Journey Into The Americas Jennifer Raff by Jennifer Raff instant download after payment.

Our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. From there modern humans followed in the steps of other kinds of humans—Homo erectus, Neandertals, Denisovans, and others—as they slowly spread across the planet. But the first H. sapiens who entered the Americas went somewhere no member of the human family had ever gone before. The process by which people explored, populated and adapted to the many different environments found across these continents was a momentous undertaking, one which began the rich and complex histories of thousands of different nations and communities.

In their journey into the Americas, the ancestors of present-day Indigenous peoples overcame extraordinary challenges. They survived the bitter cold and arid conditions of a global climatic event between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). They developed relationships with unfamiliar lands and their flora and fauna.

There are many perspectives that aim to explain these events. Indigenous peoples have numerous oral histories of their origins. Passed down from one generation to the next, such traditional knowledge conveys important lessons about the emergence of each group’s identity as a people and their relationship with their lands and nonhuman relatives. Some of these histories include migration from another place as part of their origins; others do not. The framework that most Western scientists use in understanding the history of population movements is different. This article will focus on their models for the peopling of the Americas, while respecting and acknowledging that these models stand alongside diverse and ancient oral histories with which they may or may not be congruent.