[In Depth] Relics of the first Americans?
For years archaeologists have searched for a sign of the earliest Americans—the mysterious newcomers who, it's generally believed, set out from Asia and spread down the Pacific coast by boat more than 14,000 years ago. Last week, at a jammed session of the meeting of the Society for American Archaeologists in Vancouver, researchers proposed that such evidence has been under their noses all along. They argued that a staple of museum collections known as Western Stemmed points—roughly pinkie-sized stone spearpoints with a chunky stem—are the handiwork of those first arrivals. Stemmed spearpoints in various styles may show the expansion of the first people from Asia into the Americas, although the oldest known points are still later than the site of Monte Verde in Chile, where people lived over 14,000 years ago. Author: Lizzie Wade