THE "first Americans" have long been seen as intrepid ice-age hunters whose appetite for mammoths and other big game led them across the frigid wilds of Siberia and over the Bering land bridge some 13,500 years ago. There, in the New World, bands of early humans trekked down a narrow, ice-free corridor, fanning out south of the ice sheets, crossing raging rivers and steep mountain passes, and adapting to a succession of alien ecosystems - including desert, chaparral, cloud forest, rainforest and pampas - until finally running out of land in Tierra del Fuego. It was a journey of epic proportions. So much so that the famous French archaeologist François Bordes once described it as a feat that would go unrivalled "until man lands on a planet belonging to another star".
It's made the news before.