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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;2manybooks, post: 3682169, member: 8267&quot;]Just as they have found evidence of Vikings and earlier people travelling by boat along the northern coastlines between Iceland, Greenland and Canada, there may have been a travel route along the northern rim of the Pacific as well. There are theories that posit such a coastal route for the early populating of the Americas, as opposed to (or in addition to) the inland &quot;ice free corridor&quot; across Beringia and down through Canada. But finding evidence for it is challenging because of changes in sea level. We are so used to thinking in terms of travel overland that we don&#039;t see the obvious river and sea routes for people who knew how to make boats. If you compare the art of the Ainu in northern Japan with Northwest Coast art you can see some unexpected similarities.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Columbus&#039;s expeditions introduced disease and enslavement to the Taino people of the Caribbean, practically wiping out the Native population by the first quarter of the 16th century. This is why the Spanish resorted to importing Africans as slaves.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1542 Gaspar de Carvajal, a Dominican friar, accompanied the expedition of Francisco de Orellana from the headwaters of the Amazon in eastern Peru down to the mouth of the river on the Atlantic. It was one of the first contacts of Europeans with Amazonian peoples. He later published a report of the journey, including descriptions of large settlements of Native Americans all along the river banks. Later explorers thought he was making it up, because the land appeared uninhabited and lost to the rain forest. But recent archeological studies are beginning to indicate that de Carvahal was correct. Evidence is beginning to show that there were extensive settlements throughout the Amazon basin. The best explanation for the dramatic change is that the population was decimated by European diseases before there were major incursions by Europeans into the territory.</p><p><br /></p><p>The same thing appears to have happened in North America, but there are fewer written accounts of the conditions prior to major contact.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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