Abstract

The early coastal entry model continues to be a viable alternative to the interior ice-free corridor route for the initial settlement of the New World. A review of early archaeological sites distributed along the west coasts of both of the Americas indicates that there were populations with a littoral adaptation well established on both continents by at least 10,500 years ago. Middle Pleistocene archaeological sites in northeast Honshu may represent an ancestral population pool for early coastal movements along the Pacific rim. Paleoenvironmental evidence for marked sea level changes on the northwest coast of North America indicates why Pleistocene coastal archaeological sites are so unlikely to be discovered. The most concrete evidence for a coastal route of initial entry remains linguistic: the comparatively high degree of language diversification on the west coast.