Native American Culture

The “first peoples” of North America are believed to have arrived on the continent as the result of Asiatic migrations over what is today known as the Bering Strait. Though some recent evidence disputes this theory, these peoples are supposed to have traveled over a land bridge that existed during the time of these migrations, between 20,000 and 60,000 years before the present era. The land bridge was most likely caused by glacial activity that lowered ocean levels to such an extent that groups of Stone-Age hunters were able to travel on foot from present-day Russia to what is now Alaska. Once across, these groups split up in a broad fashion spreading throughout the continent and beyond: from Greenland and today’s eastern United States seaboard to the east, to the tip of South America to the south, and extending past the Arctic Circle in the north.