Bibliogr. en fin de chapitres. Index

This special edition of Current Research in the Pleistocene argues that any model of the peopling of the New World cannot ignore the early-Paleoindian presence of humans in Central and South America. The authors, 98 scientists and scholars, most Latin Americans themselves, confidently assert that human occupation of the southern continent dates at least as early as the Clovis culture in North America. The interplay of many disciplines energizes their argument. Genetics studies, craniometrics, and physical anthropology illuminate the demographics of early Latin America. The 21st-century technology of Geographic Information Systems plots the likeliest routes traveled by colonizers. Sites visited across the width and breadth of Latin America, supported by firm radiocarbon dates, attest to the activities of human occupants, the artifacts they made, and the fauna they preyed on. Analyses of various dimensions of the ecosystem—palynology, paleontology, studies of coprolites and faunal assemblages—reconstruct the paleoenvironment that hosted the first immigrants.
(Source : éditeur)