DID some of the first American settlers come from Europe rather than across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska, as most people believe?
The controversial theory is advanced in , a book launched last week in the US. Co-authors of the University of Exeter, UK, and of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC claim that much of the north Atlantic Ocean was spanned by glaciers and ice floes during the last ice age. This bridge allowed early Europeans called the Solutreans to cross.
“We’re using an analogy with Inuit, who expanded all across the Arctic with technologies no more sophisticated than those we know the Solutreans had,” says Bradley.
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Their key evidence is the discovery in the eastern US of 18,000 to 26,000-year-old tools with a Solutrean appearance.
Other archaeologists are deeply sceptical of the theory, which has been circulating for a decade. of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque argues that the first Americans come from Siberia and developed “Solutrean” tools independently.