On the Pleistocene settlement of South America

Abstract

Australia and the Americas provide the two case-studies of the late human settlement of a continent by, it seems, Homo sapiens sapiens. At one time the corollaries of first occupation of the Americas, at perhaps 12,000 b.p., were a similarly late settlement of Australia and the need for a land-bridge across the Bering Straits. But now the pattern of occupation in New Guinea and its offshore islands proves that a long sea-crossing was made there before about 40,000 b.p. Here an Australian researcher looks across the Pacific to the evidence that has been offered for a Pleistocene occupation in south America, of a date comparable with that in Sahul.