Where did Native Americans in the USA come form?

Answer 1

From Russia's area of Siberia about 20,000 years ago by way of a "land bridge" (the water level had dropped enough to expose dry ground) across the Bering Strait. They settled first in Alaska and then moved further south as time passed.

This article, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_bridges , explains it in more detail:

The Bering land bridge, also known as Beringia, was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) north to south at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. Beringia was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light due to the southwesterly winds from the Pacific Ocean having lost their moisture over the fully glaciated Alaska Range.

The Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north and the Bering Sea to the south, are all shallow seas. During cycles of global cooling, such as the most recent ice age, enough sea water became concentrated in the ice caps of the Arctic and Antarctic that the subsequent drop in eustatic sea levels exposed shallow sea floors. Other land bridges around the world have been created and re-flooded in the same way: approximately 14,000 years ago, mainland Australia was linked both to New Guinea and to Tasmania, the British Isles were an extension of continental Europe via the English Channel, and the dry basin of the South China Sea linked Sumatra, Java and Borneo to the Asian mainland.


The Bering Land Bridge is significant for several reasons, not least because it is believed to have enabled human migration to the Americas from Asia about 25,000 years ago. Recent studies have indicated that of the people migrating across this land bridge during that time period, only 70 left their genetic print in modern descendants, a minute effective founder population— easily misread as though implying that only 70 people crossed to North America. Sea-going coastal settlers may also have crossed much earlier, but scientific opinion remains divided on this point, and the coastal sites that would offer further information now lie submerged in up to a hundred meters of water offshore. Land animals were able to migrate through Beringia as well, bringing mammals that evolved in Asia to North America, mammals such as lions and cheetahs, which evolved into now-extinct endemic North American species, and exporting camelids that evolved in North America (and later became extinct there) to Asia.

The rise and fall of global sea levels has exposed and submerged the land bridge in several periods of the Pleistocene. The bridging land mass called "Beringia" is believed to have existed both in the glaciation that occurred before 35,000 BC and during the more recent period 22,000-7,000 years ago. By c. 4000 BC the coastlines had assumed approximately their present configurations.

Beringia constantly transformed its ecology as the changing climate affected the environment, determining which plants and animals were able to survive. The land mass could be a barrier as well as a bridge: during colder periods, glaciers advanced and precipitation levels dropped. During warmer intervals clouds, rain and snow altered soils and drainage patterns. Fossil remains show that spruce, birch and poplars once grew beyond their northernmost modern range today, indicating there were periods when the climate was warmer and wetter. Mastodons, which depended on shrubs for food, were uncommon in the open dry tundra landscape characteristic of Beringia during the colder periods; in this tundra, mammoths flourished instead.

(Note: there are maps on both sites below to show where the bridge existed.)

Answer 2

i don't locate all of it that unusual. Natives in basic terms make up approximately 3% of the completed inhabitants (yet we are the quickest becoming race!). and there's a robust threat you have considered a community, you basically did not know them as a community. We blend in tremendously sturdy- we dress basically like easily everyone else at the instant. and you're waiting for us to look like what Hollywood needs you to think of we glance like however the reality is, maximum circumstances Hollywood does not even use community actors. previous that, Detroit has an exceptionally severe black inhabitants. in case you get out into different factors of MI, like the U.P., you will locate factors the place the inhabitants is in maximum cases community.

Answer 3

One of the most accepted theories about this is an Ice-age land bridge across the Bering Straight that would have linked Asia to Alaska. Historians believe that people first crossed this land bridge at least 14,000 years ago.

Answer 4

The explanation that is generally accepted, and supported by DNA testing, is that they came across the Aleutian Islands and Alaska during an ice age, when it was possible to walk across. Recent studies show that vegetation along the northern Pacific coast survived and allowed people to feed themselves while migrating.

Answer 5

Our tribal creation stories have our genesis here on this continent. Those of us who maintain belief in our tribal traditions continue to believe that we came from the place where we stand, now called North America.

Our creation stories are no different in merit or validity than the Christian belief that they descend from Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

Answer 6

One theory is when people migrated out of Africa (where the first humans are thought to have come from), they eventually crossed over from what is now Russia through Alaska and down through the continent.

Answer 7

personaly i think the ''migrating'' thiery is stupid, if the native americans wernt here when the world split apart ,(if it did) who was here first? i dont think it was uninhabited! i think they were always here. other wise we wouldent call them ''NATIVE'' americans!

Answer 8

probably from Asia