Would you like to know what those in the know say about Native Americans? The information in the following article comes directly from well-informed experts with special knowledge about Native Americans.
THE FIRST KNOWN INHABITANTS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT
THE FIRST AMERICANS
At the height of the Ice Age, between 34,000 and 30,000 BC. C., much of the world’s water was trapped in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land bridge, known as Beringia, sprang up between Asia and North America. At its height, Beringia is thought to have been about 1,500 kilometers wide. A moist, treeless tundra, it was covered in grasses and plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for survival.
The first people to arrive in North America did so without knowing that they had crossed over to a new continent. They would have been following the hunt, as their ancestors had for thousands of years, along the Siberian coast and then across the land bridge.
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Once in Alaska, it would take thousands more years for these early North Americans to make their way through the openings of the great southern glaciers to what is now the United States. Evidence of early life continues to be found in North America. However, little of it can be reliably dated before 12,000 BC. C.; a recent discovery from a hunting lookout in northern Alaska, for example, may date to around that time. So can finely crafted spear points and items found near Clovis, New Mexico.
Similar artifacts have been found at sites throughout North and South America, indicating that life was probably already well established in much of the Western Hemisphere by some time before 10,000 BCE. C. Around the time the mammoth began to die out and the bison took its place as the primary source of food and fur for these early North Americans. Over time, as large game species disappeared, either through overhunting or natural causes, plants, berries, and seeds became an increasingly important part of the diet of early Americans. Little by little, foraging and the first attempts at primitive agriculture appeared. Native Americans in what is now central Mexico led the way, growing corn, squash, and beans, perhaps as early as 8,000 B.C. C. Slowly this knowledge spread north.
Around the year 3000 a. C., an early type of corn was grown in the river valleys of New Mexico and Arizona. Then the first signs of irrigation began to appear and, around 300 BC. C., signs of the early life of the people.
In the first centuries AD. The Hohokam lived in settlements near what is now Phoenix, Arizona, where they built ball courts and pyramid mounds reminiscent of those found in Mexico, as well as a canal and irrigation system.
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