A Brief Summary Of Settling The Continent

Throughout human civilization, each unique civilization has its unique origins and the Native Americans are no exception. While the origins and history of many Asian and European countries are well known, the origins of Native Americans are not. Many theories exist about how the Native Americans’ ancestors arrived in North America but the widely accepted theory is the one I will discuss.

According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge during the period of the last ice age, from there they spread across the Americas through an ice free-corridor. However, recent finding have suggested that the first people did not walk to America but came by boat. This paper will examine evidence found in Haida Gwaii and other sites along North and South America that supports a different view of human migration to the Americas, the coastal migration theory.

During the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the Europeans decided to embark on many journeys that would change their way of life forever. These journeys and the exchange of people, ideas, animals, food, and diseases between the two groups shaped history for the next five hundred years. When the Europeans arrived at this new-found land, they discovered what they considered to be an entirely new species of humans, the Native Americans. These two newly encountered groups of people had a few of the same characteristics and way of living, but overall the differences between them were extremely immense.

During the sixteenth century European pilgrims migrated across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in North America. North America had just been introduced to the Western Civilization. The America’s were home to the indigenous people, that were made up of several tribes that were called Indians by the early settlers. Together the Indians and settlers began to thrive. Growth and development in the new world was made possible by the abundant amount of natural resources.

2. Four massive ranges—the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges, arose in western North America approximately 135 million to 25 million years ago. According the theory of “Land Bridge,” a “Land Bridge” linked up Asia and North America across the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.

These immigrants spilt into many tribes and developed many diverse religions, cultures, and ways of life.

When Christopher Columbus first encountered in the Caribbean, he mistook it to be India, which is why he started referring to the people as Native American as “Indians”. He was very intrigued by the way the Native Americans looked, dressed, and lived, so he went back to Europe and told everyone about the Americas which was referred to as “The New World”.

First, sediment samples and animal remains from the Bering Sea prove that the Beringia was habitable at the height of the ice age or 21,000 years ago. According to Elias: “humans did not survive the last ice age’s peak in northeastern Siberia, and yet there is no evidence they had reached Alaska or the rest of the New World either” (Elias). At this point, Elias’s theorizes that people lived on the Beringia, a 600 mile wide area between Siberia, Russia, and Alaska. Furthermore, “sediment cores” (Elias), from the Bering sea indicate that the

Indians arrived in America some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Archeological findings and Radiocarbon testing suggested that the prehistoric people who populated the Americas were hunters following the herds of wooly mammoths. They walked from Siberia across a land bridge into Alaska. They headed south toward warmer climates, slaughtering the mammoths as they went. As the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and covered this land bridge, creating the present-day Bering Strait and separating Alaska from Russia. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived, they were millions of what might be called First Americans or Amerindians occupying the two continents of Americas. The first noted documentation of the Beringia theory of the peopling of North America was by Jose de

Indigenous people in the Americas or “Indians” as Christopher Columbus first named them on an exploration voyage in 1492, had their lives completely change almost immediately upon the arrival of European settlers. Settlement in the “New World” as

As we all know, the founder of the North America and South America is a voyager whose name is Christopher Columbus. After having read the story of the famous merchant-Marco Polo, he became to looking forward to the land of wealthy and mystery-China. He believed that the earth is round so he decided to sailed west from Europe, then he would reach the Asia. But he didn’t land on the land of the China, he found the new land instead. After he found the America, there are lots of common on his discovery. Then they divided to the different opinion, the positive and the negative.

Ice Ages have extremely cold temperatures they make massive ice sheets or glaciers over the planet and for that extremely cold temperature the sea levels were much lower. Since, the sea levels were so low there was massive areas of land. That land is called Beringia. It's a land bridge that is connecting Siberia which is in Asia to Alaska that is in North America. Not long ago when the Europeans arrived in America they had found that Native Americans were living there. The Europeans had thought that the Native Americans had came from a mythical island called Atlantis. To illustrate Nomads gathered wild grains and mostly relied on hunting for animals. When the Nomads were in search of food they had crossed the Beringia. The recent Ice Age was 100,000 years ago and had ended 12,000 years ago. When the Ice Age ended the Ice sheets had melted so the sea level had leveled out and Beringia had disappeared. Now the Beringia lies under the Bering Strait.

There has recently been some discussion about how the Americas were original populated. In the 1930s, it was declared that the first migration was about 15,000 years ago where they crossed a land mass called the “Bering Strait.” What is the Bering Strait and where is it today? The Bering Strait is an "ice free corridor" that lead to nowadays Canada but it was only passable between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. Now it is apart of the interior of Canada between two masses of glacial land ice. There are technically three migrations, one being the people from “Northeast Asia began to enter the North American continent, following woolly mammoth and mastodon.” The second one being around 10,500 years ago, from Asia when the “Na-Dene peoples settling the central portion of the North American continent.

Before encountering with the Europeans in about 1000 c.e., roughly fifty-four million Native Americans took over the two American continents. This all happened following the Ice Age; making sea level drop exposing the bridge connecting Eurasia with North America. Asian hunters, also known as “ immigrant” ancestors of Native American decided to explore crossing the bridge. Over the centuries the people decided to split into innumerable amount of tribes. Listing the commonly known and or familiar tribes, The Incas in Peru, Mayans in Central America, and Aztec in Mexico. All producing different languages and developing different senses of religion, cultures and ways of life.

While I believe that Beringia was a means for the Amerindians to migrate to the Americas from Asia; I also believe that they voyaged here by other means (81). The Lapita may have been one of the many viable options of initial migrations with the use of their double-hulled canoes (89). According to many scholars, the route that the Amerindians migrated from was between two huge ice fields that did not thaw enough for humans to travel through until about 13,000 years ago, where there is archeological evidence that humans had settled at least a thousand years before this time (ABC News). I tend to view the migration very similarly to that of Charlotte Beck, whom in a (National Geographic) interview stated that “there were numerous