Current evidence indicates that humans evolved in Africa, spreading into Eurasia and Australia and eventually into the Americas. The traditional viewpoint has been that the ancestors of Native Americans entered over the Bering Strait area between Siberia and Alaska. This region was dry land during glacial advances, as sea levels fell due to water tied up on land in continental ice caps. As retreating ice sheets left a passageway south from unglaciated central Alaska to the northern Great Plains, these peoples moved south, eventually reaching southernmost South America.
Recent evidence suggests a different scenario, with the earliest
peoples following the Pacific coastline south, some continuing into South America, some
hooking around inland to infiltrate into interior North America from the south. In
later times, more direct movements from Siberia into the Arctic populated the
northernmost regions. Thus, those Chihuahuan Desert inhabitants who share ancestry with
the earliest peoples perhaps entered our region from the south, rather than the
traditional north. And only later joined by the southward migrating Athapaskans—the
present-day Apache.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.