Pre-Columbian River Explorers of North America

Where did the first colonizers of North America from Europe, North Africa and the British Isles first land?

The greatest mixed cluster is in New England and spreading out from it. And how did these ancient travellers journey across the face of North America? Generally in the same way that they got there. In watercraft! To the ancients the seas, lakes and rivers were the superhighways as crossing land until the later Romans developed road systems was in many cases near impossible if not exceptionally difficult. This is how all great exploration has always been done until recently. You sail across a sea and then up the first river you find to see where it will go and this scenario never changes. You only go overland when there are no rivers or lakes as it is much harder to consign goods or travel over unexplored territory than by water.

Another great superhighway to trade was from the Gulf of Mexico and up its tributaries and in some cases via now long lost rivers to the Great Lakes themselves. In fact you did not even need long lost rivers. Present day ones would do just as well. The Des Moines River which connects up with the Mississippi River runs within five miles west of Lake Michigan within the present city limits of Chicago. Not too far to move a boat across land from the Great Lakes to the Des Moines River. Even less distance in the thousand year pluvial periods when water levels were higher and there was more rain. There were wider rivers and more lakes to travel across.

Another great route was probably along what is now the St Lawrence River and Seaway to the same Great Lakes, the greatest copper mining area in prehistory, but in this case these were not Roman Era traders and explorers as the the Great Lakes Copper Mining finished at the end of the Bronze Age around one thousand five hundred BC to one thousand two hundred BC. Copper is the key component of bronze and there was plenty of it. It is an incredible coincidence or is it that the Bronze Age in Europe ended around the same time as the Copper Mining Culture of the Great Lakes suddenly ended This was around the same period as the Thera eruption that ended the supremacy of the seagoing Minoan Civilization of Crete. This could be the basis of several other books as the Minoans or Cretans were a great trading culture in this period.