Native Americans in the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History[edit]

Main article: History of Native Americans in the United States

Settlement of the Americas[edit]

Main articles: Paleo-Indians and Settlement of the Americas

This map shows the approximate location of the ice-free corridor and specific Paleoindian sites (Clovis theory).

It is not definitively known how or when the Native Americans first settled the Americas and the present-day United States. The prevailing theory proposes that people migrated from Eurasia across Beringia, a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska during the Ice Age, and then spread southward throughout the Americas over the subsequent generations. Genetic evidence suggests at least three waves of migrants arrived from Asia, with the first occurring at least fifteen thousand years ago.^[25] These migrations may have begun as early as 30,000 years ago^[26] and continued through to about 10,000 years ago, when the land bridge became submerged by the rising sea level caused by the ending of the last glacial period.^[27]