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American Indians

American Indians

I. Origins of American Indians
All human societies have versions of their own origins, and the American Indians are no different. Stories of natural or supernatural creation in the Americas or emergence from another world exist among all Indian tribes and, like the biblical narrative in Genesis, are regarded as matters of faith.
Apart from them, and not competing with them, is what is known from the evidence of science and scholarship. Since no remains of a pre-Homo sapiens type have ever been found in the Americas, it is assumed that humans did not evolve in the Western Hemisphere but entered it after the development of modern humans. It is also generally agreed--from the findings of archaeology in Mongolia, Siberia, and North America and studies in physical anthropology, linguistics, and other disciplines--that they came from eastern Asia in one or more migrations, crossing a land bridge that from time to time during the Ice Age connected Siberia with Alaska.
The time of the first arrivals is still in question. During the Wisconsin glacial stage, the last seventy thousand or so years of the Ice Age, the periodic formation of glaciers caused the sea levels to fall as much as three hundred feet. At such times, the retreating waters exposed a vast, flat landmass of tundra and grass (which scholars call Beringia) that extended north and south for up to a thousand miles across the area now covered by the Bering Strait and adjacent seas and provided passage between Asia and North America to migrating animals and humans. Conversely, during periods when the glaciers melted and withdrew, the seas rose again, covering the land bridge and preventing movement by land between the continents.
It is believed that the bridge existed sometime between seventy thousand and thirty thousand years ago; again, continuously, from twenty-five thousand to fifteen thousand years ago; and, once or twice, between approximately fourteen thousand and ten thousand years...