+

Early People of America

+ Imagine if you will……

The time is 40,000 years ago ... the last great ice sheet still covers much of the north. You are a hunter with your family, tracking animals for food and for hides to make warm clothing. You carry a stone-tipped spear. On foot, you follow wild herds through the cold and fog. You cross a bridge of ice. On the other side, you find a new land. You do not know that it is a new land. You only know that there are no human enemies to stop you.

You keep pushing south, following the herds. You find paradise - elk, deer, bison, wild vegetables, wild fruits - and forests, with so many trees - and squirrels and rabbits. Fish leap from the streams.

As time goes by, other people find their way across the frozen land.

Many years pass. The ice begins to melts. Now there is a wide strip of water where once there was a walkway of thick ice. Still, people find their way across the Bering Strait in boats of bark and hide ...

+How and when did the first people arrive?

but we have a few good theories….. They may have come across a land bridge

during the Ice Ages During the ice ages much of the oceans froze and

this exposed land that was usually covered by water.

During the last ice age, scientists and archeologists believe that (100,000 to 12,000 years ago) there was a land bridge that ran from northeastern Asia to present day Alaska

+Land Bridge (Beringia ) Theory

+Migration Across the Bering

Strait

The migration of early peoples to the Americas did not happen all at once. It was a long, gradual process.

What do we mean by migration? Use context clues.

Migration – movement of a large number of people to a new home

Over a long period of time (thousands of years) people spread throughout North America.

+Another Theory About

Ancient Arrivals There is new evidence that people were here long

before the first people crossed the Bering Strait For Example – There is evidence found by archeologists

in Cactus Hill in Virginia that there was a settlement where artifacts have been found that are nearly 18,000 years old – this is before the ice age that would have exposed the land route.

So this begs the question –

HOW DID THEY GET HERE?

Answer - More than likely by boat Some of the artifacts at Cactus Hill look like artifacts

that were found in Spain in Portugal dated around the same time.

+ Though some early people may have

arrived by boat, the majority of Early

People -probably 99% of them-

migrated over many hundreds of years

over the Bering Strait land bridge.

+What do we know about Early

Americans?

Because there was no written history before European

arrived we do not know a lot.

What we do know we have discovered when

archeologists study artifacts that have been unearthed.

Scientists who study ancient

people

Things people left behind

+Early Native Americans (Pre-European Contact) can be divided into four

main groups according to the time period in which

they lived.

15,000 BCto10,000 BC

Paleo Culture

10,000 BCto 2,500 BC

Archaic Culture

1,000 BCto 1,000 AD

Woodland Culture

700 ADTo 1400 AD

Mississippian Culture

Four Main Pre-Contact Groups

+Paleo Culture

15,000 BC – 10,000BC

Earliest known Americans Nomadic hunters that followed herds Hunted large animals like wooly mammoths, saber-toothed

tigers, and mastodons Made weapons out of stones and began using stone spears

+Archaic Culture

10,000 BC to 2,500 BC

Larger animals like the Wooly Mammoth began to die out so people began to hunt smaller animals.

They also learned how to fish

Began cooking their food

They then began staying in one place for longer periods of time

They began making bowls, tools, pendants and pipes (artifacts that archeologists have found)

Buried their dead with care – What does this show?

+Woodland Culture1000BC to 1000AD

+Mississippian Culture700AD up to European Contact