Way before Columbus!

I know we celebrate Columbus Day as a national holiday tomorrow, but what about those people who walked across a sheet of ice to get to America? Don't they deserve some recognition? They were, after all, the first Americans! Melissa Hogenboom reports at BBC,

They probably came on foot from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge, which existed between Alaska and Eurasia from the end of the last Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago. The area is now submerged by water.

...The abundance of ice meant that sea levels were much lower than they are now, and a stretch of land emerged between Siberia and Alaska. Humans and animals could simply walk from Asia to North America. The land bridge was called Beringia.


During the last Ice Age humans could walk from Siberia into the Americas (Credit: Gary Hinks/SPL)

... In fact, about 80% of Native Americans today are direct descendants of the Clovis people, who lived across North America about 13,000 years ago. This discovery came from a 2014 genetic study of a one-year-old Clovis boy who died about 12,700 years ago.

...The team concludes that the ancestors of the first Americans came to Beringia at some point between 23,000 years and 13,000 years ago.

Read more here.