Clovis hunters cut off the escape of a wooly mammoth near the end of the last ice age. For decades, archaeologists thought that Asian migrants first reached the Americas around 13,000 years ago, and swiftly migrated southward to what is now the United States. Their descendants, the Clovis people, were said to be the first Americans. Illustration by Field Museum Library/Getty Images

From Vilified to Vindicated: the Story of Jacques Cinq-Mars

How a toxic debate over the first Americans hobbled science for decades.

Hakai Magazine