1
CM-013
Last Glacial Maximum
Large ice sheets, lower global mean sea level, and transformed habitats reshaped coastlines and human opportunities, while local timing and climate varied.
Evidence first · Civilizations · Catastrophe
The first peoples of the Americas
Connect Ice Age geography, migration routes, footprints, Clovis archaeology, and Monte Verde without forcing one exclusive model.
Path progress0 of 6 stops completed
2
CM-023
Bering Land Bridge
Geology establishes repeated land exposure, paleoecology reconstructs habitable environments, and ancient DNA strongly connects the ancestry of Indigenous peoples of the Americas with populations rooted in northeast Asia and Beringia. The main uncertainties concern timing, population structure, and routes south of the continental ice sheets.
3
CM-024
Coastal Migration Theory
The model fits route-timing problems, productive Pacific ecosystems, and early western evidence, but direct late Pleistocene coastal sites remain scarce because many former shorelines are submerged or eroded.
4
CM-022
White Sands Footprints
Aquatic-seed dates prompted legitimate criticism; terrestrial pollen, optically stimulated luminescence, and an independent paleolake chronology now support the old age.
5
CM-019
Clovis Culture
Distinctive fluted points, broader toolkits, caches, dated sites, and some large-animal associations identify a short-lived but widely distributed late Ice Age complex across North America.
6
CM-021
Monte Verde
The classic Monte Verde II interpretation combines dated organic remains, wooden features, hearths, plants, stone artifacts, and other contextual evidence for a late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer occupation in southern Chile. Older activity claims are less secure, and a 2026 paper has reopened debate over the age and formation of the best-known level.