Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It’s still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it’s widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago.
“As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult,” archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He’s the author of “Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself.”
Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper’s Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.
Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.
Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US’ ancient history for yourself.
Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what’s now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.
As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters’ behavior.
Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state.
“Where are they coming from?” Feder said. “They’re not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites.” Archaeologists simply haven’t found them yet.
While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits.
In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.
For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.
At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.
Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there’s still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, “that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site.” It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.
The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person.
Cooper’s ferry is in the classic nose of the Perce nose, which the land administration office has in public property.
“The stone machinery and on the site show that at 14,550, other people knew how to locate the game, the new water and the device to make machinery,” said Michael Waters, one of the researchers, in a press release in 2016. “These other people were well suitable for this environment. “
Since it is underwater and personal property, it is not open to visitors.
Located in the center of Oregon-South, the caves seem to be a piece of the puzzle that indicates how humans have the continent thousands of years ago.
The Federal Land Management Office owns the land where the caves are located, and are signed at the beginning of historical places.
Every time other people arrived at the Americas, Siberia crossed Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. It is now covered with water, however, once a land bridge that connects them.
The in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human housing is Swan Point, in the region of the central-east of the State. In addition to the 14,000 -year -old teams and homes, gigantic bones were discovered there.
Researchers think this domain was a type of seasonal hunting camp. While the mammoths returned safe periods for years, humans would adhere to them and killed them, offering abundant food to hunters-gatherers.
Although Alaska can have a richness of archaeological evidence of the first Americans, it is also a difficult position to dig. “His excavation season is very close and expensive,” Feder said. Some require a helicopter to achieve, for example.
In 1929, James Ridgley, 1929, 1929, discovered gigantic bones with striated projectile problems near Clovis, in New Mexico. The other Clovis people who made these teams were named for this site.
For decades after Whiteman’s discovery, the idea of the mavens that the other people of Clovis were the first to cross the Bering d’Aring land bridge about 13,000 years ago. It is believed that the estimates of the arrival of humans are now at least 15,000 years ago.
Blackwater Draw Museum of the University of New Mexico in the East of New Mexico provides the archaeological site between April and October.
Archaeologists discovered the bones of the child in 2013. Local teams call it xach’ite’anenh t’eede gay, or dawn girl. Genetic tests revealed that the 11,300 -year -old baby belonged to a Amerindian population in the unknown past, the ancient Beringios.
Extending more than 80 feet long and five feet high, rows of curved poverty are wonderful when it shows from above. More than 3,000 years ago, the hunters-gatherers built them in tons of soil. Scientists do not know precisely why other people have built them, whether ceremonial or a state demonstration.
The artifacts that the equipment left implies that the site has been used and for many years and was an assembly point for trade. People have brought equipment and rocks at 800 miles away. The remains of deer, fish, frogs, caimanes, nuts, grapes and other foods have given archaeologists a review of their nutrition and daily life.
The other people of Navajo, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné Alastair journalist Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about some of the sacred and taboo areas. They come with Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists have discovered human remains.
The Mesa Verde National Park has a large number of homes, adding the Palais de Falaises. It has more than one hundred rooms and approximately two dozen kivas or ceremonial areas.
With the help of dendrocronology or trees dating, archaeologists learned when the ancestral people built some of those structures and that emigrated outside the doors of the region through the years 1300.
Feder said it was his favorite archaeological site he visited. “You don’t need to leave because you can’t be real,” he said.
Cahokia called one of the first cities in North America. Not far from St. Louis existing, around 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense colonies about 1,000 years ago. The important buildings were sitting on the most sensible giant mounds, which the Mississippiens built by hand, The Guardian reported.
After a few hundred years, the population of Cahakia decreased and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and the safe facets were rebuilt.
Although Cahokia is open to the public, the portions are recently closed for renovations.
“These other people were architects,” he said. “They had a feeling of beauty. “
Feder said that the accommodation is quite accessible, with a short walk along a path to see it, visitors cannot enter the construction itself.
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