Alaska. The first clear and undisputed evidence of the presence of human villages on the American continent. Colonization, however, likely began much earlier. In the few centuries that followed, hundreds of additional settlements are known to have taken place in the present-day United States and Mexico. The Americas were likely colonized in less than a thousand years. Indeed, even if the initial population had been only 100 people (and it could have been), with an annual increase of just 1.1%, it would have reached 10 million hunter-gatherers in a thousand years, or one person per square mile (a high number for hunter-gatherer populations). Furthermore, to travel from the Bering Range to Patagonia in a thousand years requires an average pace of 14 kilometers per year, which is perfectly normal for hunter-gatherer populations, who, under pressure, could cover that distance in a single day.
