Фольклор Америки

According to the mythologies of most Native American cultures, their people originated in the places where their ancestors traditionally lived. Some tales speak of ancient migrations. However, Native Americans are descended from hunting and gathering peoples of northeastern Asia who traveled across the Bering Sea into North America during the most recent Ice Age. During that Ice Age, which ended around 8000 B . C ., the level of the oceans was much lower, and a bridge of land linked Siberia and Alaska. Some groups may also have reached Alaska from Siberia by boat or by walking on ice. Over thousands of years, the population of North America grew and diversified into the peoples and cultures that Europeans encountered when they began to colonize the continent in the A . D . 1500s.

Scholars have divided North America into different regions based on patterns of Native American mythology. Although each region contains many different peoples and languages, some elements of mythology are shared across the region, and certain kinds of stories are particularly important.

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