Chronicle (1966)

The First Americans (1979x9)

: 11, 1979

Where did the first Americans, the ancestors of today's Indians, come from? From Asia - according to most archaeologists today - across the landbridge of ice that then linked Siberia to Alaska. But when? And how long did it take these people, hunting on foot with Stone Age weapons, to people the new continent? Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian institution, and Vance Haynes, of the University of Arizona, have been in the forefront of the debate on these questions which have been rumbling on in American archaeology. Though great personal friends, they disagree violently in their interpretation of the evidence of early man's presence in America. In the 1979 season they hoped to bring together clues from sites all over America and finally settle the debate.