Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier than previously thought

Re:Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier ... by shusaku on Saturday September 25, 2021 @04:19AM (#28651457)

I don’t understand how it would be possible for the Clovis culture to conquer an earlier people without leaving a genetic record. I mean we even have Neanderthal DNA in each of us. Surely they would have intermingled?

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Re:Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier ... by PaulDavisThe1st on Saturday September 25, 2021 @10:50AM (#28653615)

One answer would be that there was no conquering. That could happen via a few possibilities:

1. pre-Clovis people were so thinly spread that Clovis was able to just fill in the gaps

2. pre-Clovis people had actually essentially become extinct before Clovis arrived. It's not easy to see how that would be the case in a continent(s) of this size, but not actually implausible.

3. as a combination of the two, pre-Clovis culture was completely nomadic, and their constant migration kept them out of the way of Clovis until a point where their population was so diminished as to leave no descendants, even via inter-breeding.

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Re:Fossil footprints reveal humans in North America earlier ... by Causality1 on Saturday September 25, 2021 @10:22AM (#28653429)

To the best of my knowledge we don't have a good explanation yet. Maybe the genetic evidence is there but so scant we don't recognize it.

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