The American Promise

Essay # 1

Despite of the fact that most studies of American history begin with the year 1492, Asian people and their descendants have lived in the Americas for at least 10,000 to 12,000 years. The development of the ancient civilizations before 1492 has been discussed below.

The time period before Christopher Columbus entered America in 1492, is known as the Pre-Columbian era. Many civilizations that lived in American before Columbus discovered America already had settlements that were permanent and urban. Moreover, they had grown agriculture and their architecture was civic and monumental. Besides this, substantial earthworks were also done and the population that lived there had complex societal hierarchies. Many of these civilizations had faded before the Europeans reached America in the late 15th and the early 16 century. Archaeological investigations discovered all this, and, this is the reason why the people know about it today. The other kinds of civilizations were found in the Colonial period, and these have also been described in the historical accounts. Some of the civilizations such as “Maya” had their own records written, and this was because the Europeans destroyed most of the records and texts in the pyres. This resulted in very few documents that survived and these also tell us about ancient culture as well as knowledge. The societies and the cultures that existed before 1492 in the Americas were totally different from what it is today. However, there are still some people who have maintained the traditions of their descendents, and practices but they have also adopted some modern ones along with those (Assersohn, pp. 10).

The population structure in America can be discovered because of DNA micro-satellite markers. This tells that the population had genetic diversity, and they were from different places such as from North, Central, and South America. However, lower genetic diversity was shown by the Amerindian populations than the populations that lived in the continental regions. Bering Strait and Siberian populations from Alaska had the similar genetic diversities which decreased. Level of diversity was high in western South America than in the eastern part of South America but, the level of the population was low.

Lack of differentiation was also found in the Mesoamerican and Andean populations. This also implied that the coastal routes made it easy for people to migrate and to travel within the inland routes. This showed that America was colonized by a few individuals, size ...