Science - Ice Age

via Yahoo/Reuters.

Apparently new evidence has been uncovered in recent sediment cores that the Bering Land Bridge, widely thought to have allowed a land passage from Asia to North America during the Earth's last Ice Age, flooded about a millenia before previously thought, around 11,000 years ago. This leads further credence to the idea that Native Americans migrated further back in time than was once thought as well, perhaps as far back as 18,000 years if some finds I've read about can be proven.

"For decades most scientists believed that the first people to settle in the Americas were the Clovis people, and that they came via the Bering land bridge between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. But recent evidence has suggested that humans came much earlier."

One of the interesting theories is that people not only migrated via the land bridge, but also along the coast in small boats. There is certainly evidence of boats before that time in South Asia and elsewhere. Naturally, the best places to look for evidence of such coastal migrations on America's west coast are now under water as the Ice Age glaciers melted, raising the world's sea levels.