The First North American Inhabitants

The first inhabitants of North America, the ancestors of the people we call Indians today, were groups of wandering hunters and gatherers from Asia. Because the groups were small and traveled almost continually, researchers have not been able to gather much information about them. What evidence there is, however, suggests that these groups came to North America from Asia as long ago as forty thousand years. It is impossible to know the number of people who entered North America during this period. Undoubtedly, it was very small.

Why did these people come? Perhaps a few small groups of these hunters followed animal tracks and wandered into the Bering Strait region. Forty thousand years ago, the earth had not yet emerged from the last of four great Ice Ages, and the Bering Strait resembled a "bridge" of land and ice between Asia and North America. The severity of the climate may have forced some groups to return to Asia, but others succeeded in crossing into North America. These groups must have had supplies and clothing to protect them from the weather and to enable them to survive. They knew how to make fires, and they may have known how to build shelters out of snow and ice.

There is strong possibility that some people may have come to North and South America in another way—by sailing across the Pacific Ocean from Asia. But if such people did cross the Pacific Ocean, they must have made their journeys long after the Bering Strait was crossed. The ability to build boats and sail them was a later human development than that of mobile hunting.