Footprints In The Sand

Clovis Points Schlovis Points

For most people my age and older, the words “ice bridge” conjure up a very specific image – ancient peoples crossing a swatch of ice between what we now call Europe and North America. The discovery of a “New World.” For a long time, this ice bridge was the generally accepted theory for how people first arrived in North and South America from “The Old World.” The theory goes like this. Sometime around 13,500-12,000 BCE nomadic people living in what is now Russia followed prey, probably Mammoths or some other Megafuana, over an ice bridge into what is now Alaska. People followed them and for the next 4 to 5,000 years other nomadic followed them across. The people who crossed the ice bridge didn’t stay on the other side but began populating the rest of North and South America, traveling down the coast first, and then moving east until they hit the Atlantic Ocean. These people would build up tremendous civilizations and prosper for a long time.

So where did this ice bridge come from? The Earth was going through an ice age around 13,000-12,000 BCE meaning that ocean levels were lower and vast sheets of ice covered much of the poles. The ocean is relatively shallow around that area and that combination of low ocean levels and lower temps allowed for the continual existence of that ice bridge. According to the ice bridge theory it lasted until about 9,500-8000 BCE when the world began warming up. This increased warmth raised the ocean levels, and melted some of the ice sheets, destroying the bridge and cutting off the connection between Asia and North America. This separated the two landmasses and their various peoples except for a few minor exposures until 1492 when Europeans began their colonization project in the Americas.

For a long time this ice bridge theory was taught in schools and generally accepted by the broader scientific community. There are similarities in genetics and language between the indigenous peoples of North America and Asia and in the distribution of blood types. There is also a fossil record that shows that creatures were likely crossing a bridge as well.

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The big piece of evidence for the land bridge theory comes from discoveries made in 1925.  The Clovis points, leaf-shaped stone spearheads worked by human hands, show that humans lived in what is now New Mexico by at least 13,500 BCE. Much of the scientific community now considers the Clovis people to be the first to arrive in the Americas. There are disagreements, some people think that a group from what is now France came before the Clovis people, crossing the Atlantic on large ice packs, but generally, since the discovery of the points, the Clovis were considered to be the first people in North America.

However, a more recent discovery, first published in Nature in 2021, put a big old nail in the coffin of the ice bridge theory. Archeologists, in 2017, found human footprints in White Sands, New Mexico, and dated them as being at least 23,000 years old. This pushes the existence of humans thousands of years earlier than the broader scientific community thought. It also makes the ice bridge theory far less plausible than it used to be. It also really underscores how stupid the “Old World” “New World” divide is. It wasn’t until 12,500, long after people had settled across the Americas, that England was habitable at all. Yet, it’s the “Old World.”

This was a huge discovery, one that changes our understanding of the world on a huge level. It also raises questions about who matters in the scientific world.  

Indigenous people across the United States have long claimed that the ice bridge theory and the Clovis points were off the mark. Specifically, they argued that they didn’t prove when people first came to the Americas. Many Indigenous scientists and elders in the United States have claimed that humans lived in the Americas for far longer than the land bridge theory claimed. Cree-Métis archeologist Paulette Steeves, argues that humans have lived in North America as far back as 200,000 years ago. Steeves is not alone in these claims, as other Indigenous peoples have made similar claims. Steeves and other Native archeologists have also written against the idea that the Clovis were the first peoples in the Americas. However, they have been summarily dismissed by the mainstream scientific community and publications.

With this discovery of the footprints, people like Steeves are getting far more attention. The question is, why were Steeves and other Indigenous people ignored for this long? Colonialism, racism, and a thousand other ills all play into it in very specific ways. As writer Nick Martin pointed out, these questions of when and how humans appeared in North America are not considered “Native” questions by the largely white mainstream scientific community. As Martin showed, the words “native,” and “Indigenous” do not appear anywhere in the Nature article that announced the discovery of the footprints. Nor are any Indigenous scholars, elders, or storyholders mentioned in the piece at all. Yet this story is clearly about Indigenous people. It’d be like writing a history of Spain and not talking to any Spanish people.

Indigenous people’s knowledge and expertise are pushed aside time and again by the archeology community, despite the archeology community uncovering evidence that shows Indigenous people know what they’re talking about. The mainstream, and very white, scientific community is blinding themselves to the very truths that they are hunting after. Seems a little dumb to me.

Other people have written about the consequences of colonialism and racism in science, with much more skill than I can, so I’ll move on and look at another angle to this story. It’s also a tale of how scientific knowledge gets disseminated to the general populace.

Clovis points, despite being discovered in the 1920s, are not a general knowledge thing. They might show up in more modern school textbooks, or at a particularly nerdy bar trivia night, but most of the population hasn’t heard about them. The ice bridge is very well-known, with basically everyone who has ever gone to public school learning about it. The White Sands footprints, which completely upend our understanding of humans in North America, are not known by most people. Hell, I only heard about it because I was TA’ing for a Native American History class and the professor brought it up.  

Scientific knowledge does not spread fast, especially in the US. Schools cannot afford to buy new textbooks every year and most teachers are so overworked they do not have the time to keep up with every new scientific discovery. There’s also not much pressure to do so. Textbook companies are slow to adapt to discoveries and in many places under political pressure to not change anything or to wait it out.  

So, the point of all this I guess, is just the understanding that “science” is not the end all be all of anything. Many other ways of knowledge accumulation and gathering cannot and should not be dismissed. The scientific community is not free of racism or any of the other cruelties of modern life, just because they follow the scientific method or whatever. To end on a really positive note, even when we do discovery something amazing, no one ever hears about it.

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