Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Peopling of the Americas update Migrating people had 20,000-year campout
People who migrated from Asia to the New World camped out for 20,000 years on land now submerged under the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, according to a genetic analysis published on Tuesday.

A team at the University of Florida combined studies of DNA, archeological evidence, climate data and geological data to come up with their new theory, which describes a much longer migration than most other researchers have proposed.

"We sort of went out onto a limb, incorporating all this nongenetic data," molecular anthropologist Connie Mulligan said in a telephone interview.


They still posit around 15k years ago for the initial migration. This still has the same problems as the usual theories: whether or not the ice-free corridor was habitable, or the coastal route for that matter (boat use aside). They have a link to the paper itself, but I haven't been able to load it yet.