Editing History of North America (section)

===Pre-Columbian era===
{{Further|Pre-Columbian era#North America|Timeline of North American prehistory|Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indigenous peoples in Canada|Native Americans in the United States|Mesoamerica}}
[[File:Dorset, Norse, and Thule cultures 900-1500.svg|thumb|Maps showing the decline of the Paleo-Eskimo [[Dorset culture]] and expansion of the [[Thule people]] from {{circa|900 to 1500}}]]
Before contact with Europeans, the indigenous peoples of North America were divided into many different [[polities]], from small [[Band society|bands]] of a few families to large empires. They lived in numerous [[Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas|culture areas]], which roughly correspond to [[Geography of North America|geographic and biological zones]]. Societies adapted their subsistence strategies to their homelands, and some societies were [[hunter-gatherer]]s, some [[horticulturists]], some [[agriculturalist]]s, and many a mix of these. Native groups can also be classified by their [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|language family]] (e.g. [[Athabaskan languages|Athapascan]] or [[Uto-Aztecan languages|Uto-Aztecan]]).

People with similar languages did not always share the same [[material culture]], nor were they always [[Alliance|allies]].

The [[Archaic period in the Americas]] saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more [[arid]] climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna.<ref>{{cite web|title=Blame North America Megafauna Extinction on Climate Change, Not Human Ancestors|url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/10/011025072315.htm|website=ScienceDaily|year=2001|access-date=April 10, 2010}}</ref> The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers; but now individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization, for example the [[Archaic Southwest|Southwest]], [[Paleo-Arctic tradition|Arctic]], [[Poverty Point culture]], [[Plains Arctic]], [[Dalton tradition|Dalton]], and [[Plano cultures|Plano]] traditions. This type of regional adaptation became the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering among many cultures, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally [[Vegetable|wild vegetables]] and harvested plant foods.<ref name=Fiedel>{{Cite book|title= Prehistory of the Americas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yrhp8H0_l6MC&q=Paleo-Indians+tradition&pg=PR5 |first=Stuart J|last= Fiedel|via= Google Books |publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1992|access-date=November 18, 2009|isbn=978-0-521-42544-5 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas|first=Frank Salomon|last=Stuart B. Schwartz|via=Google Books|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PqEQWch7woQC&q=Formative%20stage%20in%20the%20americas&pg=PA256|publisher=Cambridge University Press|access-date=November 17, 2009|isbn=978-0-521-63075-7|year=1999}}</ref> Many groups continued as big game hunters, but their hunting traditions became more varied, and meat procurement methods more sophisticated.<ref name=Pielou>{{cite book
  | last = Pielou
  | first = E.C.
  | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=knEyjCYWEHQC&q=After%20the%20Ice%20Age%20%3A%20The%20Return%20of%20Life%20to%20Glaciated%20North%20America&pg=PP1
|via= Google Books
  | title = After the Ice Age : The Return of Life to Glaciated North America
  | publisher =  [[University of Chicago Press]]
  | year = 1991
  | isbn =978-0-226-66812-3
|access-date=November 18, 2009}}
</ref><ref name=gill>{{cite web|last1=Gillam|first1=J. Christopher|title=Paleoindian Settlement in Northeastern Arkansas Arkansas Archeology: Essays in Honor of Dan and Phyllis Morse |editor=R.C. Mainfort and M.D. Jeter. Fayetteville|publisher= University of Arkansas Press|year= 1999|url=https://www.academia.edu/31094655|access-date=November 18, 2009}}</ref> The placement of artifacts and materials within an Archaic burial site indicated social differentiation based upon status in some groups.<ref name="icaage">{{cite book
|last=Imbrie
|first=J
|author2=K.P.Imbrie
|title=Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery
|year=1979
|publisher=Enslow Publishers
|location=Short Hills NJ
|isbn=978-0-226-66811-6
|url-access=registration
|url=https://archive.org/details/aftericeager00piel
}}</ref>

[[File:04 - Palenque 031 (2866094246).jpg|thumb|00px|left|The [[Maya civilization|Mayan]] ruins of [[Palenque]], Mexico]]
Agriculture was invented independently in two regions of North America: the [[Eastern Woodlands]]<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Smith| first1 = Bruce D.| last2 = Yarnell| first2 = Richard A.| year = 2009 | title =Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America| journal = [[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences]] | volume = 106| issue = 16| pages = 6561–6566| jstor = 40482136 | doi=10.1073/pnas.0901846106| pmid = 19366669| pmc = 2666091| doi-access = free}}</ref> and [[Mesoamerica]]. The more southern cultural groups of North America were responsible for the [[domestication]] of many common crops now used around the world, such as tomatoes and [[Squash (plant)|squash]]. Perhaps most importantly they domesticated one of the world's major staples, maize (corn). During the [[Plains Village period]], [[Agriculture on the prehistoric Great Plains|agriculture]] and bison-hunting were important to [[Great Plains tribes]].

As a result of the development of agriculture in the south, many important cultural advances were made there. For example, the [[Maya civilization]] developed a [[Maya script|writing system]], built [[Mesoamerican pyramids|huge pyramids]], had a [[Maya calendar|complex calendar]], and developed the concept of [[0 (number)|zero]] 500 years before anyone in the [[Old World]].{{citation needed|date=October 2023}} The Mayan culture was still present when the [[Conquistadors|Spanish]] arrived in Central America, but political dominance in the area had shifted to the [[Aztec Empire]] further north.
[[File:Cahokia Mounds -- UNESCO reconstruction.jpg|thumb|Illustration of [[Cahokia]] from the [[Mississippian culture]] as it may have looked at its peak 1050–1350 AD]]
In the Southwest of North America, [[Hohokam]] and [[Ancestral Pueblo]] societies had been engaged in agricultural production with ditch irrigation and a sedentary village life for at least two millennia before the Spanish arrived in the 1540s.<ref>Nash, Gary B. ''Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early North America'' Los Angeles 2015. Chapter 1, p. 4</ref> Upon the arrival of the Europeans in the "New World", native peoples found their culture changed drastically. As such, their affiliation with political and cultural groups changed as well, several linguistic groups went [[Language death|extinct]], and others changed quite quickly. The name and cultures that Europeans recorded for the natives were not necessarily the same as the ones they had used a few generations before, or the ones in use today.

====Population estimates====
According to the Maddison Project at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the population estimates of North America break down as follows.  For the year 1500 AD, Angus Maddison estimates a population of 7.5&nbsp;million for pre-Hispanic Mexico. He estimates that the population of what became Canada was probably close to 250,000 and 2 million for what became the United States. Maddison's total for all of pre-contact North America, then, is 9.75&nbsp;million.<ref>{{cite book |title=[[The World Economy: Historical Statistics]] |last1=Maddison |first1=Angus |publisher=[[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development]] |date=2003 |pages=81, 114}}</ref>

In 2020, indigenous peoples numbered 34 million (25.7&nbsp;million for Mexico, 6.7&nbsp;million for the United States, and 1.6&nbsp;million for Canada), approximately 7 percent of North America's total population of 493.4&nbsp;million.