Classification of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Historically, classification of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas is based upon cultural regions, geography, and linguistics.

These cultural regions are broadly based upon the locations of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from early European and African contact beginning in the late 15th century.

[65] The Central American culture area includes part of El Salvador, most of Honduras, all of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, and some peoples on or near the Pacific coasts of Colombia and Ecuador.

[77][78] The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous American populations.

[77] Human settlement of the Americas occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the founding population.

[79][80] The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region.

[82][83][84] This suggests that the earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later populations.

The Andes, Mesoamerica, and eastern North America are considered centers that independently developed agriculture, a process known globally as the Neolithic Revolution.

Unsmelted iron was used Andeana and Mesoamerican cultures for mirrors, decorative and ceremonial items, starting fires, and small hammers.

The Americas , Western Hemisphere
Cultural regions of North American people at the time of contact
Early Indigenous languages in the US
Inuktitut dialect map
Early Indigenous languages in Alaska
Aridoamerica region of North America
Map of Mesoamerica
Cultural regions of South and Central America at the time of contact (in Spanish)
The Guianas in northern South America
The position of the Guianas in the Neotropical realm in northern South America
The Tawantinsuyu , or fullest extent of the Inca Empire , which includes much of the Andean cultural region
Approximate region of the Gran Chaco
Patagonian languages at the time of European/African contact