The Americas Before And After

The founding of the Americas — the process by which human beings first entered the Western Hemisphere and spread across two continents — is one of the most important events in human history, even though it happened in the complete absence of any historical record.

Before the founding, the Americas were unoccupied by human beings.

The vast landscapes of North and South America — with all the ecological diversity that two continents spanning from Arctic to subantarctic contain — were populated only by the animals that had evolved there over millions of years.

The megafauna of the Americas, which included giants that have since gone extinct, had never encountered human hunters.