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The history of South America is the study of the past, particularly the written record, oral histories, and traditions, passed down from generation to generation on the continent of South America. The continent continues to be home to indigenous peoples, some of whom built high civilizations prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 1400s ...
A recent estimate is that there were about 60.5 million people living in the Americas immediately before depopulation, [94] of which 90 per cent, mostly in Central and South America, perished from wave after wave of disease, along with war and slavery playing their part. [95] [75]
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 28 February 2025. Leif Erikson (c. 970 – c. 1020) was a famous Norse explorer who is credited for being the first European to set foot on American soil. Explorers are listed below with their common names, countries of origin (modern and former), centuries of activity and main areas of exploration ...
Reenactment of a Viking landing in L'Anse aux Meadows. Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. [1]
1526–28 – Pizarro and his pilot Bartolomé Ruiz explore the west coast of South America from the San Juan River south to the Santa River (about 9°S), becoming the first Europeans to sight the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. [32] 1526–27 – Jorge de Menezes reaches New Guinea. [36]
Map of early human migrations based on the Out of Africa theory; figures are in thousands of years ago (kya). [2]The peopling of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (Paleo-Indians) entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the ...
The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. [1] It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci , the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years on behalf of Spain and Portugal , with the name given by German ...
Later expeditions went to the Pacific Ocean around South America, and eventually by following the Portuguese around Africa, into the Indian Ocean; discovering Australia in 1606, New Zealand in 1642, and Hawaii in 1778. From the 1580s to the 1640s, Russians explored and conquered almost the whole of Siberia, and claimed Alaska in the 1730s.