When
many scholars are asked about
early human settlement in the Americas, they might point to a handful
of
archaeological sites as evidence. Yet the process was not a simple one,
and today there is no consistent argument favoring a particular
scenario
for the peopling of the New World.
Most researchers agree that the
Americas
were colonized late in the Pleistocene, some 14,000 years ago, but
beyond
this there is little consensus.
This
book approaches the human settlement
of the Americas from a biogeographical perspective in order to provide
a better understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of this
unique
event. It considers many of the questions that continue to surround the
peopling of the western hemisphere, focusing not on sites, dates, and
artifacts
but rather on theories and models that attempt to explain how the
colonization
occurred.
Unlike other studies, this book draws on a wide range of
disciplines
-- archaeology, human genetics and osteology, linguistics, ethnology,
and
ecology -- to present the big picture of this migration. Its
wide-ranging
content considers who the Pleistocene settlers were and where they came
from; their likely routes of migration; and the ecological role of
these
pioneers and the consequences of colonization.
Comprehensive in both
geographic
and topical coverage, the contributions include an explanation of how
the
first inhabitants of North America could have spread across the
continent
within several centuries; the most comprehensive review of new
mitochondrial
DNA and Y-chromosome data relating to the colonization; and an
important
critique of recent linguistic theories. Although the authors lean
toward
a conservative rather than an extreme chronology, this volume goes
beyond
the simplistic emphasis on dating that has dominated the debate so far
to a concern with late Pleistocene forager adaptations and how they
might
have coped with a wide range of environmental and ecological factors.
It
offers researchers in this exciting field the most complete summary of
current knowledge and provides non-specialists and general readers with
new answers to the challenging and intriguing questions surrounding the
origins of the first Americans. |
The Settlement
of the American Continents
A
Multidisciplinary
Approach to Human Biogeography
edited
by C. Michael
Barton, Geoffrey A. Clark, David R. Yesner, Georges A. Pearson
University
of Arizona
Press, 2004.
Order
a copy
|
