Origins of the Amerindians

Variations in Indian languages

Games and entertainment

Social and political organization

American Indian Culture areas

Spirituality

Conclusion

Bibliography

A. ORIGINS OF THE AMERINDIANS

When the first Europeans landed in North America, what they found was a new world. Yet it was not an empty world. Aboriginal people have actually been living on the continent for a very long time. Like the White settlers, the first Indians were immigrants. Although the date of their first arrival has not been accurately established, scholars assume that it must have occurred during the Pleistocene Epoch (1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago). It is generally thought that the first settlers entered America crossing the Bering Strait from Asia during the Ice Age. The Native Americans and the early Mongoloid people of that region shared many physical characteristics. At the time, not only did the expansion of the glacial sheets unite Asia and America, making passage easy, but it also incorporated a great amount of water into the ice, bringing large areas of the continent above the sea level. Consequently, groups of people followed the routes from Asia to America and subsequently spread over the vast area of the continent descending into climatically better regions. They may have come because they were wandering hunters, seeking new hunting grounds, like most people of that era. "These peoples would have lived in bands of about 100 persons, hunting herd animals such as reindeer and mammoths, and fishing"¹.

They would have been following game, as their ancestors had for thousands of years, along the Siberian coast and then across the land bridge. Thus, they probably were nomadic, moving camp more than one time a year to take advantage of seasonal sources of food. Some 10,000 years ago, when the melting of the glaciers separated Asia and America again, the people of the New World were left alone during millennia, developing markedly different cultures from those of the Old World. According to information based on explorers’, traders’ and missionaries’ reports, there were about 240 different tribal entities living in North America before European discovery of the continent. They did not fill this vast area though. When colonists began keeping records, however, various factors such as war, epidemics and famine had reduced the American Indian populations to a significant extent. Besides, since these peoples settled in America slowly and in small groups over several thousand years, we still lack precise immigration knowledge. Evidence of early life in North America continues to be found.

¹Encyclopaedia Encarta - Native Americans http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761570777