On the evening of March 16, at 5pm, Dr. Todd Braje will present a program that will help explain how the first Americans settled in the “New World”.

Today, there are more questions than answers about the origins of these intrepid humans, a situation that has stimulated new ideas and reinvigorated theories once considered marginal. Answers might be found along our Pacific shorelines, where the floral & faunal giants of California such as kelp forests & sea mammals may have facilitated the peopling of the Americas. Research being conducted at the Cal Academy is working on these questions by looking under the sea in the largest scientific effort ever undertaken to identify submerged archaeological sites along California’s Pacific Coast, sites that were above sea level during the time of the Bering Land Bridge.

Dr. Todd Braje is an anthropological archaeologist, associate professor, & the Irvine Chair of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences.

(Smithsonian photograph of Canadian Inuit peoples)