- [Announcer] This channel is part of the HistoryHit Network,
stick around to find out more. - [Narrator] We have been
here from the beginning. (tense music) Our ancestors navigated
by the wind and stars. Crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges, searching for new lands. Over thousands of years, our ancestors became astronomers and
architects, philosophers and scientists, artists, and inventors. We created distinct societies
and built a vast trade systems that covered two continents. In 1492, our world was changed forever, but we did not disappear. Today, the languages and
teachings of our ancestors remain. And these are the untold stories of the Americas before Columbus. (eerie music) When did the first people
arrive in the Americas? Indigenous creation stories
tell how our ancestors emerged as humans from the earth,
the water, the sky, and the land below. Some people believe that we walked into the Americas on foot,
across an ancient land bridge that once connected
Asia and North America, Others say, we paddled
here in oceangoing canoes along the Pacific coastline. There's one thing that all of these views of arrival have in common. They all begin with a journey. By 1491, tens of millions
of indigenous people were living in every part of the Americas. From the high Arctic to the
southern tip of South America. There were countless
indigenous nations each with their own distinct
language and ways of life, but this didn't happen overnight. It took thousands of years
to build this diverse world from a very small founding population. Since 1492, we've shared
our traditional territory with people from every part of the world. Today, we continue our
search for the origins of our ancestors and the
roots of our cultural identity as indigenous people. - We have two different kinds of dates. We have the archeological date
that says probably somewhere between 18 to 20,000 years ago, the first non-native born human
came into this hemisphere. In terms of indigenous perspectives, we've we've always been here. Philosophically, we've
never been anywhere else. - [Narrator] Every indigenous nation has its own creation story. These stories have been
passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. Creation stories, form a powerful part of each nation's identity and our sense of who we are as a people. (thunder rumbling) In the beginning, there was a great flood, a few animals and birds
survived by clinging to a log, among them was the tiny muskrat. The creatures decided
they needed to find land, but the world was covered in water. One by one, they took turns
diving deep into the water, looking for some dirt to
bring back to the surface. But each animal came back empty handed. Finally, that tiny muskrat
dove under the water. When he came back, he
had a paw full of earth. He placed it on the
back of a turtles shell. This is how North America
became known as Turtle Island. In the beginning, there
was only the sea and sky. The gods created the earth
and populated it with animals and birds. But the animals couldn't worship them. So they decided to make humans. The first humans were made from mud, but they fell apart too easily. Then the gods made humans from wood, but they had nothing in their minds. So they destroyed them in a flood. Finally, the gods made
humans out of maze dough. They had intelligence and knowledge and could worship the gods. So they became the first people. In the beginning, people lived in the sky and the only creatures
they knew were birds. A young hunter set out
one day to find a rare and beautiful bird. When he finally found
it, he shot his arrow. And when he went to retrieve it, he discovered a hole in
the bottom of the sky. Looking through it, he
saw forests and rivers and wild animals. He asked the other hunters to travel to this world with him, but they refused. So he made a rope and
lowered it down the hole and climbed down to the world below. He shot a deer and brought
it back to the Sky World. The others wanted to hunt deer too, so they climbed down the rope. The last person to go
through the hole in the sky was a woman and she became
stuck, preventing the people from returning to their home. She can still be seen in
the sky as the Morning Star. Historians have long supported a theory that our ancestors walked
into the Americas across an ancient land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last ice age. Until about 13,000 years ago, great sheets of ice, kilometers thick, covered much of the Northern sections of North America, Europe and Asia. But there were some ice
free regions in the Northern hemisphere where people lived. One of these regions
was known as Beringia. This thousand kilometer
expanse of land connecting the two continents, emerged
when glaciers locked up vast quantities of
water causing sea levels to fall more than 100 meters. - You see evidence that people
came across a land bridge, you see evidence of a land
bridge did exist in the past. - In the Northern parts of North
America, Alaska, the Yukon, even Northern British Columbia, we have a collection of some
of the most ancient sites across the continent. And of course that would be up
in an area that archeologists referred to as Beringia. - And you know, those
people who made it across the Landbridge, all
they had were their wits and a few stone tools. And yet they managed to explore, discover and colonize two continents. So that's a pretty amazing achievement in the annals of human history. And they did this by being very
aware of their environment, of being able to manipulate
their environment to their own benefit. - [Narrator] The water
between the two continents dropped so low, it exposed
the bottom of the sea. This arid Prairie like
landscape, remained ice free and the abundant birds and
mammals provided people with food and materials
for clothing and shelter. But Beringia was a temporary landscape. Around 20,000 years ago,
the world's climate began to warm and the glacier started melting. By 15,000 years ago, the rising sea levels had covered up the Beringia land bridge and people living there either
had to return to Siberia or stay in North America. The melting glaciers and
rising sea levels created major environmental changes in
the Northern hemisphere. The land between the two North
American ice sheets widened about 12,000 years ago,
offering an ice free corridor for people to travel through. - Historically in
archeology, it was believed that the spread further
south into the continent was between the Laurentide
and Cordilleran ice sheets. And this is known as the ice
free corridor hypothesis. And so, many researchers
saying this was the gateway into the Americas. (rhythmic drumming) - [Narrator] But taking this route south through such a harsh
terrain, would've involved a tremendous risk. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] If
they had a people who were up in Alaska and they see this opening between two ice sheets, they're taking a big leap
of faith to say, well, maybe we go a thousand
miles south of here, we'll find better land. The ice free corridor would've been a very dynamic landscape. It would've had terrible
winters like harsh, cold winters and not much
better in the summer, the summers would've been cold and rainy. So there wasn't a lot of
opportunity for people to find stable land that they could colonize. - [Narrator] The end of the
last ice age set the stage for the movement of people
overland into North America. The indigenous people who
traveled into the continent on foot from Beringia could not
have known it at the time, but they were not the
first people to settle south of the ice sheets. In fact, humans had already
been living in both North and South America for
thousands of years before the glaciers melted and
opened up routes south through the ice free corridor. (upbeat music) - [Woman Narrator] Glaciers covered much of the Northern hemisphere
until about 12,000 years ago. As temperatures warmed
worldwide, ice melted and sea levels began to rise. These changes to the
environment led to animal, bird and human migration
throughout North America, Asia and Europe. Tens of thousands of years ago, the climates and parts of the
Asian subcontinent was much wetter than it is today. In India, the Thar desert was
once a vast fertile grassland. Hunters following the herds eventually settled permanently in the region. As the glaciers retreated, the warming climate created
new agricultural zones in the Northern hemisphere. Early agriculturalists
cultivated new food resources in the fertile soils of the middle east. And this led to the formation
of farming settlements, and eventually cities. During the last ice age, sea levels were 100 meters lower
than they were today. And this created a thousand
kilometer wide land bridge to appear between Siberia and Alaska. This became one of the migration routes that humans took into the Americas. Changes in climate over the
millennia has influenced the migration paths and hunting practices of humans throughout the world. (tense music) - When they first started
doing their surveys in the, what would be the ice free corridor, the observation they
made was that the sites were getting younger as they went north, which is counterintuitive. You'd expect that the oldest
sites would be in the north and they'd get progressively
younger in the south. So it looked like people were
moving north instead of south. So this has always been very paradoxical. And the only way you can
explain it is that there were people already living
south of the ice sheets. And where did those people come from? - [Narrator] The recent
discovery of an ancient village and campsites in the
Americas that are more than 14,000 years old
supports a new theory that people first
arrived by boat along the Pacific coastline of
North and South America. - In the seventies, researchers proposed an alternative hypothesis to say that the coastal route was also viable. And this sparked a huge
debate in archeology that it had to be one or
the other, which one was it? We're now coming to an understanding that it was likely both happened. However, archeologists
are more leaning towards the coastal route as
the earlier alternative. - [Narrator] Any journey
along the Pacific coast during the ice age,
would've been treacherous. - Keep in mind that the
west coast, at that time, would've been choked with
icebergs and lots of ice floes. So for people to travel that way, they would certainly require
some good ocean going skills. And that's not out of the
question because we do know from the archeological record in east Asia, that as early as 40,000 years ago, people were able to
make open ocean voyages. When people go on journeys like this, their destination is
usually unknown to them. - [Narrator] We may
never know what compelled indigenous people to embark on this treacherous journey by sea. - What is the history of
humanity in North America? We have indications that humans were here. They were producing culture.
They were burying their dead. They were becoming a
part of the landscape. They were taking
ownership of the landscape in their own way. - [Narrator] Once arriving on land, these seafarers would've
found themselves in a strange and foreign world, filled with
unknown peril and promise. - When people are, are traveling
into unknown countries, they really have to rely on the skills that they bring with them. And so if they know how
to live off the land, if they know what
seafoods they can consume, this will give them a
better than average chance of surviving any new
country or a new terrain that they're starting to settle in. - [Dr. Watkins] The idea
of where we come from is extremely important. It gives us that sense of place. It tells us the locations
that we are tied to both as a people, as individuals. It's the part of the landscape
that continues to reside in our bones, in our blood,
but particularly in our minds. - [Narrator] It's not known
how many indigenous people arrived in the Americas by water. But evidence suggests this was
not an isolated occurrence. - Archeology keeps finding
more and more localities, which add pieces to the puzzle. When we look at them all
in a very broad picture, it does give us that story,
that deeply complex story about the first people to
come into North America. (birds chirping) (shells clinking) - [Man] (Speaking foreign language) - [Woman] (Speaking foreign language) (tense music) (crow cawing) (tense drumming) (crow cawing) (drumming continues) (crow caws) (crow caws) (crow caws) (crow caws) (drumming continues) (birds chirping) (crow caws) (drumming continues) - [Woman] (Speaking foreign language) (thunder rumbles) (voices in distance) (crow caws) (heavy rhythmic drumming) (crow caws) - [Narrator] Whether our ancestors arrived by land from Beringia or by
water along the Pacific coast, people were soon living in
every corner of the Americas. - Native Americans were at the
southern tip of South America more than 14,000 years ago. So the hypothesis is that
they took a coastal route just because traveling over land, would've been very difficult at the time. - We have a much greater understanding of the fluctuation in sea levels. So it's easier for us to
locate those most ancient sites along the coast, spreading all
the way down to California, and of course, all the way down to places like Monte Verde in South America. - [Narrator] Monte Verde
is an ancient village site located in Chile about
50 kilometers inland from the Pacific coastline
that was occupied at least 14,800 years ago. The village was discovered
in the 1970s beneath a Creek and was largely preserved
within the wet environment. The village consisted of
12 small huts that would've supported about 20 or 30 people. The huts were made from wood,
animal hide and woven rope. There were two large and
several smaller hearths in the village. The people at Monte
Verde, collected plants in the mountains, grasslands
and coastal regions of Southern Chile, suggesting
that they traveled widely to collect food and building materials along with the remains
of Mammoth and Lama, 10 types of seaweed
and the shells of crabs and clams were found at the site. The Marine based diet of
those who lived at Monte Verde points to a people who were well adapted to a Marine lifestyle. - Over the course of
many thousands of years, when you're doing things
such as experimentation of new life ways or trial
and error in new food types, all of this accumulates over
many generations and gives us what be called traditional knowledge. - [Narrator] Since first
arriving in the Americas, indigenous people have hunted
wild game for food, shelter, tools, and clothing. The type of tools used by
these ancient hunters are often used to define their cultures. One of the most important
discoveries of ancient stone tools in the Americas, was made
at Clovis, New Mexico in the early 20th century. The distinct way of
manufacturing these spearheads led to the Clovis First
Theory, which suggested that the earliest people in the Americas arrive shortly after the glaciers melted and used the same tool technology. - When we look at the history
of archeology as a discipline early on say in the early 19 hundreds, scholars believed back
then that North America had only been inhabited
by indigenous people for two to 3000 years. However, this changed of
course, with the findings of Folsom and Clovis Points in association with what we call megafauna
or ice aged giant mammals and creatures that walk
to earth along with the indigenous people. - [Narrator] The
discovery of mammoth bones alongside stone tools at the Clovis site, revealed that indigenous
people were hunting megafauna with spearhead
technology around 13,000 years ago. - Clovis was the type site where the first stone tools were found. And so after that kind of
became the umbrella term for fluted point technology. (mammoth roaring) - [Narrator] This lethal
tool was sharp enough to penetrate the thick
hides of large game, such as bison and Mammoth. Clovis points were made
from jasper, chert, obsidian and other brittle stones, and
were eventually discovered throughout North America. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] The
Clovis tool complex spread across North America very rapidly. So this has always given the
impression that people are moving along and occupying new lands. And there's lots of, lots of
variety across North America, the geographical variations. - [Dr. Reimer] And for many
decades, it was believed that the Clovis culture was the first and only culture to be across
all of North America. However, most recently, in
the last 10 to 20 years, the Clovis first models pretty much been thrown out the window because
we have ample evidence across North America, Meso
America, down to South America of sites that predate
the Clovis time period and this data and these
sites are really interesting in pushing the boundaries of what we know about that distant time. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] Think
of Clovis as an idea, and that there was already a
preexisting population that was receptive to this new invention. So when the new invention came along, it was the idea of it that
spread into a preexisting population. - [Narrator] Although stone
tools were widely used in the Americas for thousands of years, tools made from animal
bones were also used for hunting and fishing. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] Before
people had Clovis points, they actually used bone
technology and the bone tools were just as lethal as the stone tools. Now there're starting to
be a whole series of sites that have been discovered. And one of the discoveries was
actually made very early on, the Manis kill site in Washington state. There was a bone tool that
was embedded in the vertebrae of a Mastodon and it was actually made from another Mastodon's bone. From that he could get a radio
carbon date off the element of the tools, but he could
also get a radio carbon date off the kill that it was embedded in. - [Narrator] The remains
found at the Manis kill site, date back 13,800 years, a full millennium before
the glaciers melted enough to open up the ice free
corridor to the north. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] A
hunter likely took down a Mammoth once in his
life and talked about it for the rest of his life. - [Narrator] As the glaciers receded, and the lands opened
up, allowing migration across North America,
hunting techniques changed based on the terrain and their prey. - There's certainly a
long history of hunting as a way of life and going
right back to the ice age when humans first appeared on the scene. And of course, as people moved into the
farther north regions, they started coming across
animals like such as reindeer and caribou, and these
are herding animals, so they started hunting them communally. - [Dr. Yellowhorn] Clovis
tools were very lethal and whatever they hit
would've been injured, but of course you'd have to
be very close to that animal and you'd bring them into natural traps. And then once they're
into the natural traps, and then you can use your
stabbing spears to kill them. - [Dr. Claw] Stones and animal bones were the first materials used by humans to craft tools for hunting. Some of the earliest
tools to be discovered, date back more than 2 million years. 20,000 years ago, nomadic hunter gatherers lived in the Kebara Cave region in Israel. They developed the Kebaran
tool technology using flint to make spear points and arrowheads. (gentle music) The Solutrean Tool industry
emerged in Western Europe around 19,000 years ago. The people of this region
made tools by napping, tiny flakes off the Flint core. Hunters also used heat to
make the flaking more precise. One of the earliest
stone tool technologies in North America was the Clovis point named after the site in New Mexico, where the spear points
were first discovered. The people who created these tools hunted a wide range of megafauna, including mammoths. Throughout the world, the
different styles of tools that people developed,
determined the type and size of the game they hunted. - [Narrator] As our
ancestors settled throughout the two continents, creating
hundreds of nations, languages evolved and diversified. And through these languages came stronger, social and cultural identities. The Western hemisphere is the
most linguistically diverse region in the world. It's estimated that there were as many as 2000 distinct languages
spoken in the Americas in 1491. Each of these languages are
part of a language family connected through common
words, grammar and diction. (speaking foreign language) - [Narrator] Languages are more than a means of communication. For ancient societies,
they contain the cultural, historical and traditional
knowledge of a nation. Many of the languages spoken before 1491 are still in use today. (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - [Narrator] Quechua in South America, Mayan in meso America, (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - [Narrator] Pueblo in North America (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - [Narrator] and Inuktitut in the Arctic. (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) - [Narrator] Meso American cultures like the Maya and Aztec had a
complex writing system. But most indigenous languages were based on an oral tradition. - Language doesn't
leave marks on the land. Language isn't a thing that
we can point to in the world. It's something that is done by people. And especially without
writing all you have are people as your evidence. In North America, there's
a very complex tapestry of different language families that have crossed over each other. And there's probably about
30 families in North America. There's probably another 30
or so families in Central America and maybe even a hundred
families in South America. The original work on
comparative linguistics was reconstructing languages
that had long written histories like English and the romance languages like French and Italian. So it was early on believed,
no you simply couldn't do that in a language that
didn't have a written history. The early anthropologist
linguists in North America proved that yes, you could. You could reconstruct these languages and often could show
materially that language here was actually a close
relative of a language that was quite far apart from it separated by a number of others. They applied these methods that
had been developed in Europe and proved that they could be were used for unwritten languages. And that opened the door
for people to work on Native American languages and figure
out where did they come from? Which is always, you know,
the question that presses a lot of people when they study us. They also found sometimes
that the indigenous people themselves would tell you, oh, well, our language is actually related
to those guys over there. I mean, you can ask and
you find out, well yes, we share a whole bunch of words in common and you go talk to them you can tell. And although they can't really communicate in each person's language, they still find quite a large number of
words that are similar. - [Narrator] Indigenous
languages carry deep cultural and traditional knowledge. But tracing their histories is a challenge to linguistic researchers. - [Crippen] Even though
we have reconstructions internally reconstructed
and externally reconstructed language families, we can show that they're related, but we can't go back any further. And that's because
unlike biology, language doesn't have a constant rate of change. It changes in fits and
starts with long periods of little change, sudden
dramatic reconstructions of how the language works. It's not something that we can
predict with any reliability. We can show that a language
is internally related, but we can't tell you how
long the connections are. And we rely almost entirely on archeology to give us some sort of
calibration to our guesstimate. - [Narrator] Oral entomology is both fluid and fragile and of the thousands
of indigenous languages that existed in the Americas in 1491, hundreds have been lost forever. - The exact question of when these, all these languages came here, as far as linguistics can
tell, they've just been here. (speaking foreign language) (speaking foreign language) (gentle music) - [Woman Narrator] Archeological
sites in every part of the world tell the
story of ancient peoples and the cultures and civilizations they created over thousands of years. Uruk is one of the first
major cities in the world that featured monumental stone buildings. It was built at the center
of a vast trade network in the middle east. 5,000 years ago, Egypt was divided into upper and lower regions. A Pharaoh named Narmer
created a unified kingdom and there are sites throughout Egypt that represent the artistic
achievements from this era. Cahokia was the largest urban center in North America a thousand years ago. It was part of an elaborate
inter tribal trade network that connected people as far
away as the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. The archeological record
in every part of the world continues to inform us
of the accomplishments and ways of life of our ancestors. - [Narrator] Indigenous
people settled in every region of the Western hemisphere,
from the High Arctic to the Caribbean islands, to the Southern tip of South America. Historians estimate that by 1491, the population of the
Americas may have been as high as a hundred million people. Population growth in society's worldwide, can be traced to the
advent of agriculture. As people began to grow annual
crops, the need to travel to find food, lessened. Villages grew into towns
and towns into cities, with the farmers providing
a steady supply of food. The impact over thousands of
years, was a significant growth of population in the Americas. - Throughout the Americas
civilizations rose, it fell, like an oscillating
frontier through time. Some of them had great periods
of development, innovation. Their technologies were
among the most incredible, their populations were significant,
and then they collapsed. Archeologically, we're
looking at palimpsest. In other words, we're looking at layers and pieces and fragments. It's like looking at a wall of graffiti and seeing one layer on top of another, on top of another, on top of another. And when an archeologist digs, he may be digging through
10 different layers, or she may be recovering the relics of maybe 10 civilizations. - [Narrator] An example of
a significant population surge, was the Aztec city
state of Tenochtitlan. Founded in 1325 on a manmade island where present day Mexico city now stands. It was the capital of the Aztec empire. The city had a complex social
strata that included the working class, military members,
priests, and the elites. It was a vibrant city with
a bustling marketplace. At its peak, Tenochtitlan was home to more than 250,000 people. And was the center of an
empire with a population of between two and 3 million, In 1491 Tenochtitlan was the
largest city in the Americas. - [Dr. Mendoza] The question then is what about North America? The Mississippian side
of Cahokia was a center that maintained significant populations into the tens of thousands. - [Narrator] Cahokia
was arguably the largest and most influential urban center in North America before 1491. At its peak around 800 years ago, Cahokia had a population
of 40,000 or more. The city's strategic location
where the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers meet, made it a natural gateway
for inter tribal trade. But over time, like the
major cities in meso America, Cahokia also disappeared. - We have factors like
drought. We have warfare. We have invasion and conquest. All of these things factor
into the variable landscape of demography and population in the Americas. - Indigenous archeologists
are much more adept at thinking about the who of the past and the why of the past, rather than just the, what
of the material culture. It's not just the piece of
pottery that happened here without humans being involved
in either transportation in breaking it and moving it
from one place to another. And I think that's what drives
a lot of good archeologists, is recognizing that we're
not in it for the artifacts, we're in it for the stories
that the artifacts can promise. One of the most important
things about being an indigenous person involved in archeology is knowing the importance of story, the
importance of the individual and knowing how these all
fit within who we are today. There are so many tribal people
involved in trying to relate the history of individual
tribes, individual places. In the past it has been perceived to be the role of the expert to tell what the history is, history of place. And it's often has been based
on someone else's stories, some written reports or such. Now it's extremely important
that indigenous groups have the authenticity, the authority,
and the right to present the history as they know it. There are so many indigenous
people who are getting advanced degrees, who are getting
recognized as authority. And so now they're able to
take that and tell the stories that their communities want
them to tell, so that people outside of the community
can really understand what has gone before. (gentle music) - [Woman Narrator] The
sequencing of the human genome has led to many significant
discoveries about the migration and ways of life of ancient
peoples throughout the world. Ancient Egyptians believed
that the soul remained with the human body after a person died. Egyptian rulers and their
families were buried in tombs with gold, tools, food and animals, to help them on their
journey to the afterlife. The Qafzeh cave in Israel
is the site of the earliest known human burial. The remains of several adults
and children were found, including a boy, buried with a deer antler placed across his chest. At the bottom of a
Cenote in Eastern Mexico, Archeologists found the remains
of a young woman who died more than 13,000 years ago. Her DNA is a close match to
many indigenous people living in central and North America today. For tens of thousands of
years, people in every part of the world have been
carrying out rituals and ceremonies as part of
their burial practices. - [Narrator] While there
were tens of millions living in the Americas in 1491, the population soon after people arrived would only have been in the thousands. It's not surprising that the
discovery of an ancestor from this period is an extremely rare event. 13,000 years ago, a
teenage girl in the Yucatan fell into a deep hole and died. Over the millennia, sea levels rose and water filled the cave. In the 1990s, a group of
underwater archeologists found Naia, as they named
her, in 40 meters of water deep in a Cenote near Tulum. Testing Naia's DNA confirmed
that she's a direct ancestor of the indigenous people living in North and Central America today. When the human genome was sequenced early in the 21st century, it opened the door for geneticists to study the biological
blueprint of human beings. The data collected from
studying the DNA found in human cells can be used to
trace a person's ancestry. By comparing the DNA of
modern indigenous people with that of ancient people, we can see how our ancestors
migrated and settled down during the past several thousand years. - It's using your DNA to
look at similarities between different populations. So there are many different
ways we can do it. We can look at your maternal lineage. We can look at your paternal lineage, or we can look at everything
which is the whole genome. And in that instance,
we're sort of looking at the entirety of your
father's contribution, your mothers and all of your ancestors. This is just another way
to think about our past and figure out how we were
related to each other. We are all really
connected and our genetics is telling us that too. To have a really rigorous study, you want to have ancient samples because
with the ancient samples, you can tell date it
back really accurately. How long ago did they live
and what did they eat? And also, where were they? If we're looking at ancient DNA, we're only looking at the people that they actually were able
to extract DNA from. These are only 50 people
but, there were thousands of people at that time. And there are very few samples
that have been included from the United States and also from Canada. The majority of them have
been from South America and Central America. - [Narrator] What does DNA
from the ancient ancestors we've discovered, tell
us about our origins? - Actually, the closest
relations to natives in the Americas is from
sort of central Asia. So we know that we migrated in, but a lot of people have questions about, was it just one big migration? Did it happen at multiple times? Did we actually migrate
and stay in one spot? Or did we just spread all
over the Americas and how many migrations occurred? DNA can only tell us so much. We need to know actually
when these occurred, where they occurred. So if a group split
off from another group, just by looking at DNA, we
can sort of make a guess, but we won't actually
know where it occurred or when it occurred, unless
we have archeological data. - [Narrator] The study of
DNA from ancient peoples requires a culturally sensitive approach and ongoing consultation
with indigenous communities. While archeology and
genetics may seem at odds with our indigenous origin
stories, they all contribute to the overall history of our peoples. - [Dr. Claw] Going back
to my creation story that I grew up with, it was a journey, because I think a lot of creation stories are journeys and that's
how I sort of reconcile it with the genetics. We're talking about population migration. Our ancestors, they went
on this huge long journey for thousands of years
and I'm a product of that, so not only did they have
to journey across continents and oceans, but they also
had to fight disease. And once European contact came, so many of our people died, our ancestors. But we here as living people
are actually the products of all of that, that long journey. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] When Christopher
Columbus first encountered indigenous people in our
traditional territory, more than 500 years ago, he
mistakenly called us Los Indios. He thought he'd found
a new route to India, but he'd actually arrived in a world unlike anywhere else on earth. A world that was home to
thousands of distinct nations and millions of people. Today, we keep our history
alive through our stories and traditional knowledge. And we stay connected to our ancestors culture they left behind before 1491. (drumming music)
