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Who's on first? (50,000 B.C. - 1500 A.D.) WHO'S ON FIRST? (50,000 B.C.-A.D. 1500S) In This Chapter Where the "first Americans" came from The Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs The Anasazi, Mound Builders, and Pueblos Leif Eriksson, first European in America Look at a map that shows the north Pacific Ocean. You'll find the Bering Sea, an arm of the Pacific bounded on the east by Alaska, on the south by the Aleutian Islands, and on the west by Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Near the north end of the Bering Sea is the Bering Strait, which, lying between Alaska and Siberia, connects the Bering Sea with the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. At its narrowest, the strait is only 55 miles across, the shortest distance between the continents of North America and Asia. Fifty-five miles in icy cold water is a long swim, but not much of an ocean voyage. Historians believe that once upon a time, there wasn't even that 55 miles of water between the continents. A Stroll Across the Bering Sea Several times during what paleontologists call the Quaternary Period-that's their name for the last two million years--a "land bridge" emerged in the Bering and Chukchi Seas as the sea level dropped due to the expansion of the ice cap surrounding the North Pole. The theory is that anywhere from 10,000 to 45,000 years ago, human beings used the Bering land bridge to enter the New World, migrating from what is now northeast Asia to northwestern North America. Beringia, as the land bridge is sometimes called, disappeared when the major continental ice sheets and other glaciers melted, causing the sea level to rise again. 45,000 Years of American History (Abridged Version) The trek across Beringia was not really an evening's stroll. It must have consumed thousands of years. By 9000 B.C., it's likely that the former Asians reached Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America. In between, in the area that is the present-day United States, the population of what we now call Native Americans may have reached 11 million. These Native Americans, thinly distributed over a vast area in bands of a hundred or even fewer individuals, lived for thousands of years on the ragged edge of subsistence. They didn't develop great cities, but, as nomads, wandered, hunted, and foraged together. Then, perhaps 9,000 years ago, some bands began to domesticate plants in order to supplement foraged and hunted food. By the beginning of file:///F|/The%20Complete%20Idiot's%20Guide%20to%20American%20History/01.html (1 of 7) [12.07.2007 23:16:43] Who's on first? (50,000 B.C. - 1500 A.D.) the 16th century, when Europeans first made contact with Native Americans, they were cultivating maize, beans, and squash, as well as manioc, potatoes, and grains. Agriculture fostered a more stable lifestyle than hunting and gathering, and the horticultural groups lived in tribes. Along with relatively stable sources of sustenance and substantial populations came more or less permanent houses organized into villages, usually led by a recognized chief. The Anasazi Living at a subsistence level, it's not surprising that, within the area of the United States, the Native Americans left little material evidence of their ancient cultures. In the Southwest, archaeologists have identified a people they call the Anasazi (from a Navajo word meaning "the ancient ones"). The Anasazi appeared as early as 5500 B.C. and are also called the Basket Makers, because of the many skillfully woven baskets that have been discovered in sites associated with their culture. The Anasazi built communal dwellings consisting of wood and thatch, and even occupied shallow caves closed off with rocks. By A.D. 400-700, Anasazi communities evolved into collections of somewhat more sophisticated pit houses, built over shallow excavations. During the period of A.D. 700-1100, the Anasazi began building what Spanish invaders would later call pue