The coastal migration hypothesis is one of two leading hypotheses about the settlement of the Americas at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. It proposes one or more migration routes involving watercraft, via the Kurile island chain, along the coast of Beringia and the archipelagos off the Alaskan-British Columbian coast, continuing down the coast to Central and South America.[1][2] The alternative is the hypothesis solely by interior routes, which assumes migration along an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum.
The coastal migration hypothesis has been bolstered by findings such as the report that the sediments in the Port Eliza caves on Vancouver Island indicate the possibility of a survivable climate as far back 16 ka (16,000 years) in the area, while the continental ice sheets were nearing their maximum extent.[3] Despite such research, the hypothesis is still subject to considerable debate.[4][5] Carlson,[6] Erlandson,[7] and others have argued for a coastal migration from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest pre-11ka (before ≈13,000 calendar years ago) that predates the hypothesized migration of Clovis people moving south through an ice-free corridor located near the continental divide.[8] The coastal migrants may have been followed by the Clovis culture when the final retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet opened migration routes between interior and coastal Alaska.
A 2017 discovery on Triquet Island by an archaeological team from the University of Victoria appears to verify local First Nation oral history traditions that the island was inhabited during the ice age.[9] A hearth excavated at the site was determined by radiocarbon dating to be between 13,613 and 14,086 years old, making it one of the oldest settlements in North America.[10]
While some archaeologists believe that the Clovis people moved south from Alaska through an ice-free corridor located between modern British Columbia and Alberta, recent dating of Clovis and similar Paleoindian sites in Alaska suggest that Clovis technology actually moved from the south into Alaska following the melting of the continental ice sheets at about 10.5 ka.[11]
In North America, the earliest dog remains were found in Lawyer's Cave on the Alaskan mainland east of Wrangell Island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska; radiocarbon dating indicates it is 10,150 years old. A genetic-based estimate indicates that this dog's lineage had split from the Siberian Zhokhov Island dog lineage 16,700 years ago. This timing coincides with the suggested opening of the North Pacific coastal route into North America.[12]
- ^ Surovell, Todd A. (2003). "Simulating Coastal Migration in New World Colonization". Current Anthropology. 44 (4). Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research: 580–91. doi:10.1086/377651. ISSN 1537-5382. JSTOR 10.1086/377651. S2CID 144347880.
- ^ Renee Hetherington, Edward Wiebe, Andrew J. Weaver, Shannon L. Carto, Michael Eby, Roger MacLeod (2007), Climate, African and Beringian subaerial continental shelves, and migration of early peoples (PDF), Quaternary International, International Union for Quaternary Research,
... Alternatively, the coastal migration hypothesis suggests that people migrated along the southern edge of the exposed Beringian shelf and down the Pacific ...
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Majid Al-Suwaidi (2006), A Multi-disciplinary Study of Port Eliza Cave Sediments and Their Implications for Human Coastal Migration, Library and Archives Canada (Bibliothèque et Archives Canada), ISBN 0494032995, archived from the original on 2020-02-29,
... A multi-disciplinary study at Port Eliza cave on Vancouver Island has refined the timing and character of late Wisconsinan environments and has significant implications for the human Coastal Migration Hypothesis ...
- ^ Nina G. Jablonski (2002), The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, University of California Press, ISBN 0940228505,
... Recent discoveries and events have breathed new life into the coastal migration theory, which suggests the opposite of the ice-free corridor hypothesis—that maritime peoples first traveled around the North Pacific Coast then followed river valleys leading inland from the sea. Having a coastal route available does not prove that such a maritime migration took place. Archaeological evidence for early boat use from islands along the western margin of the Pacific may support the idea that such a journey was technologically feasible, but archaeological data from the Pacific coast of North and South America are presently ambiguous about the origins of the earliest coastal occupants. ...
- ^ Christy G. Turner (2003), "Three ounces of sea shells and one fish bone do not a coastal migration make", American Antiquity, 68 (2), Society for American Archaeology: 391–395, doi:10.2307/3557086, JSTOR 3557086, S2CID 163953019
- ^ 1990 in Matson and Coupland, 1995:61-61
- ^ Erlandson, Jon. 2002. Anatomically modern humans, maritime voyaging, and the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas. In The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, edited by N. Jablonski, pp. 59-92. Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences. San Francisco.
- ^ Matson & Coupland, 1995:64
- ^ "14,000-year-old archeological find affirms Heiltsuk Nation's ice age history". CBC News. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
- ^ "Heiltsuk First Nation village among oldest in North America: Archeologists". Vancouver Sun. 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2018-01-10.
- ^ Dixon 1999
- ^ Da Silva Coelho, Flavio Augusto; Gill, Stephanie; Tomlin, Crystal M.; Heaton, Timothy H.; Lindqvist, Charlotte (2021). "An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 288 (1945). doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.3103. PMC 7934960. PMID 33622130. S2CID 232020982.