 "The
indigenous peoples of the Americas are the
pre-Columbian inhabitants of the
Americas, their descendants, and many
ethnic groups who identify with those peoples.
They are often also referred to as
Native Americans,
First Nations,
Amerigine, and by
Christopher Columbus' geographical mistake
Indians, modernly disambiguated as the American
Indian
race, American Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds,
or Red Indians.
According to the still-debated
New World migration model, a migration of humans
from
Eurasia to the Americas took place via
Beringia, a land bridge which allegedly
connected the two continents across what is now the
Bering Strait. The most recent point at which
this
migration could have taken place is c.
12,000 years ago, with the earliest period remaining
a matter of some unresolved contention.
These early
Paleoamericans soon spread throughout the
Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of
culturally distinct nations and tribes. According to
the oral histories of many of the indigenous peoples of the
Americas, they have been living there since their genesis,
described by a wide range of traditional creation accounts."
Source:
Wikipedia |
