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In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, spans from the original peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures.

Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries),^[1] and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, kept written records, but due to many Christian Europeans of the time viewing such texts as pagan, men like Diego de Landa burned them, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few hidden documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge.

Historiography

Before the development of archaeology in the 19th century, historians of the pre-Columbian period mainly interpreted the records of the European conquerors and the accounts of early European travelers and antiquaries. It was not until the nineteenth century that the work of people such as John Lloyd Stephens, Eduard Seler, and Alfred Maudslay, and institutions such as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University, led to the reconsideration and criticism of the early European sources. Now, the scholarly study of pre-Columbian cultures is most often based on scientific and multidisciplinary methodologies.^[2]

Genetics

The haplogroup most commonly associated with Indigenous genetics is Haplogroup Q1a3a (Y-DNA).^[3] Researchers have found genetic evidence that the Q1a3a haplogroup has been in South America since at least 18,000 BCE.^[4] Y-DNA, like mtDNA, differs from other nuclear chromosomes in that the majority of the Y chromosome is unique and does not recombine during meiosis. This has the effect that the historical pattern of mutations can easily be studied.^[5] The pattern indicates Indigenous peoples experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes: first with the initial peopling of the Americas and second with European colonization of the Americas.^[6][7] The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous populations.^[7]

Human settlement of the Americas occurred in stages from the Bering Sea coastline, with an initial 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the founding population.^[8][9] The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicate that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region.^[10] The Na-Dené, Inuit, and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q-M242 (Y-DNA) mutations, however, and are distinct from other Indigenous peoples with various mtDNA mutations.^[11][12][13] This suggests that the earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later populations.^[14]

Settlement of the Americas

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Pre_Columbian
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