Fladmark + 40: What Have We Learned about a Potential Pacific Coast Peopling of the Americas?

Abstract

Forty years ago, Knut Fladmark (1979) argued that the Pacific Coast offered a viable alternative to the ice-free corridor model for the initial peopling of the Americas—one of the first to support a “coastal migration theory” that remained marginal for decades. Today, the pre-Clovis occupation at the Monte Verde site is widely accepted, several other pre-Clovis sites are well documented, investigations of terminal Pleistocene subaerial and submerged Pacific Coast landscapes have increased, and multiple lines of evidence are helping decode the nature of early human dispersals into the Americas. Misconceptions remain, however, about the state of knowledge, productivity, and deglaciation chronology of Pleistocene coastlines and possible technological connections around the Pacific Rim. We review current evidence for several significant clusters of early Pacific Coast archaeological sites in North and South America that include sites as old or older than Clovis. We argue that stemmed points, foliate points, and crescents (lunates) found around the Pacific Rim may corroborate genomic studies that support an early Pacific Coast dispersal route into the Americas. Still, much remains to be learned about the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas, and multiple working hypotheses are warranted.