Prepared from material supplied by:

Dr Edmund Roach, Watertown, N.Y., U.S.A.

   Clovis, New Mexico is the home of the archeological site, discovered in the 1930's, that has given its name to the people thought to have first set foot in America. Buttressed by radiocarbon dating, this event was supposed to have been 11,200 years ago. The migration of the first Americans was thought to have been timed to the rhythm of glaciers. Twenty thousand years ago, glaciers are thought to have completely blocked routes south from Alaska. Only around 11,200 years ago when the glaciers had retreated sufficiently did a passable route reopen more or less along the present borders of Alberta and British Columbia.

    That is the standard model - but it has problems. It appears that these people had reached the southernmost tip of South America 10,000 miles away within 300 years! Apparently that is four times faster than the current world record for pre-historic hunter gatherers. It has other problems. In 1978, researchers in southern Chile started to excavate a site at Monte Verde that they claim was occupied 2000 years earlier than the Clovis site. This site has now been well documented but it appears that the supporters of the standard model do not want to know about it. 

   Further trouble for the standard model has now arisen due to investigations using the mutation rate for mitochondrial DNA as a time clock. Investigations at Emory University on North American Indians indicate that these people belong to four distinct groups that diverged from a common maternal ancestor who presumably walked across the land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska. The genetic clock places this event at upwards of 21 to 41 thousand years ago. But that is not the worst blow for the standard model. Another project using mitochondrial DNA has been carried out on the Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribe of  Vancouver Island by workers from the Universities of Utah and Munich. This revealed an astonishing degree of diversity - 28 separate molecular variants in just 63 individuals. Measured by the mitochondrial DNA clock it seems that the ancestors for these people must have left Siberia up to 78,000 years ago. The Urantia Book tells us that the actual time was 85,000 years ago. Only time will tell.