Many thousands of years before Christopher Columbus’ ships
landed in the Bahamas, a different group of people discovered America:
the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land
bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska more than 12,000 years ago. In
fact, by the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D.,
scholars estimate that more than 50 million people were already living
in the Americas. Of these, some 10 million lived in the area that would
become the United States. As time passed, these migrants and their
descendants pushed south and east, adapting as they went. In order to
keep track of these diverse groups, anthropologists and geographers have
divided them into “culture areas,” or rough groupings of contiguous
peoples who shared similar habitats and characteristics. Most scholars
break North America—excluding present-day Mexico—into 10 separate
culture areas: the Arctic, the Subarctic, the Northeast, the Southeast,
the Plains, the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Northwest
Coast and the Plateau.
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