Chapter 10 - A Brave New World

Summary

ch 10: This chapter examines the peopling of the “New World” (Beringia and the Americas) between 12 and 32 Ka. Like the peopling of Sahul, population movements brought Homo sapiens from Asia to American continents and offshore islands with no prior hominin presence. Historically, archaeologists envisioned these movements as land-based, passing through an “ice-free corridor” between major continental glaciers around 13 Ka, but evidence increasingly shows that humans were already present south of the ice sheets significantly earlier than this corridor existed. Unlike in Sahul, ancestral Native Americans systematically hunted many of the megafauna that became extinct during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Extensive alliance networks whose most durable archaeological traces include distinctive stoneworking traditions, such as the Clovis Complex, may have played a role in these mass extinctions.