Michael K. Faught wants to fill in the gaps in the story of the earliest Americans.

The Clovis theory of how the Americas were populated is that migrating big game hunters walked from Asia to Alaska, followed an ice-free corridor through Canada and then chased mastodons, giant sloths and other animals across the continent and into extinction. But scientists working in both Canada and Brazil have uncovered evidence that is inconsistent with the Clovis timeline. Faught agrees with others who propose that when an ice-free corridor did allow access to the interior there were people already on the landscape. Thus there may be more than one kind of Paleo-Indian and they may have come from more than one direction.

The first people to arrive in America are identified by the fluted (grooved at the base) projectile points they made and first found near Clovis, New Mexico in 1932. The Clovis hunters have long been assumed to be the ancestors of modern Native Americans and their artifacts are among the earliest evidence of humans in the New World.

But recent findings have called into question the theory that they came from the north. Alejandra Duk-Rodkin, a researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada, has studied the history of the river systems that drained the melting glaciers and concluded that the way between them was not passable until after the Clovis culture was already flourishing far to the south.

An Emory University study of DNA in North American ethnic groups found that most native North and South Americans descend from Asian roots. But some Algonquin have DNA lineage that is found only in Europe and is not due to recent mingling of people.

“That's what pushed me over the edge,” Dennis Stanford, an anthropologist with the National Museum of Natural History, told the National Review. Stanford is a strong proponent of putting Clovis origins in Europe with an ocean passage to get here.

“If (that lineage) had found its way to America through Siberia, it almost certainly would have left behind a mark somewhere in Asia; but exhaustive searching has turned up no indications of any such archaeological record.”

South American researchers also call into question the Clovis theory. Artifacts recovered near Monte Verde (in southern Chile) date back more than 15,000 calendar years. And many scientists have noted that early South American cultures are quite distinct from those in the north and the artifacts are not Clovis related.

And then there are the issues that Faught raised in his dissertation in 1996. If Clovis hunters came from Asia then why hasn't anyone reported finding fluted points in northeast Asia, and why are significantly more found east of the Mississippi than west of it? Is it possible that the first people to reach Florida did not come by land?

It will be difficult to determine that they came by boat. Early coastal sites are now deep under water and miles from shore. —J.C.