Who populated America after the discovery. What is the history of the settlement of South America? How did the relations of European colonists with the Indians develop?

04.08.2021

From school we are told that America settled by the inhabitants of Asia, who moved there in groups across the Bering Isthmus (in the place where the strait is now). They settled in the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. Did the indigenous population of America really come to the mainland (more precisely, two continents) in this way ?!

However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this coherent theory. It turns out that America has been populated many times, this was done by some strange peoples, almost akin to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear what transport the first "Indians" took to the extreme south of the New World.

Population of America. First version

Until the end of the 20th century, American anthropology was dominated by the "Clovis first" hypothesis, according to which this culture of ancient mammoth hunters, which appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago, was the oldest in the New World.

According to this hypothesis, people who came to Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow here, but further south the path was blocked by glaciers until 14-16 thousand years ago, which is why the resettlement across the Americas began only after the end of the last glaciation.

The hypothesis was slender and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century, some discoveries that were incompatible with it were made. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a violent reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture is 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.

In order not to rewrite students and not to change their views on the characteristics of the population of America, most American anthropologists simply denied the find in scientific reliability. Already during the excavation, Dilei faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for the excavation and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archeology.

Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm the dating of 14 thousand years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time, there were no places of such an ancient settlement in North America, which raised the question of where exactly people could get to Chile.

Recently, the Chileans suggested to Delay that the excavation should continue. Influenced by the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he at first refused. “I was fed up,” the scientist explained his position. However, in the end he agreed and found at the MVI parking lot guns, undoubtedly made by man, the antiquity of which was 14.5-19 thousand years.

History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the discoveries. In his opinion, the finds may be simple stones, vaguely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.

Found Delay "tools"

Seaside nomads

To understand how justified the criticism of the new work is, we turned to the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (Moscow State University). According to him, the found tools are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials that are absent in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such items cannot be of natural origin.

The scientist noted that the systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: "When you teach at school and university that America was inhabited in a certain way, it is not so easy to abandon this point of view."

Mammoths in Beringia

The conservatism of American researchers is also understandable: in North America, recognized finds date back to a period thousands of years later than the period indicated by Delay. And what about the theory that before the glacier melted, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not have settled south?

However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along the current Pacific coast of Canada were not covered with glaciers, and remains of bears from the Ice Age are found there. This means that people could well spread along the coast, sailing in boats and without going deep into the then inhospitable North America.

Australian footprint

However, the strangeness of the settlement of America does not end with the fact that the first reliable finds of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile. Not so long ago it became clear that the genes of the Aleuts and the group of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Aborigines of Australia.

As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists are well combined with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features similar to those of Australia.

In his opinion, most likely, the Australian footprint in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which, tens of thousands of years ago, moved to Australia, while the other migrated along the coast of Asia to the north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent. ...

The appearance of Luzia - this is the name of a woman who lived 11 thousand years ago, whose remains were found in a Brazilian cave

As if that were not enough, genetic studies in 2013 showed that the Brazilian Botakudo Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to the Polynesians and some of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could well have reached South America by sea. At the same time, the traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain.

It turns out that a small group of Polynesian seafarers, after disembarking for some reason, did not return back, but overcame the Andean highlands that were unusual for them to settle in Brazil. The motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical seafarers can only be guessed at.

So, a small part of American Aborigines have traces of genes that are very far from the genome of other Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.

30 thousand years before us

However, there are also more radical deviations from the idea of populating America in one wave and only after the glacier melts. In the 1970s, the Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the Pedra Furada cave site (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many fireplaces, the age of which radiocarbon analysis showed from 30 to 48 thousand years.

It is easy to see that such numbers generated a lot of opposition from North American anthropologists. The same Delay criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could have remained after natural fire.

Gidon reacted to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American style: “Fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more. "

Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to dispute the dates of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, where did they go then and where are the traces of their stay in other parts of the New World?

Toba volcano eruption

The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. This happened with the Homo sapiens who settled in Asia. Their first traces there date back to the period up to 125 thousand years ago, but the data of geneticists say that all of humanity came from a population that came out of Africa, much later - only 60 thousand years ago.

There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to be superior to the total power of all the combined nuclear weapons ever created by mankind.

However, even by an event more powerful than a nuclear war, it is difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis living relatively close to Toba, died out from the explosion.

And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not die out at that time, traces of which are not observed in the genes of modern people for some reason. Thus, the question of where the people who settled 40 thousand years ago in South America could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds of the Pedra Furada type.

Genetics versus genetics

Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, Maanasa Raghavan's group of the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen announced that genetic analysis disproves the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers was involved in settling America.

According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later 9 thousand years ago, when America was already inhabited by immigrants from Asia.

At the same time, the work of another group of geneticists, led by Pontus Skoglund, was published, which, based on the same material, made the opposite statement: a certain ghost population appeared in the New World either 15 thousand years ago, or even earlier, and perhaps settled there before the Asian wave of migration, from which the ancestors of the vast majority of modern Indians originated.

In their opinion, the relatives of the Australian aborigines crossed the Bering Strait only to be driven out by the subsequent wave of "Indian" migration, whose representatives began to dominate the Americas, pushing the few descendants of the first wave into the Amazon jungle and the Aleutian Islands.

Reconstruction of the settlement of America by Ragnavan

Even if geneticists cannot agree among themselves about whether the "Indian" or "Australian" components became the first aborigines of America, it is even more difficult for everyone else to understand this issue. Still, something can be said about this: skulls, similar in shape to the Papuan ones, have been found on the territory of modern Brazil for more than 10 thousand years.

The scientific picture of the settlement of the Americas is very complex, and at the present stage it is changing significantly. It is clear that the settlement of the New World involved groups of different origins - at least two, not counting a small Polynesian component that appeared later than the others.

It is also obvious that at least some of the settlers were able to colonize the continent in spite of the glacier - bypassing it by boats or on ice. At the same time, the pioneers subsequently moved along the coast, quite quickly reaching the south of modern Chile. Apparently, the first Americans were very mobile, expansive and good at using water transport.

America was first a land and then a country that was born in the imagination before it really was, wrote Susan-Mary Grant. Born out of the cruelty of the conquerors and the hopes of ordinary workers, they became one of the most powerful states in the world. America's history of becoming a chain of paradoxes.

The country, created in the name of freedom, was built by the labor of slaves; a country struggling to establish moral superiority, military security and economic stability does so in the face of financial crises and global conflicts, not least of which it itself is the cause.

It all started with colonial America, created by the first Europeans who arrived there, who were attracted by the opportunity to enrich themselves or freely practice their religion. As a result, entire indigenous peoples were driven out of their native land, impoverished, and some were completely exterminated.

America is a significant part of the modern world, its economy, politics, culture, and its history is an integral part of world history. America is not just Hollywood, the White House and Silicon Valley. This is a country where customs, habits, traditions and characteristics of different peoples have combined to form a new nation. This constant process has created an amazing historical phenomenon of the superstate in an astonishingly short time.

How did it develop and what is it today? What is its impact on the modern world? We will tell you about this now.

America before Columbus

Can you get to America on foot? In general, you can. Just think, less than a hundred kilometers, more precisely ninety-six.

When the Bering Strait freezes over, Eskimos and Chukchi, even in bad weather, cross it in both directions. Otherwise, where would a Soviet reindeer breeder get a brand new Winchester? .. Blizzard? Freezing? Just like a long time ago, a man dressed in reindeer fur burrows into the snow, stuffs his mouth with pemmican and slumbers until the storm subsides ...

Ask the average American when American history begins. Ninety-eight answers out of a hundred in 1776. Americans are extremely vague about the times before European colonization, although the Indian period is as much an integral part of the country's history as the Mayflower. And still there is a line beyond which one story ends tragically, and the other develops dramatically ...

Europeans landed on the American continent off the East Coast. Future Native Americans came from the northwest. 30 thousand years ago, the north of the continent was bound by mighty ice and deep snow to the Great Lakes and beyond.

Yet most of the First Americans arrived through Alaska, then leaving south of the Yukon. Most likely, there were two main groups of immigrants: the first arrived from Siberia, with its own language and customs; the second several centuries later, when the land isthmus from Siberia to Alaska was submerged under the water of a melted glacier.

They had straight black hair, smooth dark skin, a wide nose with a low bridge, slanting brown eyes with a characteristic fold at the eyelids. Quite recently, in the system of underwater caves Sak-Aktun (Mexico), underwater speleologists discovered an incomplete skeleton of a 16-year-old girl. She was given the name Naya - a water nymph. Radiocarbon and uranium-thorium analyzes showed that the bones had been lying at the bottom of the flooded cave for 12-13 thousand years. Naya's skull is elongated, distinctly closer to the ancient inhabitants of Siberia than to the rounded skulls of modern Indians.

Geneticists also found whole mitochondrial DNA in the tissue of Nighy's molar tooth. Passing from mother to daughter, she retains the haplotype of the full set of genes of the parents. In Naya, it corresponds to haplotype P1, which is common among modern Indians. The hypothesis that Native Americans descended from early Paleo-Americans who migrated across the Bering Bridge from Eastern Siberia has received the strongest possible evidence. The Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences believes that the settlers belonged to the Altai tribes.

The first inhabitants of America

Behind the icy mountains, to the south, lay a magical land with a warm and humid climate. Almost the entire territory of the present United States is located on it. Forests, meadows, diverse fauna. During the last glaciation, several breeds of wild horses crossed Beringia, later either exterminated or extinct. Ancient animals supplied man, in addition to meat, technologically necessary materials: fur, bone, skins, tendons.

An ice-free strip of tundra stretched from the shores of Asia to Alaska, a kind of bridge across the current Bering Strait. But in Alaska, only during short warmings, the passages that opened the road to the south thawed out. The ice pressed those going to the Mackenzie River, to the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, but soon they came out to the dense forests of the present state of Montana. Some went there, others to the west, to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The rest usually went south through Wyoming and Colorado to New Mexico and Arizona.

The bravest fought their way further south, through Mexico and Central America to the southern American continent; they will reach Chile and Argentina only centuries later.

Perhaps the ancestors of the Native Americans came to the continent through the Aleutian Islands, although this is a difficult and dangerous path. It can be assumed that the Polynesians, excellent sailors, sailed to South America.

In the Marms Cave (Washington state), the remains of three human skulls, dating from the 11th-8th millennia BC, were discovered, and nearby were a spearhead and a bone instrument, which gave reason to assume the discovery of a unique ancient culture of the indigenous people of America. This means that even then, these lands were inhabited by people who were able to create smooth, sharp, comfortable and beautiful products. But it was there that the US engineering forces needed to build a dam, and now unique exhibits lie under a twelve-meter water column.

Guesses were made about who had been to this part of the world before Columbus. The Vikings were definitely there.

The son of the Viking leader Eric the Red, Leif Eriksson, leaving the Norwegian colony in Greenland, sailed Helluland ("boulder country", now - Baffin Land), Markland (forest country, Labrador peninsula), Vinland ("grape country", most likely New England). After wintering in Vinland, the Viking ships returned to Greenland.

Leif's brother, Thorvald Eriksson, two years later, nevertheless built a fortification in America with housing. But the Algonquins killed Torvald, and his companions sailed back. The next two attempts were a little more successful: the daughter-in-law of Eric the Red-haired Goodrid settled in America, established at first a profitable trade with scratching, but then returned to Greenland. Eric the Red's daughter, Freydis, was also unfortunate enough to attract the Indians to long-term partnerships. Then, in a fight, she hacked to death her companions, and after the strife, the Normans left Vinland, where they lived for quite a long time.

The hypothesis of the discovery of America by the Normans was confirmed only in 1960. The remains of a well-equipped Viking settlement were found in Newfoundland (Canada). In 2010, a burial was found in Iceland with the remains of an Indian woman with the same Paleo-American genes. She came to Iceland around 1000 AD. and stayed there to live ...

There is also an exotic hypothesis about Zhang He, a Chinese commander, who with a huge fleet sailed to America allegedly seventy years earlier than Columbus. However, it has no reliable evidence. In the scandalously famous book of the American Africanist Ivan Van Sertin, it was said about the huge fleet of the Sultan of Mali, who reached America and determined its entire culture, religion, and so on. And then there was little evidence. So external influences were minimized. But in the New World itself, there were many tribes that existed quite separately and spoke different languages. Those of them3 who were united by similarities of beliefs and blood ties formed numerous communities.

They themselves built houses and settlements of high engineering complexity, which have survived to this day, processed metal, created excellent ceramics, learned to provide themselves with food and grow crops, play ball and domesticate wild animals.

Something like this was the New World at the time of the fatal meeting with the Europeans - Spanish sailors under the command of a Genoese captain. According to the poet Henry Longfellow, she dreamed of the great Gaia-vata, the cultural hero of all North American tribes, as an inevitable fate.

The history of New America is not so many centuries old. And it began in the 16th century. It was then that new people began to arrive on the continent discovered by Columbus. The immigrants from many countries of the world had different reasons for coming to the New World. Some of them just wanted to start a new life. The latter dreamed of getting rich. Still others sought refuge from religious persecution or government persecution. Of course, all these people belonged to different nationalities and cultures. They were distinguished from each other by their skin color. But all of them were united by one desire - to change their lives and create a new world practically from scratch. This is how the history of the colonization of America began.

Pre-Columbian period

People have settled in North America for more than one millennium. However, information about the indigenous inhabitants of this continent before the period of the appearance here of immigrants from many other parts of the world is very scarce.

As a result of scientific research, it was found that the first Americans were small groups of people who moved to the continent from Northeast Asia. Most likely, they mastered these lands about 10-15 thousand years ago, passing from Alaska through the shallow or frozen ones. Gradually, people began to move inland, to the continent. So they reached Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan.

Also, researchers believe that in parallel with this process, small groups of Polynesians moved to the continent. They settled in the southern lands.

Both those and other settlers, who are known to us as Eskimos and Indians, are rightfully considered the first inhabitants of America. And in connection with long-term residence on the continent - the indigenous population.

Discovery of a new continent by Columbus

The first of the Europeans to visit the New World were the Spaniards. Traveling to a world unknown to them, they marked India and the western coastal territories of Africa on a geographical map. But the researchers didn't stop there. They began to look for the shortest path that would bring a person from Europe to India, which promised great economic benefits to the monarchs of Spain and Portugal. The result of one of these campaigns was the discovery of America.

It happened in October 1492, when a Spanish expedition led by Admiral Christopher Columbus landed on a small island in the Western Hemisphere. So the first page in the history of American colonization was opened. Immigrants from Spain flock to this outlandish country. Following them, the inhabitants of France and England appeared. The period of colonization of America began.

Spanish conquerors

The colonization of America by Europeans initially did not provoke any resistance from the local population. And this contributed to the fact that the settlers began to behave very aggressively, enslaving and killing Indians. The Spanish conquerors were especially cruel. They burned and plundered local villages, killing their inhabitants.

Already at the very beginning of the colonization of America, Europeans brought many diseases to the continent. The local population began to die from epidemics of smallpox and measles.

In the mid-16th century, Spanish colonists dominated the American continent. Their possessions stretched from New Mexico to Cape Gori and brought fabulous profits to the royal treasury. During this period of colonization of America, Spain repulsed all attempts by other European states to gain a foothold in this territory rich in natural resources.

However, at the same time, the balance of power began to shift in the Old World. Spain, where the kings unwisely spent the huge flows of gold and silver coming from the colonies, began to gradually give up its positions, yielding them to England, in which the economy was developing at a rapid pace. In addition, the decline of the previously powerful country, and the European superpower, was accelerated by the long-term war with the Netherlands, the conflict with England and the Reformation of Europe, on the fight against which huge funds were spent. But the last point of Spain's withdrawal into the shadows was the death in 1588 of the Invincible Armada. After that, England, France and Holland became the leaders in the process of colonizing America. Immigrants from these countries created a new wave of immigration.

Colonies of France

Immigrants from this European country were primarily interested in valuable furs. At the same time, the French did not seek to seize land, since in their homeland the peasants, despite being burdened with feudal duties, still remained the owners of their allotments.

The colonization of America by the French began at the dawn of the 17th century. It was during this period that Samuel Champlain founded a small settlement on the Acadia Peninsula, and a little later (in 1608) - In 1615, the French possessions extended to the lakes of Ontario and Huron. These territories were operated by trading companies, the largest of which was the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1670, its owners received a charter and monopolized the purchase of fish and furs from the Indians. Local residents became "tributaries" of companies, falling into a network of obligations and debts. In addition, the Indians were simply robbed, constantly exchanging the valuable furs they obtained for worthless trinkets.

British possessions

The colonization of North America by the British began in the 17th century, although the first attempts were made by them a century earlier. The settlement of the New World by subjects of the British crown accelerated the development of capitalism in their homeland. The source of the prosperity of the British monopolies was the creation of colonial trading companies that successfully operated on the foreign market. They brought in fabulous profits.

Features of the colonization of North America by Great Britain consisted in the fact that in this territory the government of the country formed two trading companies, which had large funds. These were London and Plymouth firms. These companies had royal charters, according to which they owned lands located between 34 and 41 degrees north latitude, and stretching inland without any restrictions. Thus, England appropriated the territory that originally belonged to the Indians.

At the beginning of the 17th century. a colony was established in Virginia. The Virginia commercial company expected large profits from this venture. At its own expense, the company delivered settlers to the colony, who spent 4-5 years working off their debt.

In 1607 a new settlement was formed. This was the Gemstown colony. It was located in a swampy place where many mosquitoes lived. In addition, the colonists turned the indigenous population against themselves. Constant clashes with Indians and disease soon claimed the lives of two-thirds of the settlers.

Another English colony - Maryland - was founded in 1634. British settlers received allotments of land there and became planters and large entrepreneurs. The workers in these plots were the English poor, who worked out the cost of moving to America.

However, over time, instead of enslaving servants in the colonies, the labor of Negro slaves began to be used. They began to be brought mainly to the southern colonies.

Over the course of 75 years after the formation of the colony of Virginia, the British created 12 more similar settlements. These are Massachusetts and New Hampshire, New York and Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Maryland.

Development of the English colonies

Poor people in many countries of the Old World sought to get to America, because in their view it was the promised land, giving salvation from debt and religious persecution. That is why the European colonization of America was widespread. Many entrepreneurs have ceased to be limited to recruiting migrants. They began to arrange real raids on people, soldering them and sending them to the ship until they sober up. That is why there was an unusually rapid growth in the English colonies. This was facilitated by the agrarian revolution carried out in Great Britain, as a result of which there was a massive landlessness of the peasants.

The poor, robbed by their government, began to look for the possibility of buying land in the colonies. So, if in 1625 there were 1980 settlers in North America, then in 1641 there were about 50 thousand immigrants from England alone. Fifty years later, the number of inhabitants of such settlements was about two hundred thousand people.

Displaced behavior

The history of the colonization of America is overshadowed by a war of extermination against the native inhabitants of the country. The settlers took the land from the Indians, completely destroying the tribes.

In the north of America, which was called New England, immigrants from the Old World took a slightly different path. Here, lands from the Indians were acquired through "trade deals". Subsequently, this became the reason for the approval of the opinion that the ancestors of the Anglo-Americans did not encroach on the freedom of the indigenous people. However, immigrants from the Old World acquired huge tracts of land for a bundle of beads or for a handful of gunpowder. At the same time, the Indians who were not familiar with private property, as a rule, did not even know about the essence of the contract concluded with them.

The church also made its contribution to the history of colonization. She raised the massacre of the Indians to the rank of a godly cause.

One of the shameful pages in the history of American colonization is the scalp prize. Before the arrival of the settlers, this bloody custom existed only among some tribes inhabiting the eastern territories. With the arrival of the colonialists, such barbarism began to spread more and more widely. The reason for this was the unleashed internecine wars in which firearms began to be used. In addition, the scalping process was greatly facilitated by the proliferation of iron knives. After all, wooden or bone tools that the Indians had before colonization greatly complicated such an operation.

However, the relations of the settlers with the indigenous people were not always so hostile. Ordinary people tried to maintain good neighborly relations. Poor farmers adopted and learned from the Indians, adapting to local conditions.

Immigrants from other countries

But be that as it may, the first colonists who settled in North America did not have uniform religious beliefs and belonged to different social strata. This was due to the fact that people from the Old World belonged to different nationalities, and, therefore, had different beliefs. For example, English Catholics have settled in Maryland. Huguenots from France settled in South Carolina. The Swedes settled in Delaware, and Virginia was full of Italian, Polish, and German artisans. The first Dutch settlement appeared on Manhattan Island in 1613. Its founder was the center of which was the city of Amsterdam, became known as the New Netherlands. Later, these settlements were captured by the British.

The colonialists were entrenched on the continent, for which they still thank God every fourth Thursday in November. America celebrates Thanksgiving. This holiday is immortalized in honor of the first year of life of the settlers in a new place.

The emergence of slavery

The first black Africans arrived in Virginia in August 1619 on a Dutch ship. Most of them were immediately ransomed by the colonists as servants. In America, blacks became slaves for life.

Moreover, this status even began to be inherited. The slave trade began to be carried out constantly between the American colonies and the countries of East Africa. Local leaders willingly exchanged their young people for weapons, gunpowder, textiles and many other goods brought from the New World.

Development of the southern territories

As a rule, settlers chose the northern territories of the New World for their religious reasons. In contrast, the colonization of South America pursued economic goals. The Europeans, having little ceremony with the indigenous people, resettled them to lands that were poorly suitable for existence. The resource-rich continent promised large incomes to the settlers. That is why in the southern regions of the country they began to cultivate plantations of tobacco and cotton, using the labor of slaves brought from Africa. Most of all goods were exported to England from these territories.

Migrants in Latin America

The territories south of the United States, Europeans began to develop also after the discovery of the New World by Columbus. And today the colonization of Latin America by Europeans is regarded as an unequal and dramatic collision of two different worlds, which ended in the enslavement of the Indians. This period lasted from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century.

The colonization of Latin America led to the death of ancient Indian civilizations. After all, most of the indigenous population was exterminated by immigrants from Spain and Portugal. The inhabitants who survived fell under the control of the colonialists. But at the same time, the cultural achievements of the Old World were brought to Latin America, which became the property of the peoples of this continent.

Gradually, European colonists began to turn into the most growing and important part of the population of this region. And the bringing of slaves from Africa began a complex process of forming a special ethnocultural symbiosis. And today we can say that the colonial period of the 16-19 centuries left an indelible imprint on the development of modern Latin American society. In addition, with the arrival of Europeans, the region began to get involved in world capitalist processes. This has become an important prerequisite for the economic development of Latin America.

According to the latest research, the first settlers came to America in one wave from Siberia no earlier than 23 thousand years ago at the height.

The radiocarbon dates obtained from the study of bone samples revealed during the complex taphonomic analysis of the fauna of the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon gave a calibrated date of 24 thousand years to the present (19650 ± 130 BP). Apparently, then these first migrants stayed in the north for a long time.

Artifacts from the Late Paleolithic Cooper's Ferry site on the Salmon River (Columbia basin) in Idaho (fragments of mammalian bones, remains of burnt coal) date back to 15.28-16.56 thousand years ago. Stone tools from Idaho bear similarities with the industry of the Late Pleistocene site Kamishirataki 2 on Hokkaido Island (Japan). This suggests that humans originally migrated to America along the Pacific coast, but does not rule out subsequent human migrations at a later time through the Ice Free Corridor (IFC) from Beringia to present-day Dakota, which opened between Cordillera and the Laurentian continental ice sheets at the end of the Pleistocene, as suggested by paleogenomics.

According to the frequencies of the most important "eastern" (Mongoloid) marker - the spatula-shaped incisors, only the Indian population of North America seems to be quite homogeneous.

About 13 thousand years ago, they were divided into northern and southern populations - the latter settled in Central, South and partly in North America.

Separately, about 5.5 thousand years ago, the arrival of the Inuit and Eskimos took place, spreading throughout the Arctic (the way they got from Siberia to Alaska remains a mystery, since there was no transition between them then).

Migration models

The chronology of migration patterns is divided into two scales. One scale is based on a "short chronology" according to which the first wave of migration to America occurred no earlier than 14-16 thousand years ago. The results of studies conducted by Rutgers University theoretically showed that the entire indigenous population of America came from only 70 individuals who arrived in 14-12 thousand years. n. along the Bering Isthmus, which then existed between Asia and America. Other estimates put the actual size of the Native American population at approx. 250 people.

Supporters of the "long chronology" believe that the first group of people arrived in the Western Hemisphere much earlier, perhaps 20-50 thousand years ago, and, possibly, other successive waves of migrations took place after it. Paleogeneticists who studied the genome of a girl who lived in the Tanana Valley in Alaska approx. 11.5 thousand years ago, they came to the conclusion that the ancestors of all American Indians in one wave moved from Chukotka to Alaska in the late Pleistocene approx. 20-25 thousand years ago, before Beringia disappeared approx. 20 thousand years ago. After that, the "ancient Beringians" in America were isolated from Eurasia. Between 17 and 14 thousand years ago, they were divided into northern and southern groups of Paleo-Indians from which the peoples that settled in North and South America were formed.

One contributing factor to the heated debate is the discontinuity of archaeological evidence for early human history in both North and South America. The North American finds generally reflect a classic set of cultural evidence known as the Clovis culture, which can be traced back at least 13,500 years ago, and is found throughout virtually all of North and Central America. [ ]

The age of the lanceolate spearheads found in Block A at the Debra L. Friedkin site at Buttermilk Creek (Texas) is 13.5-15.5 thousand years ago ...

In 2017, archaeologists unearthed a settlement on Tricket Island off the western coast of Canada, also dating back about 13-14 thousand years ago. It is assumed that this area was not covered with ice during the last glaciation.

South American cultural finds, on the other hand, do not follow the same sequence and represent a variety of cultural patterns. Therefore, many archaeologists believe that the Clovis model is not valid for South America, calling for the creation of new theories to explain prehistoric finds that do not fit into the Clovis cultural complex. Several scholars are developing a Pan American colonization model that integrates both North American and South American archaeological finds. [ ]

The settlement of the American continent is associated with several migration waves that brought Y-chromosomal haplogroups and to the New World. According to the calculations of geneticist Theodore Schurr from the University of Pennsylvania, carriers of the mitochondrial haplogroup B came to North America up to 24 thousand years ago. T. Schurr and S. Sherry believe that the migration of carriers of mitochondrial haplogroups A, B, C and D preceded Clovis and occurred 15-20 thousand years ago. n. The second migration associated with the alleged carriers of haplogroup X from the Clovis culture took place after the formation of the Mackenzie corridor 14-13 thousand years ago.

DNA research from ancient burial grounds of the Pacific coast and the mountainous regions of Peru, Bolivia and Northern Chile, as well as from Argentina and Mexico aged from 500 to 8600 years, showed the presence of mitochondrial haplogroups,,, C1b, C1c, C1d, characteristic of modern Indians. The mitochondrial haplogroup D4h3a, common for modern Indians of South America, was not identified in ancient South Americans. In North America, mitochondrial haplogroup D4h3a was found in an ancient burial ground (9730-9880 years ago) in a cave On Your Knees on the island of Prince of Wales Island (Alexander Archipelago in Alaska). A Kennewick man who lived 9300 years ago, found in Washington state, has a Y chromosome group Q1a3a (M3) and a mitochondrial haplogroup X2a.

According to scientists, in the period from 20 to 17 thousand years ago, the Pacific coast was covered with a glacier, but then the glacier retreated from the coast and the first people were able to walk along the coast to the south. The corridor between the Cordillera and Laurentian ice sheets, although opened approx. 14-15 thousand years ago, it remained lifeless and became available for human migration only after another 1.4-2.4 thousand years. Geneticists who analyzed 91 genomes of ancient Indians who lived in the territory of modern California and southwestern Ontario, came to the conclusion that earlier than 13 thousand years ago, migrants from Asia divided - one part of the ancient Indians went to the east and turned out to be related to the Kennewick man and modern Algonquins, another part of the ancient Indians went south and turned out to be related to the boy Anzik-1 (representative of the Clovis culture). Later, both populations were reunited, since the modern inhabitants of Central and South America turned out to be genetically similar to both the "eastern" and "southern" parts of the ancient Indians. Mixing of populations could occur repeatedly in both North America and South America.

Land bridge theory

An overview of the theory

The "classical" land bridge theory, also known as the "Bering Strait theory" or "short chronology theory", has been generally accepted since the 1930s. This model of migration to western North America suggests that a group of people - Paleo-Indians - crossed from Siberia to Alaska, tracking the migration of a large herd of animals. They could have crossed the strait that now separates the two continents by a land bridge known as the Bering Isthmus, which was located on the site of the modern Bering Strait during the last ice age, the last stage of the Pleistocene.

The classical version speaks of two or three waves of migration through the Bering Strait. The descendants of the first wave became modern Indians, the second (presumably) - the people of the Na-Dene, the third and later - the Eskimos and Aleuts. According to another hypothesis, the ancestors of the modern Indians were preceded by the Paleo-Indians, related not to the Mongoloid, but to the South Pacific races. In this hypothesis, the dating of the first wave is determined about 15 thousand years ago, and the second - 10 thousand years ago.

Thus, according to this theory, migration began about 50 thousand years ago and ended about 10 thousand years ago, when the ocean level was 60 m lower than today. This information was collected using oxygen isotope analysis of deep sea sediments. The land bridge that opened during this period between Siberia and the western coast of Alaska was at least 1600 km wide. According to archaeological evidence collected in North America, it was concluded that a group of hunters crossed the Bering Strait less than 12 thousand years ago and could eventually reach the southern point of South America 11 thousand years ago. [ ]

Based on the spread of American languages and language families, the tribal movement took place along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and eastward across the Great Plains to the Atlantic coast, which the tribes reached about 10 thousand years ago. [ ]

Cultural complex Clovis

The culture of big game hunters, known as the Clovis culture, is primarily known for the spearheads carved out of stone. The culture gets its name from the town of Clovis, New Mexico, where the first examples of the instruments of this cultural complex were found in 1932. The Clovis culture was spread over most of North America, and some examples of its tools were found even in South America. The culture is easily distinguished by the characteristic shape of the "Clovis points", jagged dart-points carved from flint, which were inserted into a wooden shank. [ ]

The material from the Clovis culture was dated by analyzing animal bones using carbon dating techniques. While the first results gave a heyday of 11,500 to 11,000 years ago, recent re-examinations of Clovis materials using improved radiocarbon techniques have yielded results between 11,050 and 10,800 years ago. According to these data, the flourishing of culture took place somewhat later and within a shorter period of time than previously thought. Michael R. Water (University of Texas) and Thomas W. Stafford, owner of a private laboratory in Lafayette, Colorado and an expert in radiocarbon dating, have jointly concluded that at least 11 of the 22 Clovis sites are "problematic," including the site near the town of Clovis, and cannot be used for dating due to contamination with older material, although these findings have not found general support among archaeologists. [ ]

In 2014, a group of scientists led by paleontologist James Chatters published the results of a study of the skeleton of a 15-year-old girl who lived supposedly 13 thousand years ago and was discovered in 2007 in the flooded Oyo Negro Cave on the Yucatan Peninsula. Scientists examined the mitochondrial DNA obtained from the girl's molars and compared it with the mtDNA of modern Indians. According to the data obtained, representatives of the Clovis culture and the Indians belong to the same haplogroup D1, to which some modern peoples of Chukotka and Siberia belong.

Links

Maxim Russo: Australian footprint in America - POLIT.RU
Maanasa raghavan et al. Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans, 21 Aug 2015
The first Americans came from Siberia 23 thousand years ago - MixedNews.ru
Lauriane Bourgeon, Ariane Burke, Thomas Higham... Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada, PLOS, January 6, 2017.
Bone footprints and the settlement of America, January 18, 2017
Loren G. Davis et al. Late Upper Paleolithic occupation at Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, USA, ~ 16,000 years ago, 30 Aug 2019
CyberSecurity.ru | Research | DNA analysis of a person who lived 4000 years ago (unspecified) (unavailable link)... Retrieved March 15, 2016.

Paleo-Indians

Human settlement on Earth ended with the colonization of the American continents. We can trace the route of movement of ancient people by. The first humans settled on the northeastern edge of the North American continent 22,000 to 16,000 years ago. Modern genetic and archaeological research suggests that Alaskans were able to penetrate south and quickly populate both Americas about 15,000 years ago when a passageway opened in a glacier that covered much of North America.
The first people entered North America from Asia, via a land bridge - Beringia, which during the glacial period connected Chukotka with Alaska. The Asian origins of Native Americans are undeniable today. In America, there are five variants (haplotypes) of mitochondrial DNA (A, B, C, D, X). All of them are also characteristic of the indigenous population of southern Siberia from Altai to the Amur. Mitochondrial DNA, which was extracted from the bones of ancient Americans, is also clearly Asian in origin. Based on the analysis of evolutionary lines widespread among the Indians, but not found in Asia, the time of the beginning of the settlement of the ancient Indians south of the ice sheet was established: 16 600 - 11 200 years ago.
Some anthropologists have suggested a "two-wave" population of America, but the data from genetic studies have not confirmed this. The observed distribution of genetic variation strongly suggests that all Native American genetic diversity is rooted in a single ancestral Asian gene pool, and human resettlement has occurred only once in both Americas.

Ancient people could theoretically bypass the glacier by sea

The oldest indisputable traces of human presence in Alaska are 14,000 years old and are stone tools similar to those produced by the Upper Paleolithic population of Siberia.
About 40,000 years ago, a large part of North America was covered with glaciers, which blocked the path from Alaska to the south. At the same time, Alaska itself was not covered with ice. During the warming, two corridors opened in the glacier, one along the Pacific coast, the other east of the Rocky Mountains, along which the ancient inhabitants of Alaska could go south. The corridors were opened 32,000 years ago when humans first appeared in the lower reaches of the Yana (northeastern Siberia), but they closed again 24,000 years ago. People, apparently, did not have time to use them. The coastal corridor reopened about 15,000 years ago, and the eastern one about 13,000 to 13,500 years ago. However, according to some reports, ancient hunters could theoretically bypass the glacier by sea. On the island of Santa Rosa, off the coast of California, traces of a 13,000 to 13,100-year-old human have been found.
For decades, it was believed that the first Americans were the Clovis people, which left characteristic spearheads throughout the American Midwest and Southwest some 13,000 years ago. But in recent years, a number of evidence of earlier settlement has been found all along the Pacific coast, from the US Northwest to southern Chile. Artifacts from the Paisley Caves, Oregon, indicate that the people who left them were different from the Clovis culture carriers who lived at the same time. More and more scientists are inclined to the version that the first migrants from Asia about 15,000 years ago quickly settled on the western coast of both Americas, and only then moved further east, including the Clovis culture.
Both the Clovis culture bearers and the Paisley Caves probably came from the same wave of Asian migration, but the question remains whether they were originally separate groups or whether they split later.

Clovis culture

The well-documented archaeological history of the American continent south of the glacier begins with the Clovis culture. It originated about 13,100 years ago. By this time, people had already penetrated into South America. The Clovis culture is characterized by stone lanceolate lanceolate spearheads with longitudinal grooves on both surfaces and a concave base, sometimes in the shape of a fish tail. About 400 years after its inception, the Clovis culture disappeared just as rapidly. Traditionally, the people of the Clovis culture were believed to be nomadic hunter-gatherers, capable of moving rapidly over considerable distances. Their bone and stone tools were highly sophisticated and versatile. They were made using original techniques and were highly valued by their owners. Stone tools were made from high quality flint and obsidian. These materials could not be found everywhere, so the ancient people took care of them and always carried them with them, often taking them hundreds of kilometers from the place of manufacture. The sites of the Clovis culture are characterized by small temporary camps, where people did not live for a long time, but stopped only to eat another large animal, most often a mammoth or mastodon. In the southeastern United States and Texas, significant accumulations of Clovis artifacts have been found - up to 650,000 pieces in one place, mainly waste from the stone industry.
Judging by the sites discovered in North America with the so-called "places of slaughter and butchering of proboscis" (12 such places), the favorite prey of the Clovis people were proboscis - mammoths and mastodons. It is possible that the Clovis people made significant contributions to North America. Also, the diet of the ancient Americans included smaller prey - bison, deer, hares, and even reptiles and amphibians. The Clovis culture penetrated into Central and South America, but did not receive such wide distribution as in North America. In South America, ancient sites with other types of stone tools have been discovered, including those with characteristic tips resembling the shape of fish. Some of these South American sites are close in age to those of Clovis. Recent research has shown that it is possible that both cultures descend from some common and as yet undiscovered "ancestor."
At one of the sites in South America, bones of an extinct wild horse were found. From this it follows that the first people on this continent probably also contributed to the extermination of large animals.

Few facts about settling America

To date, it has been unequivocally established that America was inhabited by the species Homo sapiens.
There have never been any Pithecanthropus, Neanderthals, Australopithecus and other ancient hominids in America.
Genetic analysis has proven that all of the indigenous population of America comes from the same population of immigrants from southern Siberia.
The first humans appeared in Alaska no earlier than 30,000 and no later than 13,000 years ago, most likely between 22,000 and 16,000 years ago.
Judging by the molecular genetic data, the resettlement of humans from Beringia deep into North America began no earlier than 16,600 years ago, and the size of the pioneer population, from which the entire population of both Americas south of the glacier came, did not exceed 5,000 people.
The theory of several waves of settlement of America has not been confirmed, with the exception of the Eskimos and Aleuts, who came from Asia much later, but settled only in the extreme north of America.
Also, the theory about the participation of Europeans in the ancient colonization of the American continent was not confirmed.

Great Human Resettlement - America - BBC Film

By the time the last ice age began to decline, people had long inhabited Africa, Australia, Europe and Asia. But America remained deserted. To the east of it stretches the Atlantic, to the west - the Pacific Ocean, and the north of the continent was frozen. The territory of modern Alaska and Canada was covered with an ice sheet up to several kilometers thick. How did people manage to get to America, cut off from the world by a wall of ice?