The settlement of North America by Europeans. The Settlement of America and the Prehistory of the Indians
Kennewick man
It is quite possible to meet a person with a similar face in any Russian city. And this type will not cause anyone either surprise or memories of overseas countries. Nevertheless, before us is a reconstruction of the face of one of the first Americans, the so-called Kennewick Man.
When on July 28, 1996, James Chatters, an independent forensic archaeologist, was invited to examine a human skeleton discovered on the Columbia River shallows near Kennewick, Washington, USA, he never expected that he would become the author of a sensational discovery. At first, Chatters decided that this was the remains of a 19th-century European hunter, because the skull clearly did not belong to a Native American. However, with the help of radiocarbon analysis, it was possible to establish the age of the remains - 9000 years! Who was the Kennewick man with distinctly European features and how did he come to the New World? Archaeologists in many countries are still scratching their heads over these questions.
If such a find were the only one, one could consider it anomalous and forget about it, as scientists often do with strange artifacts that do not fit into their schemes. But human skeletons, strikingly different from the remains of American Indians, began to come across more and more often. Suffice it to say that when analyzing almost a dozen skulls of the first Americans, anthropologists found only two that showed features characteristic of people from North Asia or Native American Indians.
Everything was much earlier!
The old scheme of colonization of the New World by mammoth hunters from Asia, who moved to North America via a land bridge, which, due to low level sea (glaciers were just beginning to melt) existed in the Bering Strait, began to burst at the seams. This was facilitated by more precise methods determining the age of archaeological finds.
The study of ancient remains continues
Previously, conservative-minded archaeologists did not even want to hear about such finds, whose age exceeded 12 thousand years. The fact is that during the Ice Age the New World long time was fenced off from Asia by huge masses of ice that blocked Alaska and northern Canada. It is unlikely that ancient people would have ventured on a long journey across glaciers, where there was neither food nor the opportunity for even short-term rest. In this icy desert, inevitable death awaited anyone. Only about 12 thousand years ago, according to scientists, the glaciers retreated, making it possible for people to move from Asia to the New World. However, archaeologist R. McNash from Boston University stated back in the 1980s: the hypothesis that man crossed the Bering Strait only 12 thousand years ago should be considered untenable, since there are traces of much more ancient migrations in South America. Even then, stone tools 18 thousand years old were discovered in the Piaui cave (Brazil), and a spear tip stuck in the bone of a mastodon 16 thousand years ago was found in Venezuela. 
In the cave of Piaui
Nakhodki recent years confirmed the seditious statement of R. McNash at the time. Modern methods Radiocarbon determination of the age of artifacts made it possible, in a number of cases, to correct previously stated figures for many ancient settlements. Southern Chile is the most interesting place, which makes scientists think about correcting the old hypothesis.
Here in Monte Verde, a real ancient American camp has been discovered. Hundreds of stone and bone tools, remains of grain, nuts, fruits, crayfish, bird and animal bones, fragments of huts and hearths - all of this is 12.5 thousand years old. Monte Verde is located at a great distance from the Bering Strait, and it is unlikely that people could get here so quickly, based on old scheme colonization of the New World. Archaeologist Dillihay, who is excavating in Monte Verde, believes that this settlement may be much older. Recently he discovered charcoal and stone tools in a layer 30 thousand years old.
Some intrepid archaeologists, putting their reputations on the line, claim to have discovered much older First American sites than Clovis, New Mexico, which was still considered the oldest. In the mid-1980s, archaeologist N. Gidon published his evidence that the drawings in the Pedra Furada cave (Brazil) are 17 thousand years old, and the stone tools are up to 32 thousand years old.
Mysteries of ancient skulls
Also interesting are the latest studies by anthropologists who, with the help of special computer programs can be translated into mathematical language. This concerns the differences in the shapes of the skulls of literally all the peoples of the world. Comparisons of skulls, known as craniometric analysis, can now be used to trace the ancestry of a population group. Anthropologist Doug Ouzley and his colleague Richard Jantz have devoted 20 years to craniometric studies of modern American Indians. But when they examined a number of skulls of the most ancient North Americans, then, to their considerable surprise, they did not find the similarity that they expected. Anthropologists were amazed at how different many of the ancient skulls were from any modern Native American groups. Reconstructions appearance the ancient Americans were more reminiscent of the inhabitants of, say, Indonesia or even Europe. Some of the skulls could be “attributed” to people from South Asia and Australia, and the skull of a caveman aged 9,400 years, extracted from a cave in Western Nevada, most closely resembled the skull of the ancient Ainu (Japan).
Where did these people with long heads and narrow faces come from? After all, they are not the ancestors of modern Indians. These questions now concern many scientists.
Why did they disappear?
Perhaps representatives different nations colonized America, and this process stretched over time. In the end, one ethnic group survived or won the “battle” for the New World, which became the ancestor of modern Indians. The first Americans with elongated skulls may have been exterminated or assimilated into other waves of migrants, or perhaps they died out from famine or epidemics.
An interesting hypothesis is that even Europeans could have been the first Americans. So far this assumption is supported by weak evidence, but it still exists. Firstly, this is the completely European appearance of some ancient Americans, secondly, the features found in their DNA that are characteristic only of Europeans, and thirdly... Archaeologist Dennis Stanford, who studied the technology of making stone tools in ancient site Clovis, decided to look for something similar in other areas of the world. In Siberia, Canada and Alaska, he did not find anything similar. But he found similar stone tools in... Spain. Especially the spearheads resembled the tools of the Solutrean culture, which was widespread in Western Europe in the period 24-16.5 thousand years ago. 
The route by which mammoth hunters came to the American continent is still unknown
In the 1970s, a maritime hypothesis for the colonization of the New World was proposed. Archaeological finds in Australia, Melanesia and Japan indicate that people in coastal areas used boats as early as 25-40 thousand years ago. D. Stanford believes that currents in the ancient ocean could significantly speed up transatlantic navigation. Perhaps some of the first Americans came to the continent by accident. They could, for example, be carried away by storms. It is also assumed that Europeans were quite capable of rowing along the edge of the ice bridge, which during the Ice Age connected England, Iceland, Greenland and North America. True, it is still unclear how successful such a trip could be without suitable areas on the coast for stops and rest.
It is possible that the New World was colonized a very long time ago, but how, scientists have yet to establish. Perhaps the previously proposed scheme for settling the New World through the Bering Strait 12 thousand years ago corresponded to the second most massive wave of migration, which, having swept across the continent, “left behind” the very first conquerors of America.
English colonization of North America.
The difficulties of the first settlers.
Reasons for the colonization of America by Europeans. Relocation conditions.
The first black slaves.
Mayflower Compact (1620).
Active expansion of European colonization.
Anglo-Dutch confrontation in America (1648-1674).
Map of European colonization of North America in the 16th-17th centuries.
Map of the American pioneer expeditions (1675-1800).
English colonization of North America. The first English settlement in America arose in 1607 in Virginia and was named Jamestown. The trading post, founded by crew members of three English ships under the command of Captain K. Newport, simultaneously served as a guard post on the way of the Spanish advance to the north of the continent. The first years of Jamestown's existence were a time of endless disasters and hardships: disease, famine and Indian raids took the lives of more than 4 thousand of the first English settlers of America. But already at the end of 1608, the first ship sailed to England, carrying a cargo of timber and iron ore. Just a few years later, Jamestown turned into a prosperous village thanks to the extensive plantations of tobacco, previously cultivated only by the Indians, established there in 1609, which by 1616 became the main source of income for the residents. Tobacco exports to England, which amounted to 20 thousand pounds sterling in monetary terms in 1618, increased to half a million pounds by 1627, creating the necessary economic conditions for population growth. The influx of colonists was greatly facilitated by the allocation of a 50-acre plot of land to any applicant who had the financial ability to pay a small rent. Already by 1620 the population of the village was approx. 1000 people, and in all of Virginia there were approx. 2 thousand people. In the 80s XVII century tobacco exports from the two southern colonies - Virginia and Maryland (1) increased to 20 million pounds sterling.
The difficulties of the first settlers. Virgin forests, stretching for more than two thousand kilometers along the entire Atlantic coast, abounded in everything necessary for the construction of homes and ships, and the rich nature satisfied the food needs of the colonists. The increasingly frequent visits of European ships to the natural bays of the coast provided them with goods that were not produced in the colonies. IN old light The products of their labor were exported from these same colonies. But the rapid development of the northeastern lands, and even more so the advance into the interior of the continent, beyond the Appalachian Mountains, was hampered by the lack of roads, impenetrable forests and mountains, as well as dangerous neighborhood with Indian tribes that were hostile to newcomers.
The fragmentation of these tribes and the complete lack of unity in their attacks against the colonists became the main reason for the displacement of the Indians from the lands they occupied and their final defeat. The temporary alliances of some Indian tribes with the French (in the north of the continent) and with the Spaniards (in the south), who were also concerned about the pressure and energy of the British, Scandinavians and Germans advancing from the east coast, did not bring the desired results. The first attempts to conclude peace agreements between individual Indian tribes and the English colonists settling in the New World also turned out to be ineffective (2).
Reasons for the colonization of America by Europeans. Relocation conditions. European immigrants were attracted to America by the rich natural resources of the distant continent, which promised rapid provision of material wealth, and its remoteness from the European strongholds of religious dogma and political predilections (3). Not supported by governments or official churches In any country, the exodus of Europeans to the New World was financed by private companies and individuals driven primarily by an interest in generating income from the transportation of people and goods. Already in 1606, the London and Plymouth companies were formed in England, which actively began to develop the northeastern coast of America, including the delivery of English colonists to the continent. Numerous immigrants traveled to the New World with families and even entire communities at their own expense. A significant part of the new arrivals were young women, whose appearance the single male population of the colonies greeted with sincere enthusiasm, paying the costs of their “transportation” from Europe at the rate of 120 pounds of tobacco per head.
Huge, hundreds of thousands of hectares, land were allocated by the British crown for full ownership to representatives of the English nobility as a gift or for a nominal fee. The English aristocracy, interested in the development of their new property, advanced large sums for the delivery of compatriots they recruited and their settlement on the received lands. Despite the extreme attractiveness of the conditions existing in the New World for newly arriving colonists, during these years there was a clear lack of human resources, primarily for the reason that the sea voyage of 5 thousand kilometers was overcome by only a third of the ships and people who embarked on the dangerous journey - two thirds died along the way. The new land was not particularly hospitable, welcoming the colonists with frosts unusual for Europeans and severe natural conditions and, as a rule, the hostile attitude of the Indian population.
The first black slaves. In late August 1619, a Dutch ship arrived in Virginia bringing the first black Africans to America, twenty of whom were immediately purchased by the colonists as servants. Blacks began to turn into lifelong slaves, and in the 60s. XVII century slave status in Virginia and Maryland became hereditary. The slave trade became a permanent feature of commercial transactions between East Africa and the American colonies. African leaders readily traded their people for textiles, household items, gunpowder, and weapons imported from New England (4) and the American South.
Mayflower Compact (1620). In December 1620, an event occurred that went down in American history as the beginning of the purposeful colonization of the continent by the British - the Mayflower ship arrived on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts with 102 Calvinist Puritans, rejected by the traditional Anglican Church and who later did not find sympathy in Holland. These people, who called themselves pilgrims (5), considered the only way to preserve their religion to move to America. While still on board a ship crossing the ocean, they entered into an agreement between themselves, called the Mayflower Compact. It is reflected in the very general form the early American colonists' ideas about democracy, self-government, and civil liberties. These ideas were developed later in similar agreements reached by the colonists of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and in later documents American history, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. Having lost half the members of their community, but surviving on a land they had not yet explored in the harsh conditions of the first American winter and the subsequent crop failure, the colonists set an example for their compatriots and other Europeans who arrived in the New World ready for the hardships that awaited them.
Active expansion of European colonization. After 1630, at least a dozen small towns arose in Plymouth Colony, the first colony of New England, which later became the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in which newly arriving English Puritans settled. Immigration wave 1630-1643 delivered to New England approx. 20 thousand people, at least 45 thousand more, chose the colonies of the American South or the islands of Central America for their place of residence.
For 75 years after the appearance in 1607 in the territory modern USA From the first English colony of Virginia, 12 more colonies arose - New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The credit for their founding did not always belong to the subjects of the British crown. In 1624, on the island of Manhattan in Hudson Bay [named after the English captain G. Hudson (Hudson), who discovered it in 1609, who was in the Dutch service], Dutch fur traders founded a province called New Netherland, with the main city of New Amsterdam. The land on which this city was built was purchased in 1626 by a Dutch colonist from the Indians for $24. The Dutch were never able to achieve any significant socio-economic development of their only colony in the New World.
Anglo-Dutch confrontation in America (1648-1674). After 1648 and until 1674, England and Holland fought three times, and during these 25 years, in addition to military actions, there was a continuous and fierce economic struggle between them. In 1664, New Amsterdam was captured by the British under the command of the king's brother, the Duke of York, who renamed the city New York. During the Anglo-Dutch War of 1673-1674. The Netherlands managed to restore their power in this territory for a short time, but after the defeat of the Dutch in the war, the British again took possession of it. From then until the end of the American Revolution in 1783 from r. Kennebec to Florida, from New England to the Lower South, over the entire northeast coast of the continent fluttered state flag UK Union Jack.
(1) The new British colony was named by King Charles I after his wife Henrietta Maria (Mary), sister French king Louis XIII.
(2) The first of these treaties was concluded only in 1621 between the Plymouth Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indian tribe.
(3) Unlike most English, Irish, French and even Germans, who were forced to move to the New World primarily by political and religious oppression in their homeland, Scandinavian settlers were attracted to North America primarily by its unlimited economic opportunities.
(4) A map of this region of the northeastern part of the continent was first drawn up in 1614 by Captain J. Smith, who gave it the name “New England.”
(5) From Italian. peltegrino - lit., foreigner. Wandering pilgrim, pilgrim, wanderer.
Sources.
Ivanyan E.A.. History of the USA. M., 2006.
History of the settlement of America. Modern science suggests that America was settled from Asia through the Bering Strait during the Upper Paleolithic period, i.e. approximately 30 thousand years ago. At the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in Veracruz and Tabasco, the Mayan-speaking Olmecs created the first civilization in Central America. In this country, almost devoid of building stone, pyramids, stairs and platforms were erected from earth and rubble and covered with a thick layer of clay and plaster. Buildings made of wood and thatch have not survived.
Unique features of Olmec architecture were monolithic basalt pillars in burial crypts, as well as mosaic pavement of cult sites with blocks of semi-precious stones. Olmec sculpture monuments are characterized by realistic features. Excellent examples of monumental Olmec sculpture are the colossal human heads, discovered in La Venta, Tres Zapotes and San Lorenzo.
The height of the head is 2.5 m, the weight is about 30 tons. No body fragments were found from these sculptures. The basalt monolith from which the sculpture is made was delivered from a volcanic quarry 50 km from their location. Moreover, both the Olmecs and the Mayans did not have draft animals. Among the numerous steles found in Olmec settlements, there are images of a jaguar, a woman in peculiar clothing and a high headdress.
There are also images of rulers, priests, deities, human faces with the mouth of a jaguar or fangs of a jaguar in the mouth, a child with the features of a jaguar. In the 7th-2nd centuries. BC e. The Olmecs had a strong cultural influence on neighboring Indian peoples. In the 3rd century. n. e. they suddenly disappeared. Archaeological research in recent years and invented in the 1950s. radiocarbon dating confirmed one of the hypotheses about natural disasters, which periodically occurred in Central America.
Scientists have determined that at the beginning of our era there was a volcanic eruption here, which put an end to further development Indian culture. Huge areas of land were stripped of vegetation and became unsuitable for agriculture, as volcanic ash covered the ground by 20 cm or more. Many rivers disappeared, animals died. The surviving people moved north to related tribes. Archaeological finds confirm that the population there more than doubles in a short period, and features alien to local traditions appear in the local culture - new forms of ceramics, ornaments, including ceramics covered with volcanic dust. An ancient Indian manuscript, the Popol Vuh, describes events similar to a volcanic eruption. Thick tar rained down from the sky. The face of the Earth darkened, and black rain began to fall. Another manuscript, called Chilam-Balam of the Jaguar Prophecies, also contains information about natural disaster A pillar of heaven rose - a sign of the destruction of the world; the living were buried among the sand and sea waves
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The settlement of all continents (except Antarctica) occurred between 40 and 10 thousand years ago. It is obvious that getting to Australia, for example, was only possible by water. The first settlers appeared on the territory of modern New Guinea and Australia about 40 thousand years ago.
By the time Europeans arrived in America, it was inhabited by a large number of Indian tribes. But before today on the territory of both Americas: North and South - not a single Lower Paleolithic site has been found. Therefore, America cannot claim to be the cradle of humanity. People appear here later as a result of migrations.
Perhaps the settlement of this continent by people began about 40 - 30 thousand years ago, as evidenced by the finds of ancient tools discovered in California, Texas and Nevada. Their age, according to the radiocarbon dating method, is 35-40 thousand years. At that time, the ocean level was 60 m lower than today. Therefore, in place of the Bering Strait, there was an isthmus - Beringia, which connected Asia and America during the Ice Age. Currently, there are “only” 90 km between Cape Seward (America) and Eastern Cape (Asia). This distance was overcome by land by the first settlers from Asia. In all likelihood, there were two waves of migration from Asia.
These were tribes of hunters and gatherers. They crossed from one continent to another, apparently chasing herds of animals, in pursuit of the “meat El Dorado.” Hunting, mostly driven, was carried out on large animals: mammoths, horses (they were found in those days on both sides of the ocean), antelope, bison. They hunted from 3 to 6 times a month, since the meat, depending on the size of the animal, could last the tribe for five to ten days. As a rule, young men were also engaged in individual hunting of small animals.
The first inhabitants of the continent led a nomadic lifestyle. It took “Asian migrants” about 18 thousand years to fully develop the American continent, which corresponds to a change of almost 600 generations. Characteristic feature The life of a number of American Indian tribes is the fact that the transition to a sedentary life never happened among them. Until the European conquests, they were engaged in hunting and gathering, and in coastal areas - fishing.
Proof that migration from the Old World took place before the beginning of the Neolithic era is the lack of a potter's wheel, wheeled transport, and metal tools among the Indians (before the arrival of Europeans in America during the period of the Great Geographical Discoveries), since these innovations appeared in Eurasia when the New World was already “isolated” and began to develop independently.
It seems likely that settlement also came from the south. South America. Tribes from Australia could have penetrated here through Antarctica. It is known that Antarctica was by no means always covered with ice. The similarity of representatives of a number of Indian tribes with the Tasmanian and Australoid type is obvious. True, if we adhere to the “Asian” version of the settlement of America, then one does not contradict the other. There is a theory according to which the settlement of Australia was carried out by immigrants from Southeast Asia. It is likely that there was a meeting of two migration flows from Asia in South America.
Penetration into another continent - Australia - occurred at the turn of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Because of the lower sea levels, there must have been “island bridges,” where settlers didn’t just go into the unknown of the open ocean, but moved to another island that they either saw or knew existed. Moving in this way from one island chain of the Malay and Sunda archipelago to another, people eventually found themselves in a certain endemic kingdom of flora and fauna - Australia. Presumably, the ancestral home of Australians was also Asia. But the migration took place so long ago that it is impossible to detect any close relationship between the language of the Australians and any other people. Their physical type is close to the Tasmanians, but the latter were completely exterminated by Europeans by the middle of the 19th century.
Australian society, due to its isolation, has largely stagnated. The aborigines of Australia did not know agriculture, and they only managed to domesticate the dingo dog. For tens of thousands of years, they never emerged from the infant state of humanity; time seemed to stand still for them. Europeans found Australians at the level of hunters and gatherers, wandering from place to place as the feeding landscape became scarce.
The starting point in the exploration of Oceania was Indonesia. It was from here that settlers headed through Micronesia to the central regions of the Pacific Ocean. First, they explored the Tahiti archipelago, then the Marquesas Islands, and then the islands of Tonga and Samoa. Their migration processes were apparently “facilitated” by the presence of a group of coral islands between the Marshall Islands and Hawaii. Nowadays these islands are located at a depth of 500 to 1000 m. The “Asian trace” is indicated by the similarity of the Polynesian and Micronesian languages with the group of Malay languages.
There is also an “American” theory of the settlement of Oceania. Its founder is the monk X. Zuniga. He is in early XIX V. published a scientific work in which he proved that in the tropical and subtropical latitudes of the Pacific Ocean currents and winds from the east dominate, so the South American Indians, “relying” on the forces of nature, were able to reach the islands of Oceania using balsa rafts. The likelihood of such travel has been confirmed by many travelers. But the palm in confirming the theory of the settlement of Polynesia from the east rightfully belongs to the outstanding Norwegian scientist and traveler Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947, just like in ancient times, managed to get from the shores of the city of Callao on the balsa raft “Kon-Tiki” ( Peru) to the Tuamotu Islands.
Apparently, both theories are correct. And the settlement of Oceania was carried out by settlers from both Asia and America.