The First Americans

In this lesson, you will explore the origins of the first people who came to North America and some theories explaining how they arrived, including the land bridge across the Bering Strait and how these early peoples adapted to diverse environments across the continent. Finally, you will gain insight into the first Americans' cultures, lifestyles, and innovations and how they shaped the continent's history.

• How long ago did people first arrive in North America?

• What are the three stages in the development of civilization?

• How did the discovery of agriculture change Native American communities?

​By the time Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492 CE, the North American continent was filled with indigenous people of distinct cultures and civilizations. Their ancestors had arrived 14,000 years earlier. The first came following herds of migrating sea mammals, settling in communities along the west coast that stretched all the way to the tip of South America. Others arrived by land, following migrating land mammals into the interior of North America. Over time they stopped migrating long distances and settled in smaller and smaller regions where distinct languages, religious beliefs, art, and customs emerged. The map to the right shows ten distinct cultural regions across North American in 1500 CE.

We refer to these first people as Paleo-Indians because they arrived during the Paleolithic Era, which is defined by the use of stone tipped spears and other primitive tools to hunt. Paleo-Indians hunted over vast distances on land and sea, following ocean and land mammals.

​Paleo-Indians - Early humans who used stone-tipped spears and other primitive tools, and hunted over vast areas.

Around 12,000 years ago, paleo-Indians in the interior of the continent underwent a radical change. They developed fish hooks and made more advanced tools, marking the beginning of the Mesolithic Period. Meso-Indians used an atlatl (at-la-tul) for hunting, which projected a small spear, and began to make jewelry out of the animals and other material around them.

Meso-Indians - Early humans who used more complex tools like fish hooks and atlatls, hunted accross smaller ranges, and began to produce jewelery.

Around 9,000 years ago, meso-indians underwent yet another major change. The Neolithic Revolution began in North America as Neolithic Indians cultivated teosinte, a wild grass ancestor of corn, in southern Mexico. Over the next several thousand years, cultivated corn made its way north through trade.

By 500 BCE, corn made up half of the diet of the Neolithic Indians living on the Colorado Plateau in the American Southwest. As farmers, neo-Indians lived in permanent communities where their populations soared.

Neolithic-Indians - Modern humans who practiced agriculture and lived in large, permanent communities.

Agriculture made a big difference for Native American groups in North America. Instead of moving around all the time, they started to live in one place. They built more complex houses. With lots of food available, people got healthier and lived longer, which made their communities grow larger and larger over time.

Spending so much time in a single place allowed Native Americans to become experts in their local resources. The food, plants, rocks and other material were incorperated into their daily lives, and eventually into their art, language and costums. In our next activity, you'll examine two Native American civilizations in order to see the influence a region can have on the culture that forms within it.