A History of the United States: Chapter 1: The First Americans

Experts in archaeology, the study of ancient peoples, continue to piece together evidence that tells the story of the first Americans.

Archaeologists have learned a lot about the past from artifacts—the tools, weapons, and other objects that early people left behind.

A strait is a narrow body of water that connects two larger ones.

What is the reason for this migration, or movement of people from one area to another? Why did these early Americans travel such distances?

Early peoples were nomads, people who moved from place to place in search of hunting grounds.

The decline in game populations meant that early Americans had to find other sources of food.

Around 10,000 years ago, people in the area now known as Mexico learned to plant an early form of maize, which is a type of corn.

Using a process called carbon dating, scientists can measure the amount of radioactive carbon in an artifact.

They can use this measurement to come up with an estimate of the artifact's age.

Eventually, the groups of people living in the Americas developed their own cultures, or shared traditions and behaviors.

Centuries before the Europeans arrived, great civilizations, or highly developed societies, thrived in Mexico, Central America, and South America.

They also came up with complex methods for tracking time, counting, and writing.

Maya civilization was a theocracy, a society ruled by religious leaders.

The Maya also developed a system of writing that used hieroglyphics, symbols or pictures that represent things, ideas, and sounds.

They dug soil from the bottom of the lake to make causeways, or bridges of earth. These causeways linked the island and the shore.

In order to farm their mountainous lands, the Inca cut terraces, or broad platforms, into steep slopes.

They irrigated, or brought water to, their corn, cotton, and other crops by digging hundreds of miles of channels.

They irrigated, or brought water to, their corn, cotton, and other crops by digging hundreds of miles of channels.

The Ancient Puebloans built great stone dwellings that Spanish explorers later called pueblos, or villages.

Visitors to New Mexico today can still see one of the most spectacular of these ancient settlements, Pueblo Bonito. The huge structure was at least four stories high and had hundreds of rooms.

The Cherokee and Iroquois had formal law codes and formed federations, agreements among different groups to join together.

The different members of the Iroquois League were organized according to clans, or groups of related families.