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Geological deposits that accumulated for millennia. But archaeologists’ careful study of the rare ancient artifacts that have been discovered has revealed much about the long, complex history of ancient Americans. The story is necessarily incomplete and controversial because evidence that would resolve uncertainties and settle disputes no longer exists or awaits discovery. But archaeologists have learned enough in the last eighty years to understand where ancient Americans came from and many basic features of the complex cultures they created and passed along to their descendants, some of whom stood on the beach of a small island in the Caribbean in 1492 and watched Christopher Columbus and his men row ashore.

The austere visage evokes the long history of these peoples and their impressive achievements. com. Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Cat. no. 273. 2 CHAPTER Ancient America BEFORE 1492 GEORGE McJUNKIN, THE MANAGER OF THE CROWFOOT RANCH near Folsom, New Mexico, rode out to mend fences and to look for missing cattle after a violent rainstorm in August 1908. An American of African descent, McJunkin had been born a slave in Texas and had been riding horses since he was a boy. After he became free at the end of the Civil War in 1865, McJunkin worked as a cowboy in Colorado and New Mexico before becoming the Crowfoot manager in 1891.

African and Asian Origins Human beings lived elsewhere in the world for hundreds of thousands of years before they reached the Western Hemisphere. They lacked a way to travel to the Western Hemisphere because millions of years before humans existed anywhere on the globe, North and South America became detached from the gigantic common landmass scientists now call Pangaea. 1). This process of continental drift encircled the land of the Western Hemisphere with large oceans that isolated it from the other continents long before early human beings (Homo erectus) first appeared in Africa about two million years ago.