The agricultural communities, in purple, tended to be more settled and more densely populated, because agriculture requires fixed infrastructure but can also support more people. This map, for example, shows the basic economics of pre-Columbus America. But what we do know still tells an interesting story. The history of North America before European contact is recorded spottily if there was an ancient American Marco Polo who traveled across the continent recording observations about life across societies, his or her work was lost in the European invasions. However, newer research shows that there may have been a second route: fantastically brave Polynesians who crossed the South Pacific in canoes, bringing tools, chickens, and certain plants with them.ģ) Economic activity in pre-Columbus North America The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society Many arrived by walking, very slowly over many generations, up to the northeast extreme of Asia and then crossing a land bridge, since submerged by ocean, that reached to Alaska. Humans are relative newcomers to the Americas: the rest of the world had been settled for tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer, when the first migrants crossed from Asia into the New World. So much of America’s history has been about movement - centuries of migration and settlement and, finally, agglomeration - and geography and ecology have greatly influenced how that played out.Ģ) First human migration to the Americas New Scientist This map shows how North America’s geography, climate, and wildlife have produced its different ecoregions, coded by color, from the wooded plains of the Northeast to the enormous semi-arid prairies at the continent’s center to the plateau deserts of the Southwest. The vast size and ecological diversity of the North American continent, the third largest on Earth, has played a central role in determining how it was settled and developed over millennia. The original Americans 1) Ecoregions of North America Commission for Environmental Cooperation Here’s a glance at America’s past and present, in 70 maps. But America is a complex nation with a long and fascinating history that could never be captured in a single frame. In one sense, mapping the United States should be a simple matter of displaying borders and geography. It has a history of political revolution and social progress, as well as a legacy of slavery and genocide. It is the world’s most powerful country, and one of the largest. The United States of America is many things.
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