Lost World : Rewriting Prehistory---How New Science Is Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners

How and when did people first settle the New World? Part history, part extreme science, this captivating book follows the quest for the holy grail of American prehistory-and the shocking revelations it has produced.

For decades, textbooks have asserted that America''s first human inhabitants came over the Bering ''land bridge'' at the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago. So why have many scholars – archaeologists, geologists, biologists, paleontologists – discovered evidence to the contrary? Exploring some of the most exciting discoveries ever to influence our image of the deep past, Lost World is the story of how a cadre of maverick scholars spent the last decade confronting one of the most entrenched orthodoxies. Award-winning journalist Tom Koppel pieces together a compelling theory as he paints a vivid panorama of a maritime people skirting the North Pacific Rim by boat and surviving in food-rich refugees on the fringes of the retreating glaciers of the Ice Age. Koppel tells his story with verve and style, eloquently evoking the sense of wonder that accompanies each part of the puzzle. The first book to tell the whole story behind this controversial hunt for the truth, Lost World is a triumph of scientific adventure, and nonfiction writing at its best.