During the last glacial period, modern humans crossed Beringia and entered the Americas for the first time, migrating across North, Central, and South America. They relied on hunting large game and may have contributed to the extinction of some animals.

Later they became more settled in a number of regions, adapting their hunter-gatherer strategies to their environments and the available resources About nine thousand years ago, groups like those in the Andes region began experimenting with animal domestication.

Beringia — a section of low-lying land between modern Alaska and Russia, now underwater, that once served as a land bridge between continents. Clovis culture — a culture consisting of mobile bands of hunter-gatherers who camped at resource-rich locations in modest populations across North America. Hopewell tradition — a widely dispersed mound-building tradition that emerged in the Eastern Woodlands around 200 BCE, linked by a network of trade routes. Mississippian tradition — a widely dispersed mound-building tradition that created a number of urban settlements linked by trading networks in the southeastern United States around 700.