# First Americans: 23,000+ years ago **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 9, 2023, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307 "2023-10-09T10:45:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/1 "2023-10-09T10:45:26Z")
A couple years ago, there was a report about ancient footprints found in New Mexico were dated to about 22-23,000 years ago. Here’s an update by the same people: > **[Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms](https://phys.org/news/2023-10-humans-america-years-earlier-thought.html)** > > When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans reached the North American interior no earlier than around 14,000 years ago. Anyway, there was some doubt about the dating used in that earlier study. Someone suggested that fossil water may have messed up the carbon dating. So they went back and did some more work and now have two independent forms of dating that agree that they are about 23K years old. I doubt this will convince everyone. This topic always has someone who has other ideas and don’t want them disturbed, so they’ll look hard find something that may be an issue. I couldn’t find a thread that only discusses when America was first peopled, but that may be a failure on my part. I know we’ve discussed this many times before. Here’s a thread that discusses all kinds of “discovery” of America, including when the Indians first came along. > [@Who Really Discovered America?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-really-discovered-america/773983): > > Everyone says Christopher Columbus was not the first to discover “America”, or more accurately, the New World. Some will name Amerigo Vespucci. Yet, it is true that Columbus discovered the New World in 1492 and Vespucci’s first voyage left Spain in 1497. So, now the only issue is Leif Erickson’s claim to discovering America around 1001. Does the SD concur? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/2 "2023-10-09T10:54:10Z")
Last I heard, these guys were about 127,000 years late to the party. > **[Cerutti Mastodon site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site)** > > .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}32°39′57.4″N 117°03′11.4″W / 32.665944°N 117.053167°W / 32.665944; -117.053167 > The Cerutti Mastodon site is a paleontological and possible archeological site located in San Diego County, California. In... ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/3 "2023-10-09T11:45:56Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Last I heard, these guys were about 127,000 years late to the party. I think you mean 107,000 years too late. But I’m not sure that site show anything more than that it was disturbed by a backhoe. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/4 "2023-10-09T14:34:40Z")
It isn’t all that unlikely that several small groups of hominids found their way to the Western Hemisphere millennia before the ancestors of modern indigenous people did. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/5 "2023-10-09T16:44:05Z")
When you find definite evidence that Sasquatch exists, then we’ll take that possibility a little more seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/6 "2023-10-09T17:02:55Z")
People drifting on rafts or crossing earlier land bridges. Continental extinction of such small populations would not be surprising. ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/7 "2023-10-13T22:58:50Z")
Can it, Fudd! We were asking who got there first. The fact that the first groups who made it may have fizzled out, with long gaps between them and whoever came next, in not a consideration here. Would not surprise anyone if indeed this happened a lot! Yeah, so let’s focus on what matters here - bragging rights! ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/8 "2023-10-13T23:42:58Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > The fact that the first groups who made it may have fizzled out, with long gaps between them and whoever came next, in not a consideration here. It is if you are using things like footprints to establish when the hemisphere became a permanent human habitat. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/9 "2023-10-13T23:48:58Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > It is if you are using things like footprints to establish when the hemisphere became a permanent human habitat. Footprints in New Mexico are a good sign that the people who made them were not going to fizzle out. NM is a long way from the ice-free corridor and from the ocean, the two possible paths for people get to America. In order for there to be that many people in NM, there’d definitely be a lot of other people elsewhere. Too many to fizzle. ETA: Actually, the ice-free corridor would not be an issue here. At 23,000 years ago, it was still several thousand years in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-americans-23-000-years-ago/991307/10 "2023-10-13T23:52:18Z")
I wouldn’t underestimate the reach of primitive nomads. If the animals living there can migrate hundreds or thousands of miles, so can their hunters.