8.1 Populating and Settling the Americas

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify patterns of early migration to the Americas
• Describe the lifestyles of people living in Archaic America
• Explain how and when the Neolithic Revolution occurred in different regions of the Americas

Ancestral humans like Homo erectus migrated out of Africa almost two million years ago and made their way around Asia, the Near East, and Europe. But so far, no solid evidence has placed them in the Americas. It was only with the rise of Homo sapiens that the populating of the Americas began. Exactly when this occurred is not clear, but it likely started around eighteen thousand years ago at the earliest. Within a few thousand years, modern humans had expanded in small numbers around North America, Central America, and South America. There they developed their own agricultural traditions, independent of those that emerged in the Near East, China, and Africa. They also established a range of unique cultural traditions and later a number of sophisticated civilizations characterized by refined religious practices, monumental architecture, large urban populations, and in some cases, writing systems.