Earliest Americans?

Question

who were the earliest americans ?where did they come from?when did they arrive ?how did they travel here?why did they come?

Answer 1

I suspect that the earliest Americans were Africans who inhabited the land before it broke away from the African continent.




g-day!

Answer 2

Well, the Native Americans, the folks referred to as "Indians", came onto the North and South American continents over the former land bridge across what is now the Bering Straits, and spread down across these continents, long enough ago that they separated quite extensively from each other. Why they came probably relates to the usual reasons anybody moves: Food sources, population pressure, someone seeing an opportunity, some shamans' nightmare, and so on.

Answer 3

I believe they island hopped their way from many different places. Japan, Asia, Africa and Europe. Just because ppl didn't have computers back then doesn't mean they were stupid. The studies are finding more and more evidence (now that Clovis First is becoming a thing of the past, about time!) that ppl were here probably as early as 25,000 yrs ago.I do believe most ppl came on boats though. Walking through the Straight with babies, old ppl and everything you own on your back would be pretty hard. Don't get me wrong it could be done, but I think boats would be easier and the ppl would realize this.

Answer 4

This is where culture plays a big part. Those who are "white" tell you that the first Americans crossed the Bering Strait on foot, crossed mountains 2 miles high in Alaska, Western Canada, Washington, Oregon and Montana into the lower, warmer states.
The "red" man (See the book, "Red Earth, White Lies") said that they came by boat, as who could possibly carry all their tools, weapons, food, supplies across that rugged terrain?
Also, when Europeans began to settle this country back in the 1500's and 1600's, Indians skin colors ranged from white, yellow, red and black, indicating, as they claimed, that more than one "race" settled here and mingled with the natives.
Just pick a good history book and take your choice!

Answer 5

The Paleoindians.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) of the Wurm/Wisconsin glacial period occurred approximately 20,000-18,000 years ago. Extremely cold weather resulted in the formation of vast ice sheets across the northernmost areas of both continents. Glaciers also formed south of the 30th parallel in the Andean Mountains along the western coast of South America. As the ice sheets formed, sea levels dropped worldwide. When the Bering and Chukchi seas had dropped some 400 feet lower than their present level, land beneath the Bering Strait was exposed. This was the land bridge Beringia, an ancient Ice Age subcontinent that united the eastern and western hemispheres [1 140; 2 60].

The Bering land bridge was a treeless, grassy tundra over 1000 miles wide. Broad temperature fluctuations produced below-freezing nighttime conditions. Permafrost kept the soil frozen year round except in the summer when the first few inches of topsoil became waterlogged and spongy.

Several groups from Asia migrated across Beringia and were ultimately responsible for populating North America. One group of European big-game hunters travelled across Siberia to Beringia. Another group of Southeast Asians built and used boats to skip along the coastline of the Pacific Rim.

After 18,000, the world began to warm up and the ice sheets began to melt which caused the seas to rise. Massive flooding occurred from 15,000 to 13,000 when "ice dams" high in the mountains were breached. By 14,000 the land bridge lay submerged beneath the Bering Strait [3 199, 206; 4 1; 5].

You can read more about them in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Paleoindians

and here:
http://www.nps.gov/history/seac/outline/02-paleoindian/se_paleo/01-intro.htm

Answer 6

"The "first Americans" have long been seen as intrepid ice-age hunters whose appetite for mammoths and other big game led them across the frigid wilds of Siberia and over the Bering land bridge some 13,500 years ago. There, in the New World, bands of early humans trekked down a narrow, ice-free corridor, fanning out south of the ice sheets, crossing raging rivers and steep mountain passes, and adapting to a succession of alien ecosystems - including desert, chaparral, cloud forest, rainforest and pampas - until finally running out of land in Tierra del Fuego. It was a journey of epic proportions. So much so that the famous French archaeologist François Bordes once described it as a feat that would go unrivalled "until man lands on a planet belonging to another star"."

"So solid seemed the evidence for this long march that most archaeologists simply refused to entertain any other possibilities. Then, in the 1990s, several discoveries shot large holes through the theory. Today a growing number of experts favour a very different scenario. Rather than trekking on foot to the New World, ice-age Asians may have paddled there in small boats, following a nearly continuous belt of kelp forests in the coastal waters of the Pacific Rim, from Japan to Alaska and southern California. Far from taking an epic leap into the unknown, these pioneers would have had no need to adjust to strange ecosystems or devise brand-new hunting technologies. "I think they were just moving along the coast and exploring," says archaeologist Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon. "It was like a kelp highway." "

"This new theory, which Erlandson and his colleagues will publish in a paper in the next issue of the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, is supported by a wide range of findings, from discoveries of ice-age sea voyages in Japan to studies of ancient human DNA and investigations of prehistoric marine ecosystems."

"Follow that Kelp : America's most ancient mariners", Heather Pringle, New Scientist, issue 2616, 13 August 2007, p. 40.

Answer 7

technically the earliest americans were the native americans already living here.

Answer 8

first americans crossed over the Bering Strait about 25,000 years ago. see below link..

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CULAMRCA/BEGIN.HTM

Answer 9

dying at start(the two mom and infant). dying by ability of an infection. dying by ability of rogue indians. dying by ability of starvation. dying from minor injury. dying from tuberculosis. in basic terms a gaggle of dying.