It was a complex, multi-stage process that played out over thousands of years, in different parts of the Beringian and American landscape, involving populations of varying size and organization, with multiple possible routes and multiple possible timing scenarios.

Even the concept of “first” is more complicated than it appears.

The first person to cross from Beringia into what is now Alaska is an individual for whom no direct evidence exists and for whom direct evidence is unlikely to ever exist.

The evidence that archaeologists find — modified bones, stone tools, charcoal from fires — represents not the first person but the first accumulation of evidence that has survived, is recognizable as evidence of human presence, and has been found by researchers.

These three conditions are very different from the condition of being the first person.