History of the Americas

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A true-color image of the Americas. Much of the information in the image comes from a single
remote-sensing device—NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, flying
over 700 km above the Earth on board the Terra satellite in 2001.

The history of the Americas begins with people migrating to these areas from

Asia during the height of an ice age. These groups are generally believed to
have been isolated from the people of the "Old World" until the coming of
Europeans in the 10th century from Iceland led by Leif Erikson and in 1492 with
the voyages of Christopher Columbus.
The ancestors of today's American Indigenous peoples were the Paleo-Indians;
they were hunter-gatherers who migrated into North America. The most popular
theory asserts that migrants came to the Americas via Beringia, the land mass
now covered by the ocean waters of the Bering Strait. Small lithic stage peoples
followed megafauna like bison, mammoth (now extinct), and caribou, thus
gaining the modern nickname "big-game hunters." Groups of people may also
have traveled into North America on shelf or sheet ice along the northern Pacific
coast.
Sedentary societies developed primarily in two regions: Mesoamerica and
the Andean civilizations. Mesoamerican cultures
include Zapotec, Toltec, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Mixtec, Totonac, Teotihuacan, Hu
astec people, Purépecha, Izapa and Mazatec.[citation needed] Andean cultures
include Inca, Caral-Supe, Wari, Tiwanaku, Chimor, Moche, Muisca, Chavin, Par
acas and Nazca.
After the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spanish and
later Portuguese, English, French and Dutch colonial expeditions arrived in the
New World, conquering and settling the discovered lands, which led to a
transformation of the cultural and physical landscape in the Americas. Spain
colonized most of the Americas from present-day Southwestern United
States, Florida and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America.
Portugal settled in what is mostly present-day Brazil while England established
colonies on the Eastern coast of the United States, as well as the North Pacific
coast and in most of Canada. France settled in Quebec and other parts of
Eastern Canada and claimed an area in what is today the central United States.
The Netherlands settled New Netherland (administrative centre New
Amsterdam – now New York), some Caribbean islands and parts of Northern
South America.
European colonization of the Americas led to the rise of new cultures,
civilizations and eventually states, which resulted from the fusion of Native
American, European, and African traditions, peoples and institutions. The
transformation of American cultures through colonization is evident in
architecture, religion, gastronomy, the arts and particularly languages, the most
widespread being Spanish (376 million speakers), English (348 million)
and Portuguese (201 million). The colonial period lasted approximately three
centuries, from the early 16th to the early 19th centuries, when Brazil and the
larger Hispanic American nations declared independence. The United
States obtained independence from Great Britain much earlier, in 1776, while
Canada formed a federal dominion in 1867 and received legal independence in
1931. Others remained attached to their European parent state until the end of
the 19th century, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico which were linked to Spain
until 1898. Smaller territories such as Guyana obtained independence in the
mid-20th century, while certain Caribbean islands and French Guiana remain
part of a European power to this day.

Pre-colonization[edit]
Main article: Pre-Columbian era
Further information: History of Canada, History of the United States, History of
Mexico, History of Central America, and History of South America
Migration into the continents[edit]
Further information: Settlement of the Americas
Further information on Native American genetic heritage: Genetic history of
indigenous peoples of the Americas

Map of early human migrations

The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas,

including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research
and discussion.[1] The traditional theory has been that these early migrants
moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day
Alaska around 40,000 – 17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly
lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation.[1][2] These people are believed to have
followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free
corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.
[3]
 Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they
migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America.[4] Evidence of the
latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of a hundred meters
following the last ice age.[5]
Archaeologists contend that the Paleo-Indian migration out of Beringia (eastern
Alaska), ranges from 40,000 to around 16,500 years ago. [6][7][8] This time range is
a hot source of debate. The few agreements achieved to date are the origin
from Central Asia, with widespread habitation of the Americas during the end of
the last glacial period, or more specifically what is known as the late glacial
maximum, around 16,000 – 13,000 years before present. [8][9]
The American Journal of Human Genetics released an article in 2007 stating
"Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all
Indigenous American haplogroups, including Haplogroup X (mtDNA), were part
of a single founding population."[10] Amerindian groups in the Bering Strait region
exhibit perhaps the strongest DNA or mitochondrial DNA relations to Siberian
peoples. The genetic diversity of Amerindian indigenous groups increase with
distance from the assumed entry point into the Americas. [11][12] Certain genetic
diversity patterns from West to East suggest, particularly in South America, that
migration proceeded first down the west coast, and then proceeded eastward.
[13]
 Geneticists have variously estimated that peoples of Asia and the Americas
were part of the same population from 42,000 to 21,000 years ago. [14]
New studies shed light on the founding population of indigenous Americans,
suggesting that their ancestry traced to both east Asian and western Eurasians
who migrated to North America directly from Siberia. A 2013 study in the
journal Nature reported that DNA found in the 24,000-year-old remains of a
young boy in Mal’ta Siberia suggest that up to one-third of the indigenous
Americans may have ancestry that can be traced back to western Eurasians,
who may have "had a more north-easterly distribution 24,000 years ago than
commonly thought"[15] Professor Kelly Graf said that "Our findings are significant
at two levels. First, it shows that Upper Paleolithic Siberians came from a
cosmopolitan population of early modern humans that spread out of Africa to
Europe and Central and South Asia. Second, Paleoindian skeletons with
phenotypic traits atypical of modern-day Native Americans can be explained as
having a direct historical connection to Upper Paleolithic Siberia." A route
through Beringia is seen as more likely than the Solutrean hypothesis.[16]
On October 3, 2014, the Oregon cave where the oldest DNA evidence
of human habitation in North America was found was added to the National
Register of Historic Places. The DNA, radiocarbon dated to 14,300 years ago,
was found in fossilized human coprolites uncovered in the Paisley Five Mile
Point Caves in south central Oregon.[17]
Lithic stage (before 8000 BCE)[edit]

Obsidian projectile point from Puerta Parada, Guatemala

See also: Paleo-Indians, Aboriginal peoples in Canada § Paleo-Indians period,

and Archaeology of the Americas
The Lithic stage or Paleo-Indian period, is the earliest classification term
referring to the first stage of human habitation in the Americas, covering
the Late Pleistocene epoch. The time period derives its name from the
appearance of "Lithic flaked" stone tools. Stone tools, particularly projectile
points and scrapers, are the primary evidence of the earliest well known human
activity in the Americas. Lithic reduction stone tools are used
by archaeologists and anthropologists to classify cultural periods.
Archaic stage (8000–1000 BCE)[edit]
See also: Pre-Columbian era and History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian)
Several thousand years after the first migrations, the first complex civilizations
arose as hunter-gatherers settled into semi-agricultural communities.
Identifiable sedentary settlements began to emerge in the so-called
Middle Archaic period around 6000 BCE. Particular archaeological cultures can
be identified and easily classified throughout the Archaic period.