The First Americans

When did the first humans arrive in the Americas? And who were they? According to J.M. Adovasio and Jake Page in *The First Americans* , the best way to answer these questions correctly is to start at the beginning—with the earliest understanding of who Native Americans are and how they got here.

Ever since those three poorly equipped caravels, manned by prejudiced Europeans, docked on the shores of a Caribbean island, the Native peoples of the Americas and their complex history have baffled many non-Native Americans.

The discovery of a spearhead in a New Mexico excavation in 1920 indicated the existence of powerful hunters who crossed the Bering Strait more than 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age. The Clovis Men, as they became known, were a unique group of individuals who began the settlement of the American continent.

J.M. Adovasio challenged this traditional theoretical approach when the site he was excavating in Pennsylvania revealed tools older than those of Clovis Man. The discovery placed him at the center of debates between archaeologists who favored the Clovis theory and those who argued for the existence of multiple inclusions across the hemisphere made by genetically distinct groups, revolutionizing the history of American archaeology itself.

The First Americans dissects beliefs, theories, and scientific questions, addressing various aspects of this controversy, and also challenging the primacy of Clovis Man as the first colonist of the Western Hemisphere. Drawing on their research and field investigations, archaeologist J.M. Adovasio and journalist Jake Page make the subject accessible to anyone interested in the roots of their own existence.