The prehistory of the Americas (North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean) 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 peoples of the "Old World" until the coming of Europeans in the 10th century from Norway and with theVoyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
The ancestors of today's American Indigenous peoples were thePaleo-Indians; they were hunter-gatherers who migrated into North America. The most popular theory asserts that migrants came to the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge, Beringia, the land mass now covered by the cold ocean waters in 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.
Cultural traits brought by the first immigrants later evolved and spawned such cultures as Iroquois on North America and Pirahã of South America. These cultures later developed into civilizations. In many cases, these cultures expanded at a later date than their Old World counterparts. Cultures that may be considered advanced or civilized include: Norte Chico, Cahokia, Zapotec, Toltec, Olmec, Maya,Aztec, Purepecha, Chimor, Mixtec, Moche, Mississippian, Puebloan,Totonac, Teotihuacan, Huastec people, Tarascan, Izapa, Mazatec, Muiscas, and the Inca.
With the European Discovery of the American continent in 1492, Spanish, Portuguese and later English, French andDutch 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 American continent 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 in the Eastern coast of the United States, as well as the North Pacific coast and most of Canada. France setteled in Quebec and other parts of Eastern Canadaand claimed an area in what is today Central United States. The Netherlands settled 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 and European traditions, peoples and institutions. The transformation of American cultures through European domination 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, whenBrazil and the larger Hispanic American nations declared independence. The United States obtained independence from England much earlier, in 1776, while Canada formed a federal dominon in 1867. 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 remain part of a European power to this day.
Contents
[hide]- 1 Pre-colonization
- 2 European colonization
- 3 20th century
- 4 Notes on Historiography
- 5 See also
- 6 Notes
- 7 References
Pre-colonization[edit]
Further information: History of Canada, History of the United States, History of Mexico, History of Central Americaand History of South America
Migration into the continents[edit]
For more details on this topic, see Settlement of the Americas.
For more details on Native American genetic heritage, see Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas.
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 theBeringia 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 completemitochondrial 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 American 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 theSolutrean hypothesis.[16]
Lithic stage (before 8000 BCE)[edit]
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 era. 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 theAmericas. Lithic reduction stone tools are used by archaeologists and anthropologists to classify cultural periods.
Archaic stage (8000 BCE — 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.
In the late Archaic, on the north-central coastal region of Peru, a complex civilization arose which has been termed the Norte Chico civilization, also known as Caral-Supe. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization originated independently and indigenously in the ancient world, flourishing between the 30th and 18th centuries BC. It pre-dated the Mesoamerican Olmec civilization by nearly two millennia. It was contemporaneous with the Egypt following the unification of its kingdom under Menes and the emergence of the first Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Monumental architecture, including earthwork platform mounds and sunken plazas have been identified as part of the civilization. Archaeological evidence points to the use of textile technology and the worship of common god symbols. Government, possibly in the form of theocracy, is assumed to have been required to manage the region. However, numerous questions remain about its organization. In archaeological nomenclature, the culture was pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic period. It appears to have lacked ceramics and art.
Ongoing scholarly debate persists over the extent to which the flourishing of Norte Chico resulted from its abundant maritime food resources, and the relationship that these resources would suggest between coastal and inland sites.
The role of seafood in the Norte Chico diet has been a subject of scholarly debate. In 1973, examining the Aspero region of Norte Chico, Michael E. Moseley contended that a maritime subsistence (seafood) economy had been the basis of society and its early flourishing. This theory, later termed “maritime foundation of Andean Civilization” was at odds with the general scholarly consensus that civilization arose as a result of intensive grain-based agriculture, as had been the case in the emergence of civilizations in northeast Africa (Egypt) and southwest Asia (Mesopotamia).
While earlier research pointed to edible domestic plants such as squash, beans, lucuma, guava, pacay, and camote at Caral, publications by Haas and colleagues have found avocado, achira, and corn (Zea Mays) to the list of foods consumed in the region. In 2013, Haas and colleagues reported that maize was a primary component of the diet throughout the period of 3000 to 1800 BC.[17]
Cotton was another widespread crop in Norte Chico, essential to the production of fishing nets and textiles. Jonathan Haas noted a mutual dependency, whereby "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their protein and the fishermen needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish."
In the 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, journalist Jonathan Mann surveyed the literature at the time, reporting a date “sometime before 3200 BC, and possibly before 3500 BC” as the begging date for the formation of Norte Chico. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BC, at Huaricanga in the (inland) Fortaleza area.
The Norte Chico civilization began to decline around 1800 BC as more powerful centers appeared to the south and north along its coast, and to the east within the Andes Mountains.
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