The first Californians — or some of the first Californians — were islanders.

And to be islanders, they had first been sailors.

That is what the dating test changed.

That is what the bones in the canyon wall were trying to tell us, for sixty-six years, until the science finally learned to listen.

The Broader Question Of Who Was First — And Why It Cannot Be Answered By One Site

The desire to identify a single “first American” — the individual who crossed from Asia into the Americas before any other human being — is understandable but ultimately unscientific in its specific formulation.

No bone, however ancient, can carry that designation with certainty, because the absence of an older bone from any specific location does not mean no one was there before.