How old is the New World. Mysteries of the settlement of America. How did the development (settlement) of America, Oceania, Australia
From school years, everyone knows that America was settled by Asians who moved there in small groups across the Bering Isthmus (at the site of the current strait). They settled in the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this coherent theory. It turns out that America was settled more than once, it was done by some strange peoples, related almost to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear on what transport the first "Indians" reached the extreme south of the New World. Lenta.ru tried to figure out the mysteries of the settlement of America.
First went
Until the end of the 20th century, the “Clovis first” hypothesis dominated American anthropology, according to which it was this culture of ancient mammoth hunters that appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago that was the most ancient in the New World. According to this hypothesis, people who got to Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow here, but then the path to the south was blocked by glaciers until a period of 14-16 thousand years ago, due to which settlement in the Americas began only after the end of the last glaciation.
The hypothesis was coherent and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century some discoveries were made that were incompatible with it. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a strong reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture was 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.
Most American anthropologists simply denied the scientific credibility of the find. Already during the excavations, Delai faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for excavations and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archeology. Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm the dating at 14,000 years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time, there were no places of such ancient settlement in North America, which raised the question of where exactly people could get to Chile.
Recently, the Chileans suggested that Delea continue excavations. Influenced by the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he initially refused. "I was fed up" - explained his position as a scientist. However, in the end he agreed and found tools at the MVI site, undoubtedly man-made, whose antiquity was 14.5-19 thousand years.
History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the findings. In his opinion, the finds can be simple stones, remotely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.
Photo: Tom Dillehay / Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Seaside nomads
To understand how justified the criticism of the new work, we turned to the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (Moscow State University). According to him, the tools found are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials that are not found in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such items cannot be of natural origin.
The scientist noted that the systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: "When you teach in school and university that America was inhabited in a certain way, it is not so easy to give up this point of view."
Image: Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center
The conservatism of American researchers is also understandable: on the territory North America the recognized finds are thousands of years later than the period given by Delea. And what about the theory that before the melting of the glacier, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not settle south?
However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along Canada's present-day Pacific coast were not glacier-covered, and there are remains of bears from ice age. This means that people could well spread along the coast, swimming across in boats and not going deep into the then inhospitable North America.
Australian footprint
However, the fact that the first reliable finds of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile does not end with the oddities of the settlement of America. Not so long ago, it turned out that the genes of the Aleuts and groups of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Australian Aborigines. As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists are well combined with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features close to Australian ones. In his opinion, most likely, the Australian trace in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which moved to Australia tens of thousands of years ago, while the other migrated along the coast of Asia to the north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent. .
As if that wasn't enough, 2013 genetic studies showed that the Brazilian Botakudo Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to the Polynesians and part of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could well have reached South America by sea. At the same time, traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain. It turns out that a small group of Polynesian navigators, for some reason, did not return after landing, but overcame the Andean highlands, which were unusual for them, in order to settle in Brazil. One can only guess about the motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical sailors.
So, a small part of the American natives have traces of genes that are very far from the genome of the rest of the Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.
good old
However, there are more radical deviations from the idea of settling America in one wave and only after the melting of the glacier. In the 1970s, the Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the Pedra Furada cave site (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many bonfires, the age of which was shown by radiocarbon analysis to be from 30 to 48 thousand years. It is easy to understand that such figures caused great rejection by North American anthropologists. The same Deley criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could remain after a fire of natural origin. Gidon reacted sharply to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American: “Fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more.”
Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to challenge the dating of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, then where did they go then and where are the traces of their stay in other parts of the New World?
Image: USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. This is what happened to Homo sapiens who settled in Asia. Their first traces there date back to the period up to 125 thousand years ago, however, genetic data say that all of humanity came from a population that left Africa much later - only 60 thousand years ago. There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to exceed the combined yield of all the combined nuclear weapons ever created by mankind.
However, even an event is more powerful nuclear war it is difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis, who lived relatively close to Toba, died out from the explosion. And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not die out at that time, traces of which are in the genes modern people while for some reason it is not observed. Thus, the question of where the people who settled 40 thousand years ago in South America could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds of the Pedra Furada type.
Genetics vs genetics
Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, the Maanasa Raghavan group from the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen announced that the data of genetic analysis refute the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers participated in the settlement of America. According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later than 9,000 years ago, when America was already inhabited by immigrants from Asia.
Europeans of America
In the USA there is German America, French America, Chinese America, Russian, Polish, Jewish America, etc. The biggest one is certainly German America. The descendants of immigrants from Germany make up at least 17% of the population of the entire United States. There are especially many of them in Texas, California and Pennsylvania, although there are states - for example, Ohio, Nebraska, both Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa - where the heirs of the Germans make up more than a third of the state's population. German America produced not only President Dwight Eisenhower, but also Generals John Pershing and Norman Schwarzkopf, as well as many entrepreneurs and inventors, including the Rockefeller family, the Anheuser and Bush beer magnates, Donald Trump, William Boeing, Walter Chrysler, and George Westinghouse. Only in late XIX in. from Russian Empire more than 100 thousand Volga Germans moved to America. At one time, the German language was so widespread here that America could have become a German-speaking, and not an English-speaking country - then world history, most likely, would have developed in a completely different way.
In less than the last two centuries, about 6 million Italians have moved to the United States, and 80% of them came from southern regions Italy, especially Sicily. The Italians had a huge impact on America, which was not limited to the popularity of Italian restaurants. Today, almost 18 million Americans (6% of the country's population) have Italian roots and consider themselves the heirs of Italian immigrants. Rudolph Giuliani, Vince Lombardi and Madonna, Lady Gaga, Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett, Susan Sarandon, Nicolas Cage and Danny DeVito, John Travolta, Al Pacino and Liza Minnelli, Francis Ford Coppola and Marisa Tomei. You can remember the famous Italian mafia in the USA, with which Russians are familiar from The Godfather and The Soprano Family. There are two Italians sitting on the US Supreme Court today. Immigrants from Italy strengthened large group adherents of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, which partly made it possible for John F. Kennedy to become president, although he himself belonged to the descendants of Irish immigrants. Kennedy is still the only Catholic president in the history of the country.
The Irish aspect of today's American life is hard to miss for anyone who has been in the US for even a short time. Irish bars, names, music and elements of everyday life are deeply embedded in American life. Almost 12% of the country's population write themselves down during the census as the heirs of Irish settlers. Seven of those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were Irish. Twenty-two American presidents were of the same blood - from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama, whose maternal ancestry has Irish ancestors, and besides them, Bushy's father and son, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman ... By the way, the Irish-American landowner Charles Lynch at the end of the 18th century. went down in history as Godfather» unconventional execution, which is still called lynching. Of the three hundred and thirty-two languages spoken in the United States in surveys, Irish now ranks sixty-sixth simply because many native speakers have adapted to American English. The Irish also joined the ranks of the Catholics, although a small part of them, together with the Scottish immigrants from Great Britain, became Protestants.
About 10 million Americans, that is, more than 3% of the country's population, are of Polish origin. Although the first Poles arrived in the United States as early as early XVII century, the main number of immigrants fled here in the late XIX - early XX century. from the Russian Empire, as well as from the Austrian and German occupations. Among them were many Jews and Ukrainians. As a result, "Polish Americans" became the largest group of Slavic emigrants from Eastern Europe. In 2000, about 700,000 people in the US named Polish, rather than English, as their mother tongue. Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Kazimir Pulatsky became heroes of America during the years of the struggle for independence, statues were erected to both of them in Washington. General Pulatsky generally entered the history of the country as the "father of the American cavalry." Poles in the US are Catholic and play a big role in local religious movements, and there is even a Polish Museum of America in Chicago.
Of the well-known representatives of the Polish people, every educated American knows Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Advisor from 1977-1981. with President Jimmy Carter, Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Lisa Kudrow from Friends, actors Paul Newman, Natalie Portman, William Shatner, artist Max Weber, film producers Samuel Goldwyn and the Warner Brothers, director Stanley Kubrick , singer Eminem. However, for some reason, it was the Poles who in America became the characters of jokes about stupid, narrow-minded and poorly educated people. They, in fact, are the American analogue of the Chukchi from Russian jokes. If you tell an American any anecdote about the Chukchi - replacing, of course, the word "Chukchi" with the word "Eskimo", he will not understand what the salt is. If the word "Chukchi" is replaced by the word "Pole", then the American will laugh just like a Russian at a joke about the Chukchi. Why it happened in America, I could not find out. The main version told to me is that at one time many poorly educated and naive Polish peasants emigrated to America, who began to symbolize a kind of local “Chukchi”. I don’t know about education, but, as it seemed to me, no one ever considered the Poles naive, except maybe Ivan Susanin.
Despite the external hostility that the French often show towards Americans, the reality of America is that about 12 million people in the country consider themselves French, and almost 2 million speak French at home. In Louisiana, about half a million speak Creole, which is based on a simplified version of French. Many people moved to the US from the French part of Canada.
The French minority in the US is less visible because many of its members identify with the Creole and Cajun (in Louisiana) ethnic groups rather than with France proper. The number of Franco-Americans increased dramatically after the American purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803 (not to be confused with the current US state of Louisiana). Through this purchase, America acquired, in whole or in part, fifteen of its present states and two Canadian provinces. Today, New Hampshire is the only state where people with French roots make up more than a quarter of the population, with the largest numbers living in California, Louisiana and Massachusetts. Most Franco-Americans are Catholics.
During the exploration of American territory French was no less common than English and German, and in many places was the main language of the pioneers. Anyone who has traveled the US knows that the country is covered in French names – the states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Delaware, Maine and Illinois, Oregon and Wisconsin… Warren Buffett, Louis Chevrolet, King Gillett, the DuPont family, Jessica Alba, brothers have French roots. Baldwin, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Jim Carrey, acting family Duval, Matt LeBlanc from Friends, Patrick Swayze... French blood flowed and flows in the veins of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and William Taft, writer Jack Kerouac and others.
One of the first to the territory of the current United States began to move immigrants from Spain. Their presence has been recorded since 1565. However, most Hispanic immigrants to the United States came from Latin America, especially Mexico and Puerto Rico. Today it is the largest ethnic group in the US among Romance speakers. It is believed that there are more than 24 million people. Spanish was the first language spoken by immigrants from Europe, but then English began to take over. Today, Spanish is the second main language of the United States, behind English in terms of prevalence, but ahead of any other languages spoken by the inhabitants of the country.
There is no need to talk about the influence of Spanish culture on American. Spanish (and Latin American) cuisine, traditions, holidays, customs and life, without exaggeration, have become one of the foundations of American life. The fact that Americans have long been associated with cowboys, which originated in medieval Spain, speaks for itself. The largest number The Hispanic minority lives in the states of California, New York, Texas and Florida, but the Hispanic names densely cover the map of the country. These are, for example, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Nevada, thousands and thousands of town names and settlements, rivers and hills, nature reserves and mountain ranges. As for the list of Americans with Spanish roots who entered the history and culture of the United States, it is very long. These are actors from Salma Hayek and Cameron Diaz to Martin and Charlie Sheen, and musicians from Julio Iglesias and Kurt Cobain to Jerry Garcia and Gloria Estefan, politicians and writers, religious figures and athletes.
Another ethnic group that appeared on the territory of America among the first were the Dutch. History records the founding date of the first Dutch settlement in the New World - 1613. Today, about 6 million Americans consider themselves descendants of Dutch settlers. Most live in Michigan, Montana, Ohio, California and Minnesota.
Of course, I did not set out to describe in this book the history of the development of America by the Dutch and the relationship of the new state with the Netherlands, but I will note that it was the Dutch who first began to celebrate US independence in 1776 and taught other Americans to salute their national flag. The story of the 1626 purchase of the Manhattan peninsula for $24 has been recounted many times, but areas of New York still retain their Dutch names. Many words have passed from the same language into American English, including the word "Yankee". Some American philologists convincingly argue that it was from the old Dutch language that the definite article came into English. the, as well as many necessary words - "house", "street", "book", "pen", etc. The Dutch community plays an important role in the life of the Reformed Church of America and a number of other religious associations.
Three people had Dutch roots American presidents, and one of them - Martin van Buuren, the eighth president of the United States - was a real Dutchman. By the way, he turned out to be the only president of the country for whom English was a second language, that is, a non-native language. Prior to this, van Buuren also managed to visit the eighth vice president and tenth US secretary of state. Many "Dutch Americans" have entered the history of the United States, for example, Willem de Kooning, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, the Vanderbild family, Christina Aguilera, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, Henry and Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Dick van Dyck, director CIA General David Petraeus, Thomas Edison, Walter Cronkite, Anderson Cooper and many others. For some reason, it is a popular tradition in America to make the Dutch the heroes of many films - thus, as a result, they are present in both Titanic and The Simpsons.
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Subtitles
The history of the discovery of America by Europeans
Pre-Columbian era
Currently, there are a number of theories and studies that make it highly likely that European travelers reached the shores of America long before the expeditions of Columbus. However, there is no doubt that these contacts did not lead to the creation of long-term settlements or the establishment of strong ties with the new continent, and thus did not have a significant impact on the historical and political processes in both the Old and New Worlds.
Travels of Columbus
Colonization of South and Central America in the 17th century
Chronology major events:
- - Christopher Columbus lands on the island.
- - Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda reach the mouth of the Amazon.
- - Vespucci, after the second journey, finally comes to the conclusion that the open continent is not part of India.
- - After a 100-day trek through the jungles of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, he crosses the Isthmus of Panama and reaches the Pacific coast for the first time.
- - Juan Ponce de Leon goes in search of the legendary Fountain of Youth. Having failed in reaching the object of search, he, nevertheless, discovers deposits of gold. Names the Florida peninsula and declares it a Spanish possession.
- - Fernando Cortez enters Tenochtitlan, captures the Emperor Montezuma, thereby starting the conquest of the Aztec empire. His triumph leads to 300 years of Spanish rule in Mexico and Central America.
- - Pascual de Andogoya discovers Peru.
- - Spain establishes a permanent military base and settlement in Jamaica.
- - Francisco Pizarro invades Peru, destroys thousands of Indians and conquers the Inca Empire, the most powerful state of South American Indians. A huge number of Incas die from chickenpox brought by the Spaniards.
- - Spanish settlers found Buenos Aires, but after five years they were forced to leave the city under the onslaught of the Indians.
Colonization of North America (XVII -XVIII centuries)
But at the same time, the balance of power in the Old World began to change: the kings spent the streams of silver and gold flowing from the colonies, and had little interest in the economy of the metropolis, which, under the weight of an inefficient, corrupt administrative apparatus, clerical dominance and lack of incentives for modernization, began to lag behind more and more. from the booming economy of England. Spain gradually lost the status of the main European superpower and mistress of the seas. Many years of war in the Netherlands, huge funds spent on the fight against the Reformation throughout Europe, the conflict with England hastened the decline of Spain. The last straw was the death of the Invincible Armada in 1588. After the English admirals, and more so in a violent storm, destroyed the largest fleet of the time, Spain fell into the shadows, never to recover from this blow.
Leadership in the "relay race" of colonization passed to England, France and Holland.
English colonies
The well-known chaplain Gakluyt acted as the ideologist of the English colonization of North America. In and 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh, by order of Queen Elizabeth I of England, made two attempts to establish a permanent settlement in North America. The reconnaissance expedition reached the American coast in 1584 and named the open coast of Virginia (eng. Virginia - "Virgin") in honor of the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I, who never married. Both attempts ended in failure - the first colony, based on Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia, was on the verge of collapse due to Indian attacks and lack of supplies and was evacuated by Sir Francis Drake in April 1587. In July of the same year, a second expedition of 117 colonists landed on the island. It was planned that ships with equipment and food would arrive in the colony in the spring of 1588. However, according to different reasons the supply expedition was delayed by almost a year and a half. When she arrived at the place, all the buildings of the colonists were intact, but no traces of people, with the exception of the remains of one person, were found. The exact fate of the colonists has not been established to this day.
At the beginning of the 17th century, private capital entered the business. In 1605, two joint-stock companies received licenses from King James I to establish colonies in Virginia. It should be borne in mind that at that time the term "Virginia" denoted the entire territory of the North American continent. The first of these companies was the London Virginia Company. Virginia Company of London) - received the rights to the south, the second - the "Plymouth Company" (eng. Plymouth Company) - to the northern part of the continent. Despite the fact that both companies officially proclaimed the spread of Christianity as the main goal, the license they received granted them the right to "search and mine gold, silver and copper by all means."
On December 20, 1606, the colonists set sail aboard three ships, and after a difficult, almost five-month voyage, during which several dozen people died of starvation and disease, in May 1607 they reached Chesapeake Bay (Eng. Chesapeake Bay). Over the next month, they built a wooden fort, named after King Fort James (English pronunciation of the name Jacob). The fort was later renamed Jamestown, the first permanent British settlement in America.
The official historiography of the United States considers Jamestown the cradle of the country, the history of the settlement and its leader, Captain John Smith (Eng. John Smith of Jamestown) has been covered in many serious studies and works of art. The latter, as a rule, idealize the history of the city and the pioneers who inhabited it (for example, the popular cartoon Pocahontas). In fact, the first years of the colony were extremely difficult, in the hungry winter of 1609-1610. out of 500 colonists, no more than 60 survived, and, according to some accounts, the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism in order to survive the famine.
American stamp issued for the tercentenary of the founding of Jamestown
In subsequent years, when the issue of physical survival was no longer so acute, the two most important problems were strained relations with the indigenous population and the economic feasibility of the existence of the colony. To the disappointment of the shareholders of the London Virginia Company, neither gold nor silver was found by the colonists, and the main commodity produced for export was ship timber. Despite the fact that this product was in some demand in the metropolis, which had depleted its forests in order, the profit, as well as from other attempts economic activity, was minimal.
The situation changed in 1612, when the farmer and landowner John Rolfe (Eng. John Rolfe) managed to cross a local variety of tobacco grown by the Indians with varieties imported from Bermuda. The resulting hybrids were well adapted to the Virginia climate and at the same time suited the tastes of English consumers. The colony acquired a source of reliable income and for many years tobacco became the basis of the economy and exports of Virginia, and the phrases "Virginia tobacco", "Virginia blend" are used as characteristics of tobacco products to this day. Five years later, tobacco exports amounted to 20,000 pounds, a year later it was doubled, and by 1629 it reached 500,000 pounds. John Rolfe rendered another service to the colony: in 1614 he managed to negotiate peace with the local Indian chief. The peace treaty was sealed by marriage between Rolf and the leader's daughter, Pocahontas.
In 1619, two events occurred that had a significant impact on the entire subsequent history of the United States. This year Governor George Yardley George Yeardley) decided to transfer part of the power Council of Burghers(English) House of Burgesses), thus founding the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. The first meeting of the council took place on July 30, 1619. In the same year, a small group of Africans of Angolan origin was acquired by the colonists. Although formally they were not slaves, but had long-term contracts without the right to terminate, it is customary to count the history of slavery in America from this event.
In 1622, almost a quarter of the population of the colony was destroyed by the rebellious Indians. In 1624, the license of the London Company, whose affairs had fallen into decay, was revoked, and from that time Virginia became a royal colony. The governor was appointed by the king, but the colony council retained significant powers.
Settlement of New England
In 1497, several expeditions to the island of Newfoundland, associated with the names of the Cabots, laid the foundation for the claims of England to the territory of modern Canada.
In 1763, under the Treaty of Paris, New France came into the possession of Great Britain and became the province of Quebec. Rupert's Land (the area around Hudson Bay) and Prince Edward Island were also British colonies.
Florida
In 1763, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in exchange for control of Havana, which the British occupied during the Seven Years' War. The British divided Florida into East and West and began to attract immigrants. For this, the settlers were offered land and financial support.
In 1767, the northern boundary of West Florida was substantially moved, so that West Florida included parts of the present-day territories of the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
During the American Revolutionary War, Britain retained control of East Florida, but Spain was able to take over West Florida through an alliance with France at war with England. Under the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 between Great Britain and Spain, all of Florida was ceded to Spain.
Caribbean Islands
The first English colonies appeared in Bermuda (1612), St. Kitts (1623) and Barbados (1627) and were then used to colonize other islands. In 1655, Jamaica, taken from the Spanish Empire, was under the control of the British.
Central America
In 1630, British agents founded the Providence Company. (Providence Company), whose president was the Earl of Warwick, and the secretary was John Pym, occupied two small islands near the Mosquito Coast and established friendly relations with the locals. From 1655 to 1850, England, and then Great Britain, claimed a protectorate over the Miskito Indians, but numerous attempts to establish colonies were unsuccessful, and the protectorate was disputed by Spain, the Central American republics and the United States. The objections from the United States were caused by fears that England would gain an advantage in connection with the proposed construction of a canal between the two oceans. In 1848, the capture of the city of Greytown (now called San Juan del Norte) by the Miskito Indians, with the support of the British, caused great excitement in the United States and almost led to war. However, by signing the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, both powers pledged not to strengthen, colonize, or dominate any part of Central American territory. In 1859, Great Britain transferred the protectorate to Honduras.
The first English colony on the banks of the Belize River was established in 1638. In the middle of the 17th century, other English settlements were established. Later, British settlers began harvesting logwood, from which a substance used in the manufacture of dyes for fabrics was extracted and had great importance for the wool spinning industry in Europe (see article Belize#History).
South America
In 1803, Britain captured the Dutch settlements in Guiana, and in 1814, under the Treaty of Vienna, officially received the lands, united in 1831 under the name of British Guiana.
In January 1765, British captain John Byron explored Saunders Island at the eastern tip of the Falkland Islands and announced that it was annexed to Great Britain. Captain Byron named the bay on Saunders Port Egmont. Here in 1766 Captain McBride founded an English settlement. In the same year, Spain acquired French possessions in the Falklands from Bougainville and, having consolidated its power here in 1767, appointed a governor. In 1770, the Spanish attacked Port Egmont and drove the British off the island. This led to the fact that the two countries were on the brink of war, but a later peace treaty allowed the British to return to Port Egmont in 1771, while neither Spain nor Great Britain abandoned their claims to the islands. In 1774, on the eve of the impending American War of Independence, Great Britain in unilaterally left many of her overseas possessions, including Port Egmont. Leaving the Falklands in 1776, the British installed a commemorative plaque here to confirm their rights to this territory. From 1776 until 1811, a Spanish settlement remained on the islands, administered from Buenos Aires as part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. In 1811, the Spaniards left the islands, also leaving a tablet here to prove their rights. After declaring independence in 1816, Argentina claimed the Falklands as its own. In January 1833, the British again landed in the Falklands and notified the Argentine authorities of their intention to restore their power on the islands.
Timeline of the founding of the English colonies
- 1607 - Virginia (Jamestown)
- 1620 - Massachusetts (Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Settlement)
- 1626 - New York
- 1633 - Maryland
- 1636 - Rhode Island
- 1636 - Connecticut
- 1638 - Delaware
- 1638 - New Hampshire
- 1653 - North Carolina
- 1663 - South Carolina
- 1664 - New Jersey
- 1682 - Pennsylvania
- 1732 - Georgia
French colonies
By 1713, New France was at its largest. It included five provinces:
- Acadia (modern New Scotland and New Brunswick).
- Hudson's Bay (present-day Canada)
- Louisiana (the central part of the USA, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans), subdivided into two administrative regions: Lower Louisiana and Illinois (fr. le Pays des Illinois).
Spanish colonies
The Spanish colonization of the New World dates back to the discovery of America by the Spanish navigator Columbus in 1492, which Columbus himself recognized eastern part Asia, the east coast or China, or Japan, or India, because the name West Indies was assigned to these lands. The search for a new route to India is dictated by the development of society, industry and trade, the need to find large reserves of gold, for which demand has risen sharply. Then it was believed that in the "land of spices" it should be a lot. The geopolitical situation in the world changed and the old eastern routes to India for Europeans, which passed through the lands now occupied by the Ottoman Empire, became more dangerous and difficult to pass, meanwhile there was a growing need for the realization of a different trade with this rich land. Then some already had the idea that the earth was round and that India could be reached from the other side of the Earth - by sailing west from the then known world. Columbus made 4 expeditions to the region: the first - 1492 -1493 - the discovery of the Sargasso Sea, the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, Tortuga, the foundation of the first village in which he left 39 of his sailors. He declared all the lands to be possessions of Spain; the second (1493-1496) years - the complete conquest of Haiti, the discovery
"Canada" - The volume of falling water reaches 5700 or more m? / s. Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Fauna. It borders the USA, Denmark and France. Area - 9984 thousand square meters. km. (second place in the world). Until 1855 it was called Bytown. Heather, sedge, shrub birch and willow grow here. These include the Notre Dame mountains, the Shikshok massif, the Kibkid mountains.
"Discovery of North America" - Negroids. Mongoloids. Mulattos. Population. Caucasians. Key dates of geographical discoveries in America. People from Europe and Africa. Eskimos. Metis. The past. Traveling North America. Indigenous. Sambo. Indians. History of discovery and research.
"Mainland North America" - Mission: Identify average temperature July for all climatic zones. The Cordilleras are rich in both sedimentary and igneous minerals. Christopher Columbus-Bahamas and Antilles, pool caribbean. In summer, the temperature depends on the latitude of the area and increases when moving from north to south.
"North America Geography" - "Guiana Triangle". dominant religions. Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism. Latin America. Northern part of the USA. Catholicism, Protestantism. Colonization - development Colonists - settlers. Mesoamerica. The name of the subregion. Traditional beliefs, Protestantism. Geography of cultures of modern America.
"North America" - The peoples and countries of North America. Most residents speak English language. The large Mackenzie River belongs to the Arctic Ocean basin. West. The Colorado River belongs to the Pacific Ocean. The cave has underground rivers associated with the Green River system. In Canada - in English and French, in Mexico and Central America - mainly in Spanish.
Natural Areas of North America - Working with the Geo 7 Disk 1. Open the Geo 7 folder on your desktop. Determine the geographical location of natural areas. Main content: Climate. Author: teacher of geography of the municipal educational institution "Poyarkovskaya secondary school No. 2" Gladchenko G.V. Tundra-marsh. Group work. Wolverine, skunk, raccoon, gray squirrel. Soils. Chestnut chernozems.
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From the school bench we are told that America settled by the inhabitants of Asia, who moved there in groups through the Bering Isthmus (in the place where the strait is now). They settled in the New World after a huge glacier began to melt 14-15 thousand years ago. Did the indigenous population of America really come to the mainland (more precisely, two continents) in this way?!
However, recent discoveries by archaeologists and geneticists have shaken this coherent theory. It turns out that America was inhabited repeatedly, some strange peoples did this, almost related to the Australians, and besides, it is not clear on what transport the first "Indians" reached the extreme south of the New World.
The population of America. First version
Until the end of the 20th century, the “Clovis first” hypothesis dominated American anthropology, according to which it was this culture of ancient mammoth hunters that appeared 12.5-13.5 thousand years ago that was the most ancient in the New World.
According to this hypothesis, people who got to Alaska could survive on ice-free land, because there was quite a bit of snow here, but then the path to the south was blocked by glaciers until a period of 14-16 thousand years ago, due to which settlement in the Americas began only after the end of the last glaciation.
The hypothesis was coherent and logical, but in the second half of the 20th century some discoveries were made that were incompatible with it. In the 1980s, Tom Dillehay, during excavations in Monte Verde (southern Chile), found that people had been there at least 14.5 thousand years ago. This caused a strong reaction from the scientific community: it turned out that the discovered culture was 1.5 thousand years older than Clovis in North America.
In order not to rewrite students and not change their view of the characteristics of the American population, most American anthropologists simply denied the find scientific reliability. Already during the excavations, Delai faced a powerful attack on his professional reputation, it came to the closure of funding for excavations and attempts to declare Monte Verde a phenomenon not related to archeology.
Only in 1997 did he manage to confirm the dating at 14,000 years, which caused a deep crisis in understanding the ways of settling America. At that time, there were no places of such ancient settlement in North America, which raised the question of where exactly people could get to Chile.
Recently, the Chileans suggested that Delea continue excavations. Influenced by the sad experience of twenty years of excuses, he initially refused. “I was fed up,” the scientist explained his position. However, in the end he agreed and found tools at the MVI site, undoubtedly man-made, whose antiquity was 14.5-19 thousand years.
History repeated itself: archaeologist Michael Waters immediately questioned the findings. In his opinion, the finds can be simple stones, remotely similar to tools, which means that the traditional chronology of the settlement of America is still out of danger.
Delays found "guns"
Seaside nomads
To understand how justified the criticism of the new work, we turned to the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky (Moscow State University). According to him, the tools found are indeed very primitive (processed on one side), but made from materials that are not found in Monte Verde. Quartz for a significant part of them had to be brought from afar, that is, such items cannot be of natural origin.
The scientist noted that the systematic criticism of discoveries of this kind is quite understandable: "When you teach in school and university that America was inhabited in a certain way, it is not so easy to give up this point of view."
Mammoths in Beringia
The conservatism of American researchers is also understandable: in North America, the recognized finds date back thousands of years after the period indicated by Delea. And what about the theory that before the melting of the glacier, the ancestors of the Indians blocked by it could not settle south?
However, Drobyshevsky notes, there is nothing supernatural in the more ancient dates of the Chilean sites. The islands along Canada's present-day Pacific coast were not glaciated, and bear remains from the Ice Age have been found there. This means that people could well spread along the coast, swimming across in boats and not going deep into the then inhospitable North America.
Australian footprint
However, the fact that the first reliable finds of the ancestors of the Indians were made in Chile does not end with the oddities of the settlement of America. Not so long ago, it turned out that the genes of the Aleuts and groups of Brazilian Indians have features characteristic of the genes of the Papuans and Australian Aborigines.
As the Russian anthropologist emphasizes, the data of geneticists are well combined with the results of the analysis of skulls previously found in South America and having features close to Australian ones.
In his opinion, most likely, the Australian trace in South America is associated with a common ancestral group, part of which moved to Australia tens of thousands of years ago, while the other migrated along the coast of Asia to the north, up to Beringia, and from there reached the South American continent. .
The appearance of Luzia is the name of a woman who lived 11 thousand years ago, whose remains were discovered in a Brazilian cave 
As if that weren't enough, genetic studies in 2013 showed that Brazilian Botacudo Indians are close in mitochondrial DNA to Polynesians and part of the inhabitants of Madagascar. Unlike the Australoids, the Polynesians could well have reached South America by sea. At the same time, traces of their genes in eastern Brazil, and not on the Pacific coast, are not so easy to explain.
It turns out that a small group of Polynesian navigators, for some reason, did not return after landing, but overcame the Andean highlands, which were unusual for them, in order to settle in Brazil. One can only guess about the motives for such a long and difficult overland journey for typical sailors.
So, a small part of the American natives have traces of genes that are very far from the genome of the rest of the Indians, which contradicts the idea of a single group of ancestors from Beringia.
30 thousand years before us
However, there are more radical deviations from the idea of settling America in one wave and only after the melting of the glacier. In the 1970s, the Brazilian archaeologist Nieda Guidon discovered the Pedra Furada cave site (Brazil), where, in addition to primitive tools, there were many bonfires, the age of which was shown by radiocarbon analysis to be from 30 to 48 thousand years.
It is easy to understand that such figures caused great rejection by North American anthropologists. The same Deley criticized radiocarbon dating, noting that traces could remain after a fire of natural origin.
Gidon reacted sharply to such opinions of her colleagues from the United States in Latin American: “Fire of natural origin cannot arise deep in a cave. American archaeologists need to write less and dig more.”
Drobyshevsky emphasizes that although no one has yet been able to challenge the dating of the Brazilians, the doubts of the Americans are quite understandable. If people were in Brazil 40 thousand years ago, then where did they go then and where are the traces of their stay in other parts of the New World?
Toba volcano eruption
The history of mankind knows cases when the first colonizers of new lands almost completely died out, leaving no significant traces. This is what happened to Homo sapiens who settled in Asia. Their first traces there date back to the period up to 125 thousand years ago, however, genetic data say that all of humanity originated from a population that emerged from Africa, much later - only 60 thousand years ago.
There is a hypothesis that the reason for this could be the extinction of the then Asian part as a result of the eruption of the Toba volcano 70 thousand years ago. The energy of this event is considered to exceed the combined yield of all the combined nuclear weapons ever created by mankind.
However, even an event more powerful than a nuclear war is difficult to explain the disappearance of significant human populations. Some researchers note that neither Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor even Homo floresiensis, who lived relatively close to Toba, died out from the explosion.
And judging by individual finds in South India, local Homo sapiens did not die out at that time, traces of which are not observed in the genes of modern people for some reason. Thus, the question of where the people who settled 40 thousand years ago in South America could have gone remains open and to some extent casts doubt on the most ancient finds of the Pedra Furada type.
Genetics vs genetics
Not only archaeological data often come into conflict, but also such seemingly reliable evidence as genetic markers. This summer, Maanasa Raghavan's group at the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen announced that genetic data disproved the idea that more than one wave of ancient settlers participated in settling the Americas.
According to them, genes close to Australians and Papuans appeared in the New World later than 9,000 years ago, when America was already inhabited by immigrants from Asia.
At the same time, the work of another group of geneticists led by Pontus Skoglund came out, which, based on the same material, made the opposite statement: a certain ghost population appeared in the New World either 15 thousand years ago, or even earlier, and, perhaps, settled there before the Asian wave of migration, from which the ancestors of the vast majority of modern Indians originated.
According to them, relatives of the Australian Aborigines crossed the Bering Strait only to be forced out by the subsequent wave of "Indian" migration, whose representatives began to dominate the Americas, pushing the few descendants of the first wave into the Amazon jungle and the Aleutian Islands.
Ragnavan's reconstruction of the settlement of the Americas
Even if geneticists cannot agree among themselves on whether the “Indian” or “Australian” components became the first natives of America, it is even more difficult for everyone else to understand this issue. And yet, something can be said about this: skulls similar in shape to the Papuan ones have been found on the territory of modern Brazil for more than 10 thousand years.
The scientific picture of the settlement of the Americas is very complex, and present stage changes significantly. It is clear that groups of different origins participated in the settlement of the New World - at least two, not counting a small Polynesian component that appeared later than the others.
It is also obvious that at least part of the settlers were able to colonize the continent despite the glacier - bypassing it in boats or on ice. At the same time, the pioneers subsequently moved along the coast, quite quickly reaching the south of modern Chile. The early Americans appear to have been highly mobile, expansive, and well versed in the use of water transport.