How Humans Got Out: The Routes Into the Americas

If people were in eastern Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum — as the Bluefish Caves evidence suggests — the next obvious question is how they eventually moved into the rest of North America.

The ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Last Glacial Maximum were formidable barriers, and the question of when and how routes opened through or around those barriers is central to understanding the timing and mechanism of the first human expansion into the Americas.

Two main routes have been proposed and debated for the dispersal of people from Beringia into the interior of North America.