Expert: Ralph Salier - 3/27/2002

Question
Some say the 10,000 to 15,000 years ago people known as the Folsom people lived in parts of North America.  Some sources feel that they were not Native American but more like African American. I would like to know what you think.

Answer
Well there is no evidence that these peoples were African Americans.  In fact the bones we have of the few individuals that have been identified as Folsom show some of the charicteristics of Caucasians and some of Asian so a bit unusual from what I have read.  They are trying to do some DNA studies to potentially track where these peoples originated but most of the DNA from the bone has deteriorated to far to be usable.  There are some black populations outside of Africa such as those in southern India and the Aboriginals of Australia but they arrived in these areas at a very different time frame then those peoples going across the Bearing land bridge or even sailing the coast.

Given the distribution of the Folsom points in Asia I would think that these peoples origniated south and west of the Kamchatka Penisula and migrated northward following the herds into NA.  Prior to this, there is evidence from Northern China that these peoples may have come from further west but there are very few excavations of folsom materials in China.