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The big picture Traversence
15,000+ years agoThe first peoples
People have lived on this continent for at least 15,000 years, and footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, are dated to more than 20,000 years ago. Archaeologists trace early arrivals across Beringia, the land that once joined Asia and Alaska, and down the Pacific coast. Many Indigenous nations tell their own histories of origin on this land; hundreds of sovereign tribal nations carry them forward today.
Around 1000 ADNorse voyages
Norse sailors, Leif Erikson among them, reached the coast of Newfoundland. The sagas call the land Vinland; the site at L’Anse aux Meadows is the one confirmed Norse settlement in the Americas.
From 1492The age of exploration
Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492. Explorers from Spain, Portugal, France, England and the Netherlands followed, mapping the coasts and the great river valleys. The encounter that followed brought disease, war and displacement to Indigenous peoples, and reshaped the continent.
Sources: National Park Service, “Peopling of the Americas” · Bennett et al., “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum”, Science, 2021 (White Sands) · Parks Canada, L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site · Library of Congress, “Exploring the Early Americas” · Traversence summary, being reviewed
