Seafaring Clues to First Americans

People in North America were voyaging by sea some 8,000 years ago, boosting a theory that some of the continent's first settlers arrived there by boat. That is the claim of archaeologists who have found evidence of ancient seafaring along the Californian coast. The traditional view holds that the first Americans were trekkers from Siberia who crossed a land bridge into Alaska during the last Ice Age. The report in American Antiquity makes arrival by boat seem more plausible. Researchers conducted an archaeological analysis of 9,000-8,000-year-old tools unearthed at Eel Point on San Clemente, one of the eight Channel Islands that lie off the Californian coast. They propose that some tools used by the prehistoric people of Eel Point may have had the same functions as implements employed for boat-building by Chumash Indians in the early 20th Century.

For example, a triangular "reamer" tool from Eel Point closely resembles a Chumash "canoe drill" used to expand an existing hole in a wood plank. On this basis, archaeologists Mark Raab, Jim Cassidy and Nina Kononenko argue that the inhabitants of Eel Point were accomplished seafarers.

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i always thought the vikings were the first one to arrive in America by boat?

Keep in mind that we were 1st taught that it was Columbus,that was the 1st to make it to the Americas by boat. Then it was discovered that the Vikings came 1st. I believe that people came here by long before the Vikings. If I rember correctly there were Clovis spear tips found in the southwest that pre date the same or similar tips found in the Northwest. Which would lead to the speculation that humans came up from South America and not the Bering Strait.

i always thought the vikings were the first one to arrive in America by boat?

There is evidence that people from china and the celts also visited America

[Edited on 27-2-2004 by Amuk]

Interesting article, and nice photo of the stone tools! The travel map they show on that page (of the way the tribes moved from the north along the seacoast) roughly follows some of the travels described in the Hopi and Navajo legends.