An archaeological site in Siberia, long thought to be the original jumping-off point for crossing the Bering land bridge into North America, is actually much younger than previously believed, shaking the theory that the first Americans migrated overland during the final cold snap of the last great ice age. Using radiocarbon dating, scientists found that the Ushki site, the remains of a community of hunters clustered around Ushki Lake in northeastern Russia, appears to be only about 13,000 years old, 4,000 years younger than originally thought. The new date places the Ushki settlement in the same time period as the Clovis site, an ancient community found in New Mexico, making it highly unlikely that people could have traversed the thousands of miles from Siberia in such a short period. "This was the last site out there in Siberia that could have been an ancestor for the Clovis," said Michael Waters, co-author of the research that appeared last week in the journal Science. "We have to think bigger now and start thinking outside the box."

History books have long touted the idea that the first Americans, perhaps hunting a herd of mammoths, crossed into North America across the Bering land bridge, a strip of land believed to have linked Russia to the United States between 10,000 to 18,000 years ago.

View: Full Article | Source: Contra Costa Times

That's news. How long would it take to get from Alaska to South America on foot, anyway? Stone Age people were just as smart as we are, I'm sure they would have figured out how to make boats or something like that, and skirting ice floes does sound plausible.

I had read that the archeological remains of Central and South America are older than the time frame where everyone walked across that land bridge. Perhaps I misread.