I was having a conversation today and one of the subjects was the variety in languages among American Indians. And by ‘American’ here, I mean both north and south America, not just the US.  

I would have assumed that if the Indians came over the land bridge to the new world during the previous ice age, the languages would have been related. But it seems, at least when I look at Wikipedia, the native American language groups are not related.  

It seems to me that if Polynesian explorers could launch off across the pacific and find Easter island, then most likely some made it to South America and stayed there. And if they could do it, then perhaps the Americas were populated much more by travelers from Africa or even early Europe than we give credit for. Maybe that would explain some of the variety in language groups. I suppose time and relative isolation would probably take care of the rest, but if they were literally all descended from the same initial group of travelers that crossed from Asia, then it would seem like there ought to be more relation. Maybe that’s just wrong though. It’s an interesting subject.