The Increasingly Intricate Story of How the Americas Were Peopled

Tens of thousands of years ago, the places that have since been named Russia and Alaska were not separated by water, but connected by a continuous bridge of land. People walked across that land, heading eastward from Asia. For a time, their journey was blocked by two gigantic ice sheets that smothered most of what is now Canada. But once the ice started melting, those early pioneers—the ancestors of today’s Native Americans—spread southward.

Sometime between 14,600 and 17,500 years ago, they split into two main lineages: a northern group and a southern one. The northern group gave rise to the Algonquian-, Na-Dené-, Salishan-, and Tsimshian-speaking peoples of Canada, and to —a famous 8,500-year-old skeleton found in Kennewick, Washington. The southern group included the—a 12,600 year old infant skeleton from the widespread Clovis culture.