A new study has revealed that modern humans entered America much earlier that it was previously thought. The researchers of the latest study claim that they have got hold of the oldest human footprints in North America. The footprints were found out to be 13,000 years old. The scientists saw a total of 29 footprints on the shoreline of the Calvert Island in Canada. The island is situated to the north of Vancouver.

Further analysis revealed that the footprints were most probably made by two barefoot adults and a small child. They left the footprints in the wet clay near the edge of the water on the Calvert Island. The researchers said that the footprints were oldest ever to be found in North America. Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist, said that the age of the site is remarkable and suggests about an early entrance into the Americas. The archeologists were completely astonished to see how well-preserved the human footprints were. The scientists measured the sizes of the feet and found out that the child had a junior size 1, the adult woman foot had a size 3 and adult man had size 7.

Lead author of the study, Duncan McLaren, an anthropologist at the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria in British Columbia said that the new find provides proof that the humans were inhabiting the North American region at the end of the last ice age. “It is possible that the coast was one of the means by which people entered the Americas at the time,” said McLaren.

The footprints were discovered during an excavation work that took place from 2014 to 2016. The study of these footprints revealed that humans were present on the Pacific coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago and that the region was devoid of ice cover well before the end of the last ice age that took place about 11,700 years ago. Kevin Hatala, an assistant professor of biology at Chatham University, said, “Ultimately, the data seem to show indisputable evidence of human presence along the Pacific Coast of Canada.” He further said that the latest footprint human footprint study is important because it is very rare to find archeological sites from this time and place. Currently, the Calvert Island is completely covered with forests and can only be reached by boat.

As per Wikipedia, The continents of North and South America were settled by Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers from North Asia between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, by way of the Beringia land bridge which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum. The earliest populations in the Americas, between roughly 20,000 and 10,000 years ago are also known as Paleo-Indians.

Advances in archaeology, Pleistocene geology, physical anthropology, and DNA analysis have shed progressively more light on the subject; however, significant questions remain unresolved. While there is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration, its timing, and the place(s) of origin in Asia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. Specifically, “Clovis first” refers to the hypothesis that the Clovis culture represents the earliest human presence in the Americas, beginning about 13,000 years ago; evidence of pre-Clovis cultures has accumulated during the 2000s to 2010s, pushing back the date of the first peopling of the Americas to about 16,000 years, or possibly close to 20,000 years ago.

There is general agreement among anthropologists that the source populations for the migration into the Americas originated from an area somewhere east of the Yenisei River. The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Native American populations has long been recognized, along with the presence of Haplogroup X. As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Native American associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai-Baikal region of southern Siberia. Some subclades of C and D closer to the Native American subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations.

Here’s an excerpt on Ice Age, The last glacial period occurred from the end of the Eemian interglacial to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c. 110,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. This most recent glacial period is part of a larger pattern of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation extending from c. 2,588,000 years ago to present.

During this last glacial period there were alternating episodes of glacier advance and retreat. Within the last glacial period the Last Glacial Maximum was approximately 22,000 years ago. While the general pattern of global cooling and glacier advance was similar, local differences in the development of glacier advance and retreat make it difficult to compare the details from continent to continent (see picture of ice core data below for differences). Approximately 13,000 years ago, the Late Glacial Maximum began. The end of the Younger Dryas about 11,700 years ago marked the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch, which includes the Holocene glacial retreat.

From the point of view of human archaeology, the last glacial period falls in the Paleolithic and early Mesolithic periods. When the glaciation event started, Homo sapiens was confined to lower latitudes and used tools comparable to those used by Neanderthals in western and central Eurasia and by Homo erectus in Asia. Near the end of the event, Homo sapiens migrated into Eurasia and Australia. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived the last glacial period in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover. The retreat of the glaciers 15,000 years ago allowed groups of humans from Asia to migrate to the Americas.