ones in N America mostly came across the land bridge that is now the Aleutian Islands. Some came across the ice further North.

South America seem to have came by sea.

Answer 2

Most common view is view either a land or ice bridge across the Bering Strait.

Answer 3

They migrated over the Bering Land bridge between Russia and Alaska that  no longer exists. It is not called the Bering Strait. I'm sure you can google for a lot more information.

Answer 4

Across Beringia (the land mass that connects Siberia and Alaska which is STILL THERE but it is submerged under water).  It becomes more difficult to determine how they got from Alaska to the continental US and South America.  The current theory is they came across Beringia, then along the west coast.  However, since those sites are currently underwater, it has been difficult to prove.  They did not come at one time with only a hundred people.  There were three basic migrations, the Amerind, the Aleut-Eskimo, and the Na-Dene.  Also, Beringia was not a narrow strip of land, it was hundreds of miles across and people and animals likely migrated back and forth.

Answer 5

Paleoamericans were the ancient peoples of the Americas who were present at the end of the last Ice Age. The prefix "paleo" comes from the Greek palaios meaning ancient, and refers to the Upper Paleolithic time period. The best known of these peoples were part of the Clovis culture. However, evidence of several pre-Clovis Paleo-Indian cultures also exist.

Paleoamericans are believed to be the first people to have inhabited a large number of areas in the Americas, though there is now some doubt as to whether they were the first inhabitants of the continent as a whole. The current prevailing theory postulates that Paleo-Indians entered the Americas from Asia via a land bridge (Beringia) connecting eastern Siberia with present-day Alaska when sea levels were significantly lower because of widespread glaciation between about 15,000 to 35,000 years ago. However, evidence suggestive of even earlier human occupation in South America at sites like Monte Verde in Chile (35,000 years), or in North America at site of Topper (50,000 years ago), have generated an alternative theory that Paleo-Indians, or at least some groups of them, may have come from the Pacific Islands or mainland Asia by watercraft.

Paleoamericans are believed to have been nomadic hunter-gatherers (They hunted a type of huge sloth, a type of bison and camels) whose following of animal migrations dictated where they camped. As the glaciers that covered much of North America receded in the warming climate following the most recent glacial maximum, tundra foliage was the main plant growth. Paleo-Indians living in the tundra hunted both large mammals like prehistoric bear, bison, and caribou, as well as smaller mammals like hare and arctic fox. Paleo-Indians also lived in the taiga, forested steppe, semi-arid temperate woodlands, and other ecozones. Paleoamericans are known to have hunted with both fluted stone-pointed wooden lancing spears and shorter spears thrown using an atlatl; they probably also foraged for edible plants.

Paleoamericans likely traveled in small groups of approximately 20 or 50 members of an extended family. Archaeological evidence of particular kinds of fluted stone have been uncovered, suggesting trade occurred between such groups.

Archaic stage Modern day native Americans are the direct descendants.

Answer 6

from the web page where there is lots more info...

So how did people get to South America? There were only two ways to move, walk or take the boat. They probably did both (show possible routes on National Geographic [2000] map, Peopling of the Americas) . The typical explanation for the earliest humans' entrance into the New World is that people crossed from northeast Asia, Siberia, into North America, during the Pleistocene when sea levels were lower and there was a land bridge; they kept walking and made it to South America. This year the coastal hypothesis is back in favor, the idea that the earliest peoples made their way slowly down sheltered coasts of both North and South America. Though sea level has risen and no doubt drowned just about all the evidence, there are a few North American sites supporting this hypothesis. At any rate, they must have come through North America first, to a greater or lesser degree, not across the wide Pacific from Japan, even though many of the South American dates are earlier than the earliest ones from North America. Bruhns (p. 43) says they must have moved into South America down the mountain chains because those environments support large herbivores. This has been our stereotyped view of the first Americans, Big-Game Hunters extraordinaire, very macho, with big chipped stone points and lots of meat. But we need to examine this model closely.

Answer 7

While I agree, for the most part, with all the posters in that by far the majority (if not all) came accross Beringa in several migrations from Asia.  Genetic researchers have thrown a wrench into the works by discovering the "infamous" haplogroup X among Eastern American tribes (centered around the great lakes area).   This MtDNA is found in North America & the Eastern Part of Brazil (Yanomamo tribe).  One hypothesis suggests a migration from West Asia to Western Europe then following the Ice Sheets in small boats accross the Atlantic.  The other suggests a migration from Western Asia accross most of Asia to Beringa & accross the US to the Eastern US.  The problem with the latter hypothesis is that no Haplogroup X DNA is found in Central or Eastern Asia but that DNA is found among West Europeans.

Following the Ice sheet accross the Atlantic would have been a very difficult task, even for a group that subsisted mainly on seals & sea food... but if they migrated via Asia & Beringa, they left no evidence of doing so.

Chuckle... thought I'd just toss this in to confuse some tidy ideas about the migrations.

Edit:

The person that gave me a thumbs down is obviously not well versed enough in the subject matter to put up a detracting arguement & must resort to childish drivel when someone posts an opposing arguement... why not "try" to refute what I posted with a valid arguement?

Answer 8

It is believed they came across the Bering Sea via a land bridge that is no longer there.  The land bridge in the past connected Asia to North America.

gatita_63109

Answer 9

That's under intense debate.  The original hypothesis, and the most well known one, is that a small group (probably somewhere around a hundred or two hundred people) crossed the Bering Straight from Siberia into North America during the last ice age, when the sea levels were low enough that there was dry land between the two.  You could've just walked across back then.  The two major ice sheets over what is now Canada also were supposed to leave a corridor between them for a short amount of time, so this group could walk down that way.

This is now under question for a number of reasons.  First, there have been several sites that date to before the Clovis culture, which is the one that is supposed to have come across the Bering Straight.  They could not have come the same way because, again, that path was only open for a short time.  There are different theories as to how they got over here.  They may have sailed down the western coast of North America, again starting in the extreme north.  There were definitely boats at the right time for that.  They may have come across the Pacific.  Other peoples managed to sail some pretty insane distances, so it's possible.  I've also recently read a suggestion that they came down to and then across the Antarctic, to start colonizing the Americas from the south.  If that's true, then more power to them.  That's a very hard route to take.

The Bering Straight hypothesis is also coming under fire both because there have been no camps found along the supposed highway down Canada, and also because that route wasn't as hospitable as once thought.  It definitely wouldn't have been a nice stroll.

The idea of these people as primarily hunters is also under attack, by the way.  In general, hunter/gatherer groups take in most of their calories from gathering.  Also, there's evidence that the great animal die-off that happened right about the time the Clovis culture appeared on the scene wasn't caused by them, at least not primarily.  Many non-game animals died as well.  Man the Hunter is most likely a myth.  It's more like People the Gatherers, Trappers, Scavengers, and Occasionally Hunters.