A 2022 artifact discovery has turned the “Coastal Migration” theory on its head. For decades, scientists believed the first Americans traveled down the Pacific coast by boat.
In 2019, a survey crew mapping a dried lake bed in New Mexico noticed faint depressions in the cracked mud that resembled human footprints. The team initially assumed the prints were recent, left by hikers days earlier. Radiocarbon and pollen dating later placed them at roughly 23,000 years old, thousands of years before humans were believed to have been present in that region.The site is White Sa…