America

A new study of ancient DNA indicates that the ancestors of modern Native Americans first arrived in the New World not earlier than about 21,000 years ago, at the very end of the last Ice Age and the coldest period of Earth’s history. These findings have added more fuel into the long-standing debate in archaeology, and they sit in a stark contrast to the 23,000-year-old human footprints at White Sands in New Mexico, suggesting that people might have already been in America before that wave of migration. Three Timelines, One Contentious Question Since the late 1800s, researchers have argued over whether humans entered the Americas before, during or after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the frigid peak when vast ice