9781422283561

Introduction

Early Peoples

P eople have inhabited North America for thousands of years. The idea that this continent was a New World was thought up by those who arrived by ship from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean 500 years ago. The civilizations in North America were like those on the other side of the world. They had their own societies, customs, laws, religions, arts,

N orth America has many different climates. In Idaho, spring flowers bloom in the valleys while there is snow on the mountain tops.

and rivalries. But where did they come from?

Migrating Peoples The earliest human fossil remains found in North America are Homo sapiens , ancestors of ours who lived about 200,000 years ago. During an

Ice Age about 50,000 years ago the ocean between Siberia and Alaska was probably bridged by a

A 19th-century engraving of an imaginary mammoth hunt. The people who migrated to North America were probably following the large animals they hunted for food.

huge glacier which allowed people to migrate from one continent to the other.

T he Bering Strait as it might have been during the Ice Age when peoples moved from Siberia to Alaska. The outline shows where the ice may have covered the ocean.

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