Long Held Assumptions The colonization of the Americas is very controversial. It was long believed that the Clovis were the first people to arrive to the Americas from Northeast Asia following the large Pleistocene animals via the Bering Land Bridge by foot around 12,000 radiocarbon ya. Then the Clovis presumably spread southward through an ice-free corridor located between the Cordilleran and Laurentide continental ice sheets. There are many new ideas regarding these theories that are based on linguistic, genetic, morphological, and archaeological evidence. Stratigraphy has also been integral to the chronological dating of artifacts. These new ideas are presented in the pages that follow.