Researchers have pinpointed two intervals when ice and ocean conditions would have been favorable to support early human migration from Asia to North America late in the last ice age, a new paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows.
Researchers have pinpointed two intervals when ice and ocean conditions would have been favorable to support early human migration from Asia to North America late in the last ice age, a new paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows.
The findings align with a growing body of evidence that the most likely path for the first Americans was a Pacific coastal route that was in use before the large ice sheets covering much of present-day Canada and parts of the U.S. began to retreat.
Using ocean modeling and data from sediment cores collected in the northeast Pacific Ocean, the researchers found two distinct climate intervals where a combination of winter sea ice and ice-free summer conditions likely would have facilitated migration further south toward the end of the last ice age, said Alan Mix, an oceanographer and paleoclimatologist at Oregon State University and a co-author of the paper.
“Our research indicates that during the last ice age, the ice along the west coast of North America, from Seattle to Alaska, moved back and forth quite a bit,” said Mix, a professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “Surprisingly, there were times when ice didn’t block the way for those early people. In fact, some ice might have made migration easier.”
Read more at Oregon State University
Photo Credit: Noel_Bauza via Pixabay
