TO THE Europeans who crossed the At-lantic Ocean in the isth and 16th centuries,America was a New World.But it had been a New World before,when the first people arrived there.The question is,when? Scientific opinion is almost unanimous that Homo sapiens originated in Africa somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago,and then spread to Asia,Australia and Europe.That peopling of the Old World was completed about 35,000 years ago.The first Americans,ancestors of today's Amerindians,were,by contrast,thought to have been Asian hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering Strait when it was dry land not more than 15,000 years ago.
展开▼
