Humans began migrating out of Africa and across the globe during the Upper Palaeolithic period, moving across Asia and eventually to a place known as Beringia, which is today the Bering Strait between Eastern Russia and Alaska. The sea levels were much lower then and much of the Bering Strait would have been land, creating this region as an access point to a whole New World. They are thought to have arrived in North America via coastal routes approximately 15,000 YBP, up to one to two thousand years prior to the previously thought first people, the Clovis Culture, who would have come through a corridor in the glaciers as the final Ice Age receded. The history of the North West is connected more to coastal culture (aquaculture) than perhaps it is to stone technology.

It is thought that Humans entered the American continents around 15,000 years YBP through the North-West Coastal route and would be already in the Southern Continent by this time. As the glaciers melted, this gave way to an easier route into the Northern Continent and will allow a greater number of people enter, still coming from across the Bering strait before it would become the sea that it is today.

Ancient North America

Mediaeval North America.

Modern North America.