We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions Sue Monk Kidd (Author)
Description Combining personal experience and classic Christian teachings, this inspirational autobiographical account of a woman's personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace received "Virtue" magazine's "Book of the Year" award.
Publisher - HarperOne Publish Date - October 11, 2016 Pages - 240
About the Author Sue Monk Kidd is the author of the bestselling novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair, as well as the award-winning The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and God's Joyful Surprise.
Reviews
As I read her book, Kidd became a companion. I love having her walk with me on my journey.--Eugene Peterson, author of The Message
"A joy to read....Honest and healing."--Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Soul Making
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Teihard de Chardin is NOT a process theologian but one which uses a small bit of process theology's relational process philosophy and theology tucked into the mythic realm of de Cardin's own Westernized (non-processual) system.
And though de Chardin describes this relational approach as a myth... a true process theologian will not; more aptly, relationality is one of the concise descriptors to how the God of all, and the creational products of the God of all, work and react to one another.
Thankfully, Ilia Delio, the author of the title below, IS a process theologian to which I am in hopes she makes this distinction as her publisher, Orbis, has not in it's published blurb below. - re slater
We are a species between axial periods. Thus, our religious myths are struggling to find new connections in a global, ecological order. Delio proposes the new myth of [Jung's] relational holism; that is, the search for a new connection to divinity in an age of quantum physics, evolution, and pluralism. The idea of relational holism is one that is rooted in the God-world relationship, beginning with the Book of Genesis, but finds its real meaning in quantum physics and the renewed relationship between mind and matter.
Our story, therefore, will traverse across the fields of science, scripture, theology, history, culture and psychology. Our guides for a new myth of relational holism are the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and the Jesuit scientist-theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The complex human can no longer be simplified to one view or another: one must see the whole of our existence or one does not see at all.
Ilia Delio, OSF, a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, is Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology, Villanova University, and founder of the Center for Christogenesis. Her many books include The Hours of the Universe, Christ in Evolution, The Emergent Christ, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian, and Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion (all with Orbis).
Reviews
"Over ten years ago, Ilia Delio boldly asserted that evolution is the metanarrative for our age, changing even our understanding of God. Engaging the God question in this evolutionary context requires the myth of the relational whole, the story of a living God in relationship with a living earth. God is incomplete, not‐yet, and we are incomplete, not‐yet! With her unique creative literary flair, Ilia Delio draws on the relational holism of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung (whom she names as the saint) and the Jesuit scientist‐theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (whom she describes a prophet) to create a new framework for thinking about God. The outcome is a highly original synthesis--spiritually inspiring and theologically ground-breaking." --Diarmuid O'Murchu, author, Doing Theology in an Evolutionary Way
"Ilia Delio offers a brilliant and breathtaking look at the relational wholeness of God and world through the lenses of Teilhard, Jung, and contemporary science. If you're seeking faith in the future or a unitive vision that will revitalize our understanding of the participatory inter-becoming of God, humans, and world, this book is a must-read." --Sheri D. Kling, director, Process & Faith
"From the psycho-sentient depths of matter to the heights of divine becoming, Delio's cosmotheandric entanglement of Jung and Teilhard, modern science and ancient mysticism, achieve a new relational holism for a new axial age. The theology of the future will be "theohology"--experiential talk of the God-whole that is still coming into being." --Andrew M. Davis, The Center for Process Studies
"Ilia Delio is right: we need a new framework for thinking about God and salvation in an age of quantum physics and evolution that overcomes obstacles in the Church and beyond. Delio offers such an obstacle-overcoming framework: theohology. Building on insights from Jung, Teilhard, and many others, she provides a vision of the God who is the Whole of the whole, the distinct source of love but inseparable from everything that exists. This is an amazing book!" --Thomas Jay Oord, author, Open and Relational Theology
"The Not-Yet God is an important work and a major contribution to the fields of theology and depth psychology. In comparing Teilhard and Jung, Delio reveals new aspects of both thinkers and allows us to appreciate them from new angles. This work demonstrates wide reading and research in these fields and is written in a clear and concise language, so that not only specialists but general readers can glean many insights from Delio's excellent scholarship." --David Tacey, emeritus professor, La Trobe University, Australia; author, The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change
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Process Pop-Up: The Not-Yet God and the Relational Whole
January 8 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm PST
We are part of a creative whole of unlimited potential whereby God, self and world are constantly drawn into new existence together
The new science, especially quantum physics, has changed our understanding of space, time and matter; hence it raises new questions on the meaning of God. Is God outside space and time? Or is God integral to the unfolding of the universe? If consciousness is fundamental to matter, is consciousness fundamental to the reality of God as well? We will discuss these questions and more as we explore the essential role of consciousness in relation to the religious experience of God.
Entanglement is the inextricable and insuperable relationality of all that is, including God. If pantheism conjures up the collapse of God into matter, then entanglement holds everything together in a relational whole. There is no transcendence without immanence and no immanence without transcendence; there is no God without matter and no matter without God. God and matter form a complementary whole.
Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.
Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, and is the author of twenty books including Care for Creation (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods) which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009, first place for social concerns and second place in spirituality. Her book The Emergent Christ won a third place Catholic Press Book Award in 2011 for the area of Science and Religion. Her recent books include The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love (Orbis, 2013), which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a third place Catholic Press Association Award for Faith and Science. Ilia holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015, and one from Sacred Heart University in 2020.
I am a Christian deeply involved in interfaith communities. I look for books that Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and others might explore together as springboards for thought and conduits for friendship. "The Not-Yet God" by Ilia Delio is such a book. I am also a member of an adult Sunday School class in a local Methodist Church. I am on the lookout for books that might be helpful for my Sunday School class. Here, too, "The Not-Yet God" is such a book.
Let me explain. On the one hand, with its emphasis on Christian theologians and teachings, "The Not-Yet God" is relevant to Christians with its novel understanding of Christ and the birth of Christ in the human heart. It offers new ways of thinking about Christ, God, Church, and Christian spirituality.
On the other hand, with its focus on a religion of tomorrow that understands God as the sacred Whole of the universe and spirituality as respect and care for the planet, "The Not-Yet God" is relevant to people of all faiths. She speaks of a church of the planet, but she could as easily have said a sangha of the planet, or an umma of the planet, or a temple of the planet. Her hope, and mine as well, is that people of many faiths, and people without any faith, might find some of the ideas she proposes important, helpful, and inspiring.
I am also a process theologian, as is she, although she is much more influential and talented than I. I am chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Process Studies, on the advisory board of Process and Faith, and active in the Cobb Institute for Process and Practice - all of which seek to introduce process ways of thinking to the general public. I am always on the lookout for books that I might share with people in study groups who want to learn about the process tradition. "The Not-Yet God" is such a book.
Delio is a unique kind of process thinker: weaving together insights from Teilhard de Chardin, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Carl Jung, David Bohm, Marshall McLuhan, Cynthia Bourgeault, and many others. The subjects she addresses, too, are unique, especially computer technology and artificial intelligence. She is one of the very few who have developed theologically sensitive and appreciative approaches to AI as a potential partner in helping bring about a better world. As part of the process family, she is among our pioneers in charting new ground - a very Whiteheadian and Teilhardian thing to do.
I believe I have finally found an Internet site as dense as mine own. Kudos! to Kelly Hart! You've done an amazing job! Thank you! - re slater
HUMANPAST.NET
HumanPast.net was designed as a large filing system for keeping track of, and analyzing, information that pertains to who we are and how we got here on Earth. Most of what fills the many pages of this website was gleaned from books, and the excerpts were taken as direct quotes without editing, or if they were edited this would be indicated with ellipses ... References to the specific sources for the information are indicated by links that appear at the end of every quote.
I have attempted to approach this project with a very open mind, selecting some material that is conventionally accepted and some material that might be considered questionable by the academic community. I feel that by placing all of this information into a readily accessible form that is organized according to time, topic and location, that it will help provide a basis for better understanding our origins and experience as a species.
The menu at the top of each page depicts 13 general categories that relate to our evolution, as well as access to source material and a page where you can search the entire site for any specific information. Drop down submenus show the range of time frames that are represented by all of the pages; this ranges from the present back to several thousands, or even millions of years. Clicking on any one of the times will take you to the page where all of the collected information on that particular topic that relates to that particular time frame can be found.
Each individual page is further organized according to location, and the links at the top of the page will jump you to the place on the page where information that pertains to that location can be found. These location tags are generally arranged according to continents or regions that have been a focus for anthropological or archaeological research. Usually the page starts with globally pertinent information that is not confined to a specific region. The "Other" category includes all island or other locations that are not represented by the major locations.
To further elucidate or illustrate the text I have often included either scans of images found as part of the source material, or taken directly from open source image libraries found online.
You will notice that not all locations, or even all of the category/time pages have text inserted. This is a work in progress, and I continue to place pertinent material as I read about this fascinating area of study, and as time allows.
I am making all of this available for study because I feel that only by understanding the broad range of information available can we all make reasonable judgements about who we are and where we came from. Enjoy the process of coming to your own conclusions!
The earliest known dog in the archaeological record dates back 14,000 years. But the remains that date to that point in time are few and far between. More dogs have been found buried with humans who died about 12,000 years ago, which indicates that by the end the Ice Age the human-dog relationship was beginning to be established. It was not until 7000 BC to 6000 BC, however, that this relationship was clearly established in the archaeological record. The bones of dogs become common in campsites of the late Neolithic period. (The Genesis Race)
By the beginning of the Holocene the body mass of males living at higher latitudes was not significantly different from that of males living at these latitudes today. The same is also true of high-latitude females. At lower latitudes, however, males and females were still significantly larger (11-12%) than those now living at these latitudes. One other interesting feature of these changes is that at the same time there appears to have been a parallel reduction in brain size. (Climate Change in Prehistory)
…Homo floresiensis, the “Hobbit,” quite possibly a completely different human species from our own that survived for tens of thousands of years after our other evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals and the Denisovans had vanished from the earth. It’s intriguing that the date of extinction of Homo floresiensis appears to have been around 12,000 years ago—exactly in the apocalyptic Younger Dryas window. (Magicians of the Gods)
Africa
In North Africa, modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared as Iberomaurusians (an African Cro-Magnon variation) between 19,000 and 10,000 years ago. (Before the Pharaohs)
What Irish found is that Cro-Magnon types, Iberomaurusians of twelve thousand years ago, are related to North Africans who lived later in history, during Egypt's dynastic times. However, despite purported similarities in culture and robust cranial characteristics, Iberomaurusians are wholly unlike Nubians from twelve thousand years ago or more. The Iberomaurusian samples show resemblance to all later North Africans, as suggested by the features found in the North African dental trait complex. Extreme divergence between ice age Iberomaurusians and Nubians suggests they are not closely related. Nubians exhibit a mass-additive dental pattern, like that found in sub-Saharan peoples. The latter possess a suite of eleven traits that Irish calls the "sub-Saharan African dental complex." The dental evidence supports the theory that the older of the two general types of people were the North African Cro-Magnon, which existed throughout North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. However, for some unknown reason, they appear to almost vanish in North Africa, allowing Mediterranean types to become more prominent. (Before the Pharaohs)
It appears that the first incursions of nomads into the southern Sahara, which came from the south, did not take place until around 12 kya. At around the same time migrants may also have entered the northern Sahara from the Mediterranean coast. There is evidence of their presence by 11.5 kya in the Acacus Mountains of Libyan Sahara. What is even more interesting is that between 9 and 8 kya these people had developed a hunting strategy that involved the capture, penning and feeding of Barbary sheep to manage their food supplies more efficiently. (Climate Change in Prehistory)
Southwest Asia
Paleopathologists studying ancient skeletons from Greece and Turkey found a striking parallel. The average height of hunter-gatherers in that region toward the end of the Ice Age was a generous five feet ten inches for men, five feet six inches for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, reaching by 4000 BC a low value of only five feet three for men, five feet one for women. By classical times, heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the heights of their healthy hunter-gatherer ancestors. (The Third Chimpanzee)
According to one physical anthropologist, all of the burials at Ain Mallaha were of the Robust or Eurafrican type of Proto-Mediterranean; all those at Nahal Oren were Gracile Proto-Mediterranean. She believes that these two sub-races, which still dominate the Mediterranean populations of today, diverged from a common ancestor many thousands of years before meeting again in tenth millennium Palestine. (Plato Prehistorian)
Egypt
Through skeletal and dental comparisons, it is clear that the Cro-Magnon types were the dominant human group in North Africa and the Mediterranean prior to 10,000 BC. Studies from both Egypt and Malta bear this out, and attest to the probability that Mediterranean type slowly mixed with the indigenous population. The Cro-Magnon types began to diminish around 5000 BC. Eventually, the Mediterranean types became the dominant human type in the area. Since, as scholars such as Emery have noted, Cro-Magnon types were some of the earliest pharaohs, it is logical to conclude that they were members of the host culture that occupied the land in Egypt. (Before the Pharaohs)
Indus Valley
Type B [blood] is believed to have developed between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago in the Himalayan highlands (currently Pakistan and India). Its highest numbers are in India, Japan, China, and Mongolia, and in Russia up to the Ural Mountains. (Gods, Genes, and Consciousness)
China
Recently discovered human fossils from Longlin Cave and Red Deer Cave in southwest China raise an intriguing mystery. Falling into extinction as recently as 11,500 years ago—a date that coincides with the cataclysmic end of the Younger Dryas—these so-called “Red Deer People” were not anatomically modern humans. Instead the fossils exhibit a range of “primitive” features. “Their skulls are anatomically unique,” reports lead researcher Darren Curnoe, an evolutionary biologist at the University of New South Wales. “They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago.” Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London proposes a solution—namely that the Red Deer People were a separate species, the result of an episode of interbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Denisovans. Afterward, Darren Curnoe suggests, they became isolated from other human populations and “did not contribute genetically to people alive in East Asia today.” (Magicians of the Gods)
Europe
Through skeletal and dental comparisons, it is clear that the Cro-Magnon types were the dominant human group in North Africa and the Mediterranean prior to 10,000 BC. Studies from both Egypt and Malta bear this out, and attest to the probability that Mediterranean type slowly mixed with the indigenous population. The Cro-Magnon types began to diminish around 5000 BC. Eventually, the Mediterranean types became the dominant human type in the area. Since, as scholars such as Emery have noted, Cro-Magnon types were some of the earliest pharaohs, it is logical to conclude that they were members of the host culture that occupied the land in Egypt. (Before the Pharaohs)
Paleopathologists studying ancient skeletons from Greece and Turkey found a striking parallel. The average height of hunter-gatherers in that region toward the end of the Ice Age was a generous five feet ten inches for men, five feet six inches for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, reaching by 4000 BC a low value of only five feet three for men, five feet one for women. By classical times, heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the heights of their healthy hunter-gatherer ancestors. (The Third Chimpanzee)
...there is clear evidence in Thom's plan of Avebury that this neolithic monument should be considered the work of extraordinaryily sophisticated minds... "as far as brain power is concerned, my superiors." Yet they could apparently neither read nor write. Thom was a highly respected engineer, a polymath who taught both engineering and surveying and wrote numerous published papers on field-working methods. Not one to express lightly the brain power evident in the Neolithic Period, he came to this conclusion following arduous calculations based on data collected from hundreds of monuments over a period of forty years. If Thom's beliefs were correct, individual among the Neolithic people at Avebury were capable of communicating intelligent information through the structure of their monuments. With the benefit of technology that was not available to them, we can now suggest that the precise location of these monuments may help us to understand not only that they could do this, but also why they were doing it. (Sacred Geometry of the Earth)
Cro-Magnon had a very tall stature. He averaged well over six feet, and sported rather heavy cheek bones, a heavy brow and a strong jaw. The original race of cro-Magnon was extremely dolichocephalic (long-headed from front to back) and yet had a short face and large forehead. We have four Cro-Magnon invasions, on both sides of Gibraltar, occurring over a period of just under 25,000 years: the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian. The last one occurred just when Atlantis was said to have subsided, and since that magic date, there have been no more Cro-Magnon invasions. The final "invasion," the Azilian, occurred approximately 10,000 B.C., suspiciously close to the date Plato says Atlantis sank. (Species with Amnesia)
The mitochondrial DNA discoveries show that the Basque population is related to the North American Indian population. ... it seemed hat Haplogroup X entered by 28,000 B.C. and again in 10,000 B.C. These appear to be waves of immigration from the Atlantic. (Species with Amnesia)
South America
Another skeleton, of a woman being called Luzia, which was found in Brazil, has prompted speculation of another origins scenario. The skeleton, estimated to be possibly 11,500 years old and thus older than any previous human bones in the Western Hemisphere, appeared to be more Negroid in its cranial features than Mongoloid. (112)
Cro-Magnon types have also been found in certain portions of North and South America, even as far south as Tierra del Fuego where 10,000-12,000 year-old Cro-Magnon-type skeletons have been found. (Species with Amnesia)
Mesoamerica
North America
C. Turner looked at many different features of teeth, including shoveling, and variations in the number of roots of premolars and molars. By comparing large samples of teeth on many different measurements, Turner concluded that: (1) New World groups are more like Asians than like Europeans; (2) all New World groups resemble each other more than they do most Old World populations; (3) dental variation is greater in North America than in South America; (4) there are three "clusters" of New World peoples. It is very difficult, however, to estimate rates of change in these kinds of physical features, and thereby to estimate how long ago the migrations to the Americas began, but Turner's calculations estimate a date of about 12,000 years ago for the initial colonization of the New World, with two much later waves of colonizations.(Patterns in Prehistory)
...mtDNA profiling by Douglas Wallace's group of Native Americans living in the Great Lakes region shows the existence of a fifth genetic lineage. This form (X) only exists amongst Europeans and is not present in East Asians. The data suggest that this haplogroup arrived in the Americas either 12 to 17 kya or 23 to 36 kya. (Climate Change in Prehistory)
Many of the mastodon sites in Orange County are located very near the Dutchess Quarry Cave, an archaeological site of extreme importance and age, which holds evidence at its deepest levels of some of the earliest human occupation on the North American continent, dating to 10,000 BCE or earlier, according to Gramly and others. (Spirits in Stone)
Cro-Magnon types have also been found in certain portions of North and South America, even as far south as Tierra del Fuego where 10,000-12,000 year-old Cro-Magnon-type skeletons have been found. (Species with Amnesia)
The mitochondrial DNA discoveries show that the Basque population is related to the North American Indian population. ... it seemed hat Haplogroup X entered by 28,000 B.C. and again in 10,000 B.C. These appear to be waves of immigration from the Atlantic. (Species with Amnesia)
Other
Fossilized remains available to us so far show Homo sapiens appeared without direct antecedents much less than half a million years ago. Their fossils have been found in Australia as late as 10,000 BC. (Gods, Genes, and Consciousness)