Under this model, people may have been in Beringia or even in North America for tens of thousands of years before the Last Glacial Maximum, potentially surviving in refugia during the coldest phase and expanding southward and eastward as conditions improved.

The White Sands dates are consistent with this model, though again they do not prove it.

What all of these models must now account for is the physical fact of people in New Mexico 23,000 years ago.

That fact is on the ground.

It is in the sediment.

It is visible to anyone who walks the exposed surfaces of the ancient Lake Otero lakebed under the right light conditions.