If people have been in the Americas for thousands of years, and homo-sapiens originate from Africa, how did they get there?

Question

If people have been in the Americas for thousands of years, and homo-sapiens originate from Africa, how did they get there?

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Answer 1

Roughly 14-17,000 years ago (I believe are the latest estimates), much of North America was was covered in glacial sheets, while the oceans had a much lower sea level. This revealed a large land mass that stretched from the eastern edges of Siberia to Alaska called Beringia (or the Bering Land Bridge, or Bering Straight). This land mass revealed a sort of pathway between glacial sheets directly into North America (more centrally), which humans entered into. Around the same time, other groups of humans from Siberia would follow the coast lines from Beringia down along the Western Coast, eventually reaching South America.

These migration patterns would have taken around 1,000 years until humans had reached the bottom of South America. The migrations were motivated likely by the migration patterns of animals as well as a “push” from more populated areas to less populated areas from Siberia (less competition with other humans).