Which oldest known North America culture were entirely nomadic hunters of large animals?
1 Answer
Research into early human settlement in the Americas is ongoing; however the safest theory is that big-game hunters out of Siberia crossed the Berengia landbridge around 16,500 years ago.
Explanation:
Notwithstanding several spectacular claims (often backed by little evidence), it seems the most uncontestable date for the beginning of human settlement in the Americas is around 16,500 years ago.
The DNA evidence suggests a split in a human population in Southern Siberia 42,000 to 21,000 years ago. All of the Native Peoples of the Americas seem to have come from this one source (which also contributed to populations in Europe and Asia).
The Berengia Landbridge (a result of the Quaternary Glaciation of 40,000 to 13,000 years ago) allowed Siberian populations to reach North America. There is evidence of coast-hugging travellers who paddled along the coast, but sea-levels have risen over 100m since the end of the last Ice-Age -- making archeology very difficult!
There is more evidence (largely being easier to retrieve) of big-game hunters who trailed Megafauna across the landbridge and down through land-corridors that appeared between the Laurentian Icesheet and the many glaciers spawned in the mountain's Cordilleran Icesheet.
Both theories allow for a rapid distribution of humanity once past Berengia and Alaska; and perhaps both theories are true. In any event, both would have caused population pressures and competition - which explain the rapid dispersal of early populations.
The other problem is that linguistics, genetics, and stone tools all give different ideas of who was who, and where they were and when. The Clovis Point for spears and atlatl darts goes back to 10,500 BC; and is often associated with the last of the large MegaFaunae that went extinct at the end of the Ice Age, But techniques can be taught to others we can't say those who used it were one people.
