Human Migration - before or after Pangaea?

Anyone else ever think it's weird that there were human settlements in South America and other places before we europeans ever got there? I mean if we share a common ancestor they have to have traveled there at some point. They were seperated from us long enough that they developed different traits from europeans (such as skin color and hair etc) but we are still of the same species (since we can interbreed).

So how did people get there? i'm thinking it has to be one of these 3:

1) Traveled there through the Bering Strait in Russia - this is probably the most common theory, but why would they go that far south when there is so much good land and bison in America. Something had to drive them there but what? Not to mention it's several thousand miles, how long would it take a tribe to migrate there on foot?

2) Humanity developed before Africa and South America split - interesting possibility but when exactly did the continents split? I thought it was closer to the time of the dinosaurs. Maybe humans have been around longer than previously believed?

3) Humans evolved independtly in different regions - I find this one hard to believe, that the same species can develop around the same time in isolated places. Unless there really was a "creator" who put people of different skin colors all over the world.

Maybe it's a mix of 2 and 3 and a particular ape migrated from Africa to South America before they split and independently evolved into humans. Or maybe some other possibility.

What do you think happened?

For bonus points also try to create some other way that it could have happened

 

According to some esoteric beliefs, humanity is now in it's 3rd incarnation upon the earth. This goes back several million years alone.

There is ZERO evidence of anything regarding the first 2 incarnations. Continents have been broken up since then.

We need only concern ourselves with the past 5 million years.

Humanity most likely started in Asia, not Africa. If you look at the world populations, this gives several clues. Africa might have been more populated at one time, but climate causes people to move around more than anything else.

As ice ages form, the populations move south. When it warms up, they move north again. People in the equatorial regions are in the comfort zone for the most part.

The last ice age caused a great migration from northern Europe to head south into Africa. Northern Africa was once very green and lush, but as the last ice age ended, this caused the Sahara to advance northward, building sand dunes as it went. These dunes eventually started to block the rain from coming inland and the desert has been expanding ever since. Even Israel was greener in Jesus' day than it is now.

History is pretty spotty for this subject. The best we can do is imagine ourselves in the shoes of people in that day and time. What would they do? Where would they go?

The answers are not unlike our own answers in the modern day.


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The continents split tens of millions of years ago, somewhere in the triasic I think, either way if humans were around then it means 1. we did in fact live with dinosaurs, 2. Going with the asteroid theory, we would not have survived that, in fact the asteroid impact which killed off the dinosaurs is what gave a different kind of animal the room and ability to start dominating the earth, i.e. mammals

Why is it so hard to believe people evolving, we didn't really "evolve" there are some minor differents in humans that might look like alot but genetically it's almost nothing, skin pigments, hair and such really don't take much to change. The Neanderthal is a perfect example of this, it's almost human, but it's not, and it and humans lived at the same time, not even that long ago.

Why is the Bearing land bridge so far fetched, it was there for thousands of years, and it's not like people crossed it then just kept going till land ended, human migration took thousands of years. I mean we got to the Bearing land bridge from Africa and that's farther then Alaksa to South America

 

Your items #2 and #3 are so far-fetched and so at odds with the available evidence that it's difficult to even think of a response (and that's being kind ... a professional anthropologist would simply dismiss them as crackpot ideas and move on).

Nonetheless, you've brought up the biggest anthropological mystery of the New World ... how did these people get here during times when the Bering Land Bridge was submerged, if in fact they did?

Other than having them transported by aliens, there's only one way ... by boat, either by sailing directly across the Pacific from Asia, or by hugging the coastline down from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest.

There's some evidence for the Pacific-sailing theory, although it's mostly circumstantial. Theoretically, there ought to be plenty of evidence for the coast-hugging theory, if in fact it's true, but it's either submerged or buried under the ice, so there hasn't been much work done on the idea.

The Pacific-sailing idea isn't given a lot of credence by the anthropological community, but it won't go away for the simple reason that these people obviously got here somehow, assuming the dates for their arrival are correct. We're talking up to 30,000 years ago, but that figure is still very controversial. The earliest widely-accepted arrival date is more like 11,000 years ago ... that date is accepted because there are clear human artifacts from that time and because the Land Bridge was open then. The Bridge was not open at the 30,000 year mark.

The strongest "evidence" that they sailed across the Pacific, making landfall in present-day Mexico, is the oral histories of the tribes of the American Southwest. The Hopi people, for instance, are adamant that their ancestors came from Asia in this manner. It's true that DNA and language studies of the Hopi make it clear that they are not of the Athapaskan stock that came down through the ice-free corridor in Canada, and which makes up most of the other Southwestern tribes. In fact, they seem to be more closely related to Australian Aboriginals than they are to the Siberian peoples.

To those who might consider a trans-Pacific migration beyond the capabilities of Stone Age peoples, consider Hawaii. Asians somehow managed to find and populate it. Is navigating to a tiny flyspeck in the middle of the ocean less difficult than finding Mexico?

This evidence, such as it is, is a long way from definitive, however. There are other possible explanations for the Hopi differences.

The fact is, it's still a complete mystery how the earliest humans could have gotten to the New World in the time frame we're talking about, and that's probably why most anthropologists find it so hard to believe the 30,000 year figure.