New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23360555

New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.

  • LvxferreEnglish
    1·
    21 hours ago

    So, ~30kya? It makes sense actually, given the diversity of the languages in the Americas.

    The main current hypothesis (10k~15kya) feels fishy. Around those times, around the globe, Proto-Afro-Asiatic was being spoken; and you still do see a few family features in its descendants, like the feminine suffix (typically -t), that “consonant roots, vowel infixes” world building template, or even the “emphatic” series. You don’t see anything remotely similar in the languages of the Americas, even if you give the founder effect some leeway and say that the Americas were initially settled by speakers of, say, five or six unrelated languages.