The Problem With “First”

The framing of the Bluefish Caves story in terms of “first Americans” is understandable — it is the framing that generates attention and creates the sense of historical significance that the evidence deserves.

But it is also, in important ways, a misleading framing that the evidence itself does not support.

The search for the “first Americans” treats the peopling of the Americas as if it were a single event — a moment when the first person crossed from Asia into North America — and as if finding the archaeological evidence of that moment were the goal of the research.

But the peopling of the Americas was not a single event.