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The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed from a global perspective, this was the last major continental land mass to be reached by human beings. The earliest occupation of Patagonia carries obvious implications for understanding when the North and South American continents were peopled, because it gives a baseline that all calculations regarding the rate of dispersion of humans throughout both continents must take into account.
For many years the human settlement of North and South America has been conceived of as beginning in the far north and travelling progressively southwards to Patagonia. However, fundamental disagreements developed concerning the length of time involved Some scholars accepted a human presence in the Americas as early as 20,000 years ago, while others proposed that it could date no earlier than 8,000 years ago, and the debate is still with us today.
The idea of a relatively ‘late’ settlement of the Americas (around 8,000 years ago) implies that a rapid process of migration took place. Herein lies a second debate which revolves around the question of how migration is to be understood. The ‘late’ model demands a hypothetical migration conceived of as a single, continually advancing wave of settlement. This has always been difficult to take seriously and many scholars now support the idea of an ‘early’ model that sees the migration as a less ordered migration, and this is surely the most realistic scenario as migrants slowly adapted to the diverse natural habitats they would have met while travelling through the continent.
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