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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

For a good run-down of the various folks that may (or may not) have crossed the Atlantic, see Simon Winchester's book Atlantic (ISBN13: 9780061702587):

* http://www.simonwinchester.com/atlantic

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Winchester

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For a more crackpot work, there's Boland's They all discovered America

https://archive.org/details/theyalldiscovere00bola

https://www.amazon.com/discovered-America-Charles-Michael-Bo...

What's odd about this conversation is that it's fairly undisputed that Far East Asian natives discovered America and settled it.

It was 16,000+ years ago, so calling them "Far East Asian naives" kinda undersells that the natives at the time were a completely different group than the ones we think of as current East Asian natives.

There's some evidence (linguistic and otherwise [1]) that the Ket people [2] of Siberia are a remnant of the peoples that populated the Americas.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M0QnAqQUmw 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ket_people

There is evidence for trans Beringian trade and population mixing well into the 15th century: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tiny-blue-beads-eu...

> calling them "Far East Asian naives" kinda undersells

Fine. Far Northeastern Asian Upper Paleolithic Hunter Gatherers then.

I’m still not sure why we’re talking about ancient naïveté, I figure they didn’t know a lot of things back then.

Not really a different group. DNA evidence strongly supports the tie between modern Asian people and Native Americans.

It's hard to call it "discovered" when the landbridge was still there and they were hunter-gathers (although "settled" is accurate). "Migrated to" maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia

The History Channel aired this documentary which summarizes multiple theories about the discovery of America, from either the Atlantic or Pacific. Ice age explorers, Vikings, Polynesians, etc., are all covered:

https://vimeo.com/288240659

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