A great amount of archeological investigation has determined that the Native Americans came from Asia via a now-submerged land bridge to Alaska about 15,000-years-ago, as did a variety of large land animals. Maybe the migrant man was following the mammoth and food animals. You wonder why they made the perilous and cold journey, but along that “Beringia” coastline numerous artifacts and village sites have been discovered.
One of the most recent finds was described in an article, “Ancient DNA gives glimpse of ancestors of Native Americans.” An infant girl was found buried near Fairbanks, Alaska, and her remains, dated at 11,500 years ago, are the earliest known from that far north. The genetics indicated that her ancestors had split from the Asian people about 25,000 years ago, and the girl's tribe split away from this group about 20,000 years ago, and spread into the Americas. We have scanty information, and the exact details may forever remain a mystery.
We indeed see as through a glass, darkly, and can only guess at the appearance and habits and thought patterns of those mystery people. It was only a few hundred years ago that we realized various tribes were scattered all over America and even to the tip of South America. Did they all descend from those that crossed from Asia? I love a mystery that adds to the intrigue of life!
When Laurie Kavanaugh retired from the E-R newspaper, she and her husband Tom moved to Arizona to pursue the mysteries of cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and signs of prehistoric occupation. Their journeys have taken them all over Utah, New Mexico, and that middle part of America where the Ancient Ones of the desert places had lived.
Some of those stone homes were cliff-hangers, squeezed into overhang cracks along the canyon walls and mortared into place, supposedly as a defensive maneuver against tribal enemies. It was an incredible effort to get building material, food, and water up those precarious heights often reached by carved foot-holes in the sheer sandstone.
I knew of Laurie's interest in prehistory, and once guided her and Tom to a lone boulder etched with mysterious petroglyphs at the base of Table Mountain. As we crossed over a flume and up the slope, she spoke of her fear of heights, so I know it's been a challenge for her to explore those steep cliff dwellings. Still, she expresses her joy of the beautiful wild land and the wonder of finding those traces of ancient people and the mystery of their emergence into America.
Recently, she showed a picture of a precious white-and-translucent arrowhead she had found, but dutifully laid it back where she found it, in accord to the law now prevailing not to collect any artifact on public land. The next person to find it may not be so disciplined. Collectors have gathered the relics for ages, and indeed you find thousands in various collections. You need go no farther than the Pioneer Museum here in Oroville, CA to see hundreds displayed behind glass.
There's nothing quite like the feeling of discovery when you find a rock or meteorite or artifact that probably no one has ever seen before. On my wall is a spearhead I found as a boy in Missouri, and the sense of wonder about it is as keen today as the day I found it.
You can find 'arrowheads' all over the country, which indicates the various tribe's widespread presence, and each stone implement speaks of its maker and a human like us. It is thrilling to think of this connection to a resourceful person of nature existing in the wilderness of yesteryear.
We gasp in wonder at the creation of anything, especially of mankind emerging in the hostile regions of Siberia, and some of them crossing onto the American continent. The mystery of migration is right up there with the emergence of a butterfly from a chrysalis! The very fact of Earth being inhabited by so many species of life is remarkable in lieu of space investigators finding no life so far on any other planet. Life on Earth is all the more reason we Homo sapiens should respect and take good care of our inheritance.