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Population figures for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before European colonization have been difficult to establish. Estimates have varied widely from as low as 8 million to as many as 100 million, though many scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million by the end of the 20th century. [1] [2]
Before contact with Europeans, the natives of North America were divided into many different polities, from small bands of a few families to large empires. Modern anthropology assigns some larger divisions into various " culture areas ", regions within which a particular set of cultural, political, subsistence and/or linguistic traits predominated.
Although the exact pre-colonization population count of the Americas is unknown, scholars estimate that Indigenous populations diminished by between 80% and 90% during the first centuries of European colonization. Most scholars estimate a pre-colonization population of around 50 million, with other scholars arguing for an estimate of 100 ...
The Cambeba were a populous, organized society in the late pre-Columbian era whose population suffered a steep decline in the early years of the Columbian Exchange. The Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana traversed the Amazon River during the 16th century and reported densely populated regions running hundreds of kilometers along the river.
An example of an Indigenous map is a 2.6-meter long Ojibwe scroll and story detailing the 14th-15th century emigration of the Ojibwe people. It tracks the tribe's journey their original territory in the Zhiiwitaagani-gichigami (Atlantic Ocean) to the Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin (Great Lakes).
The Europeans brought Old World diseases which are thought to have caused catastrophic epidemics and a huge decrease of the native population. Columbus came at a time in which many technical developments in sailing techniques and communication made it possible to report his voyages easily and to spread word of them throughout Europe.
Map of the Americas showing pre-Clovis settlements. Historically, researchers believed a single theory explained the peopling of the Americas, focusing on findings from Blackwater Draw New Mexico, where human artifacts dated from the last ice age were found alongside the remains of extinct animals in 1930s [31] This led to the widespread belief in the "Clovis-first model," proposing that the ...
[77] [78] The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous American populations. [77] Human settlement of the Americas occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the founding population.