First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America

Description

More than 12|000 years ago| in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory| humans colonized North America| a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling| cutting-edge synthesis| written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates| tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from| when they arrived| and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast| unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology| geology| linguistics| skeletal biology| genetics| and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics| he explores disputes over the hemisphere’s oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters| personalities| and controversies| this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.