jueves, 28 de agosto de 2014

Study provides new look at ancient coastline, pathway for early Americans

The first humans who ventured into North America crossed a land bridge from Asia that is now submerged beneath the Bering Sea, and then may have traveled down the West Coast to occupy sites in Oregon and elsewhere as long as 14,000 to 15,000 years ago.

Now a new study has found that the West Coast of North America may have looked vastly different than scientists previously thought, which has implications for understanding how these early Americans made this trek.

The key to this new look at the West Coast landscape is a fresh approach to the region’s sea level history over the last several thousand years. Following the peak of the last ice age about 21,000 years ago, the large continental ice sheets began to retreat, causing sea levels to rise by an average of about 430 feet. When the ice was prominent and sea levels were lower, large expanses of the continental shelf that today are submerged were then exposed.

As the melting progressed and sea levels rose, likely archaeological sites along the coast were submerged.
Most past models have assumed that as the massive North American ice sheets melted, global sea levels rose in concert – a phenomenon known as “the bathtub model.” But the authors of this new study, which was just published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, say sea level rise does not happen uniformly. [...] oregonstate.edu via phys.org

Related: Coastal paleogeography of the California-Oregon-Washington and Bering Sea continental shelves during the Latest Pleistocene and Holocene: Implications for the archaeological record.

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