This episode of Horizon from the BBC called Stone Age Columbus explains the theory that around 15,000 years ago Europeans crossed the Atlantic to settle in the American continent.
"Who were the first people in North America? From where did they come? How did they arrive? The prehistory of the Americas has been widely studied. Over 70 years a consensus became so established that dissenters felt uneasy challenging it. Yet in 2001, genetics, anthropology and a few shards of flint combined to overturn the accepted facts and to push back one of the greatest technological changes that the Americas have ever seen by over five millennia."
The theory has been seen as controversial not least because it challenges the notion that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are descended entirely from Asian migrants. But as Dr Joallyn Archambault of the American Indian Programme of the Smithsonian Institute this theory reaffirms the courage and creativity of the Native Americans' ancestors venturing across huge bodies of water. Archambault adds that it also underlines the idea that, "we are truly all one species".
