Pleistocene Americans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2023
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.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.