History
...generally used to refer to early Native Americans up through the end of the Ice Age (c.8000 B.C.). Most authorities believe they entered North America from Siberia as small bands of migratory big game hunters. Such a journey could have been made by means of a land bridge, known as Beringia (Bering Strait) from Siberia to Alaska
they were nomadic hunters/gatherers of wild plants and migrated with families called bands; they also hunted using stone projectile points attached to wooden shafts to hunt/butcher animals
Clovis Point Hunters - necessity was the mother of invention, as Paleo-Indians had to devise a more efficient technology to feed an increase population and thus invented the Clovis point; these Paleo-Indians migrated from place to place looking for large mammals to kill; they generally built camps near sources of water that attracted game animals and houses in Clovis villages were arranged in a half-circle with doors opening toward the south so inhabitants could avoid the chill from the north wind
Paleo-Indians lifestyle change - nomadic lifestyle changed at end of "Ice Age" as large mammals disappeared; they thus had to find an alternative to meat (necessity is the mother of invention) for survival and turned to agriculture (maize, beans, squash, peppers); results of this change allowed human population to increase and for people to settle down in villages (nomadic hunters and gatherers changed to village farmers)
Windover site in Florida
Mayas, Incas, Aztecs
Mayas
mountains, deserts, rainforests in the Yucaton Peninsula (Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Mexico)
had pyramids, temples, plazas
educated people as they created first system of hieroglyphic writing in North and South America, developed system of mathematics (discovered number zero), studied astronomy and could calculate beginnings of eclipses and seasons as...
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