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First Settlers Of North America Essay

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There have been a wide variety of beliefs about where the first settlers of North America came from (Shultz, Mays, & Winfree, 2010). Shultz, himself, is quoted as admitting that “We will probably never know when the first people stepped foot on what we now call the United States”. With that being said, it is widely believed, at this time, that the paleo-Indians were the first people to settle what we now call North America. Early evidence suggested that these people came south out of what is now known of as Alaska around twelve thousand years ago, in an effort to find viable food sources; however, recent carbon dating suggests otherwise. The new theory is that the early settlers might have arrived in North America via boat from either Asia or even Europe as many as fifteen thousand years ago. Either way, these people are known as the Paleo-Indians. …show more content…

What differentiated these people from each other at the time was their nomadic tendencies and their ability to adapt to the environment in which they chose to reside(Shultz, Mays, & Winfree, 2010). It was not unheard of for each group to pack up and move every three to six days and travel as far as 200 miles each time. Also, as a result of their traveling lifestyles, they had a wide variety of languages and belief systems. Some learned to make weapons from the indigenous rocks and become hunters, while other chose to grown gardens and live off the land by other means. Each culture had a different way of chipping stones to make tools and weapons. Either way, the Paleo-Indians grew in population and spread throughout North

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