Native Americans

Essay by arakul600College, UndergraduateA-, December 2008

download word file, 64 pages 4.7

Chapter I.INTRODUCTIONTraditionally, the very beginning of the United StatesÃÂÃÂ history is considered from the time of European exploration and settlement, starting in the 16th century, to the present. But people had been living in America for over 30,000 years before the first European colonists arrived.


Chapter II.GENERAL BACKGROUNDORIGIN AND ANTIQUITYVarious origins have been assigned to the Indian race. The more or less beleivable explanation is following. At the height of the Ice Age, between 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the world's water was contained in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia and North America. At its peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 kilometers wide. A moist and treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses and plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival. The first people to reach North America almost certainly did so without knowing they had crossed into a new continent. They would...