I have no training in archaeology. I didn’t even take a single course in the field when I was a college student. However, I spent my career in a field heavily influenced by archaeologists' discoveries. Students of the bible learn about the language, culture, and context of our sacred stories from the discoveries of archaeologists and historians. Across the Middle East, archaeological excavations have revealed the precise locations of biblical sites and deepened our understanding of the words that have been so carefully preserved over the millennia.

A recent archaeological discovery has no direct connection to biblical theology. Still, it adds a great deal of understanding about the place where we live, and by that, I mean not just the Pacific Northwest, which is our current home, but the North American continent. In the desert in New Mexico, there is an ancient lakebed where humans walked alongside giant sloths more than 20,000 years ago. Alongside larger footprints are small ones that scientists believe were made by children and teenagers, showing a community of different ages living, playing, and surviving on this continent earlier than some previous scientific theories about how humans first came to this continent.

There is general agreement among scientists that the first peoples to arrive on this continent migrated from Eurasia. The dominant theory is that during the last Glacial Maximum, when massive sheets of ice spread southward from the poles and a larger percentage of the earth’s water was in ice, sea levels were lower, and a land bridge formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska. Hunter-gatherers, sometimes referred to as Paleo-Indians, following game came to North America and eventually spread south and east to inhabit the entire continent and South America as well. It is believed that the earliest migration was down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile.

The land bridge existed for thousands of years, but during much of this time, it would have been covered in ice and snow, making migration extremely challenging. The time when humans could have migrated on foot, instead of by boat, would have been fairly narrow. Archaeologists do not have precise information about the exact timing of the migration because any evidence of such migration has been covered by the sea level rise that accompanied the end of the ice age.

Some archaeologists have based the dating of human occupation of North America on fossil records of humans that date back to around 13,000 years ago. The discoveries of those fossils and some accompanying cultural evidence led to the “Clovis first” theory, which has been common among archaeologists for much of my life. The only known formal burial site of a Clovis human was discovered in the Crazy Mountains near my hometown. The body of an infant boy is associated with over 100 stone and bone artifacts, stained with red ochre and dated between 12,990 and 12,840 years ago. Perhaps influenced by such a significant discovery in the place where I was an infant boy, I have generally based my understanding of people in that place as having stemmed from the Clovis culture. This is consistent with the teachings of the Apsáalooke (Crow) people who inhabited the region before European settlement.

However, new archaeological evidence, including footprints in the New Mexico desert, is pushing back the date of the first humans on this continent. While we may never discover enough to know for certain, evidence is mounting that humans have occupied the continent for a longer period than once believed. Many indigenous cultures teach that their people have always been in certain locations.

Where we now live, indigenous Coast Salish people trace some of their stories to the Haida people who occupied the islands off of British Columbia stretching north to southern Alaska since before the giant trees covered the area. As the ice sheet retreated, the land was tundra, without any large trees. As the climate changed, cedar, hemlock, Douglas fir, and other trees began to thrive. Haida oral histories report that there were no trees when the people first came from the ocean. They could barely survive in the harsh climate and knew only how to gather food from the sea. When cedar trees began to grow, they learned to make clothing, houses, totem poles, and canoes out of the trees. Haida people treat cedar trees with great reverence and respect. Those traditions and the culture of gathering food from the ocean are also part of the culture of other Coast Salish people. As we have begun to make friends and learn about local Lummi and Nooksack people, we have attended canoe landings and other ceremonies that celebrate the gifts of cedar trees.

Archaeological discoveries in our region regarding dating are consistent with the Clovis findings in the Crazy Mountains. People were on this continent 13,000 years ago. While that certainly pushes back the dates of the way history was taught when I was a child, as if it began with the settlement of Europeans on this continent, recent discoveries are now pushing back those dates by several thousand years.

This archaeological evidence clearly shows that humans have adapted to shifts in climate. Humans are resilient and able to adapt. The soil, climate, landscape, sea level, vegetation, and animals of this region have changed, and humans have lived through those changes, adapting to all of them. Human ancestors survived enormous environmental and climatic changes in the ancient past. They did so with far fewer tools than we have today.

Understanding that our species results from environmental change is essential as we discover and develop strategies for our present human-caused climate crisis. As was true of the ancients, contemporary humans can adapt, move, or die. As was true in the past, the future will likely involve all three results. We are already seeing migration of people away from the most drought-affected regions of the globe to places with more food resources. We have new neighbors from Texas and Arizona who say they moved in part due to the weather. We will likely see more people moving in the future. Sadly, we have also witnessed human deaths due to starvation caused in part by climate change.

The third option, adaptation, is worthy of exploration. We have already begun to use the tools at our disposal. Our home is equipped with a heat pump that not only provides heat during cold times but also cools during hot weather. Air conditioning was not required in decades past in this region, but is becoming more common. The energy to provide for our cooling comes from the solar panels on our roof, making it affordable. These are just some of the adaptations that are becoming more common.

As was true of the ancients, adapting to climate change is essential to our time as we pass on the stories of humans to future generations in this place.