American archaeology

In many parts of the United States, archaeologists have found relics of people who lived thousands of years before Columbus discovered America. In fact, these relics have helped other scholars to decide when the people we call "American Indians" first came to the continent of North America from Asia, where their original home was, perhaps as many as fifty thousand years ago. Wherever you go in the United States, you will be near the ancient dwelling places of some of these peoples of the vanished ages. In Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, and other parts of the Midwest, and as far south as Alabama, there are relics of the mound builders about whom there is a separate article in this encyclopedia.

The Mound Builders built great mounds of earth and stone, and used them for houses, and for churches, and for burial places for their dead. The "cliff dwellers" of the American Southwest left their "apartment houses" on the sides of cliffs in such good condition that you can walk into them and see how people lived three thousand years ago. The mayans and aztecs in Centtal America, and the incas and other prehistoric men who came long before them in Peru and other parts of South America, are other ancient men of the Western Hemisphere about whom there are separate articles.