Wait, but you thought the earliest immigrants came over the Bering Strait land/ice bridge around 13,000 years ago. Well no, that turns out not to be right. For a while now, scientists have known the Americas were populated earlier than this, but a new study by archaeologists from the University of Venderbilt finds solid evidence of small camp sites in Chile that date back even earlier than thought – from 17,000 to 19,000 years ago.

So many questions.

The most prevalent being: How did people get there? Was it still over the Bering Strait and down through North and Central America? Or was there another route we haven’t discovered yet? Maybe boats, skipping across the Pacific one island at a time?

Another thing to wonder about: Will more evidence turn up in the future that puts humans in ‘the New World’ even earlier? Who knows, but one thing is clear. Science never ceases to surprise.

Check out full article with all the exciting details at the Vanderbilt University website.