Settlement of Americas and Pre-Columbian Era

1397 Words6 Pages
There is a widely misunderstood conception about the history of America that it is associated with the Christopher Columbus's discovery. Yet, there were thousands of years of history prior to his finding of America. Many previous civilizations rose and fell, which were highly sophisticated in economy, agriculture, science, and social structure. This hidden past holds theories of how human beings first arrived in Americas, how they migrated, settled, evolved to create some of the most fascinating civilizations of the pre-Columbian era and history of mankind. Specifics of migration of the first people, also known as Paleo-Indians are still under discussion, and research, since the exact date and routes taken cannot be proven using concrete evidence by archeologist and historians. The prefix "paleo" is derived from Greek adjective palaios, meaning "old", and the term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the earliest period of human occupation in the Americas. The widely accepted, theory also known as the western theory, suggests that Paleo-Indians used the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000—16,500 years ago to migrate to Americas. At the time the sea levels were significantly lower due to Quaternary glaciation (Ice Age) and the migration of herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna –the set of species of large animals that lived on earth from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago– resulted in diaspora of first people from Central Asia to Americas. Paleo-Indians traveled along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, which covered a major part of North American continent, starting from northern Canada to central United states. Another theory suggests that Paleo-Indians traveled either on foot or using primitive boats such as canoe, logboat, and/or monoxylon, down the Pacific
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