[tzs]

Looking at it from the other direction, humans reached North America before the wheel, and before domestication of any animals except possibly dogs. Traveling a great distance by land would then mean either carrying your stuff or dragging it possibly on a sled maybe with dogs to help.

I'm not sure boats are old enough, but rafts definitely are. Humans also had rope well before then, and string even longer. A boat or raft train down the coast seems feasible, and would let you let you bring a lot more of your stuff.

Fishing is also old enough, which might make picking traveling by water a more attractive choice than going by land. Going to some far away unknown place by land runs the risk of having to cross mountains or deserts along the way where food may be scarce. (And that's another advantage of a water route--no mountains).

[AlotOfReading]

Much of the Alaskan and Canadian coast was glaciated during the period in question. You should trust me that doing a raft train along the live edge of sea ice is a very quick way to die.

[doodlebugging]

According to the paper sea ice was a seasonal consideration during the LGM. There was open ocean during the summers. If these people were fishermen they would have all the skills and motivation to follow the fish wherever they led. Since the circulation in the area of interest is cyclonic, or counterclockwise, a boatload of people would naturally be carried to the central Oregon coast if they launched from Beringia off present-day Kodiak Island. The whole journey, assuming as I tend to do that systems operate today in the same fashion that they operated back then, (uniformitarianism) has those people making landfall about 90-120 days later riding the ocean currents. That sounds reasonable.

The thing that I most wish would change in archaeology is the dumbing down of people who lived a long time ago. The very truth of their survival in situations where few of us modern people would thrive or survive tells modern people everything they should know about our common ancestors. They were ignorant only of the things that we all take for granted today - paved roads, wristwatches, computers, air conditioning, automobiles and engine power, etc. They were masters of their environments who learned by doing things with their hands and by listening to the oral histories of their heroes and internalizing that knowledge so that they could thrive if confronted with similar challenges in their own lives.

The fact that sections of the trails they took to get into North America have been erased since they made their epic journey is entirely due to everyday processes like erosion, inundation, etc. When we find a new site with outlier dates we should consider that we are constrained by the sparse sampling in the data driving our determinations of climate conditions during that period. We don't have high enough resolution to define seasonal variations so we can't say with confidence that it didn't happen during a summer's journey to a group of people who just followed the roving food supply wherever that led and laid in enough supplies to last them thru the winter that they knew was coming.

[doodlebugging]

I agree. They could've used inflated sealskins for pontoons for a large raft and we would not know it today unless we happened to find one stuck in an anaerobic mudflat. There is so much to learn that I think it is too early in the game to discount anything.