Editing History of South America (section)

=== Earliest inhabitants ===
The Americas are thought to have been first inhabited by people from eastern Asia who crossed the [[Bering Land Bridge]] to present-day Alaska; the land separated and the continents are divided by the [[Bering Strait]]. Over the course of millennia, three waves of migrants spread to all parts of the Americas.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Native Americans migrated to the New World in three waves, Harvard-led DNA analysis shows &#124; Boston.com |url=https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/07/11/native-americans-migrated-to-the-new-world-in-three-waves-harvard-led-dna-analysis-shows |website=www.boston.com}}</ref> Genetic and linguistic evidence has shown that the last wave of migrant peoples settled across the northern tier, and did not reach South America.

Amongst the oldest evidence for human presence in South America is the [[Monte Verde|Monte Verde II]] site in Chile, suggested to date to around 14,500 years ago.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pino |first1=Mario |last2=Dillehay |first2=Tom D. |date=June 2023 |title=Monte Verde II: an assessment of new radiocarbon dates and their sedimentological context |journal=Antiquity |language=en |volume=97 |issue=393 |pages=524–540 |doi=10.15184/aqy.2023.32 |issn=0003-598X|doi-access=free }}</ref> From around 13,000 years ago, the [[Fishtail projectile point]] style became widespread across South America, with its disppearance around 11,000 years ago coincident with the disappearance of South America's [[megafauna]] as part of the [[Quaternary extinction event]].<ref name=":12">{{Cite journal |last1=Prates |first1=Luciano |last2=Perez |first2=S. Ivan |date=2021-04-12 |title=Late Pleistocene South American megafaunal extinctions associated with rise of Fishtail points and human population |journal=Nature Communications |language=en |volume=12 |issue=1 |page=2175 |doi=10.1038/s41467-021-22506-4 |issn=2041-1723 |pmc=8041891 |pmid=33846353|bibcode=2021NatCo..12.2175P }}</ref>