as tolls collected by local warlords that were essentially pro-
tection money. When the military was not fi ghting, troops
constructed dams, aqueducts, canals, bridges, and roads, and
by maintaining permanent outposts, they “romanized” the
people under their sway. Th e military and civil servants cre-
ated what was called Romanitas, or a feeling of belonging to
a great empire, and for many people achieving Roman citi-
zenship was a major goal. By spreading the culture of Rome
and Greece, the Roman migrants gave Europe, in particular,
a common cultural heritage that is still felt.
THE AMERICAS
BY LAWRENCE WALDRON
Th e people who fi rst set foot in the Americas have long been
a favorite topic of speculation. Native Americans have been
worked into Western myths in an attempt to explain their
origins. Th e various Native Americans, for their part, have
always had their own myths, with which they not only ex-
plained their origins but also gave themselves a sense of pur-
pose, morality, and hope. Over the past two centuries the
geographic origin of America’s most ancient settlers has also
been a research interest for scientists. In that time some as-
pects of myth have given way to scientifi c theories based on
empirical evidence. Th e science of archaeology was one of the
fi rst disciplines to propose theories and possible time frames
for the peopling of ancient America. Archaeologists and an-
thropologists were eventually followed by many other scien-
tists on the trail of the very fi rst Americans.
Many diff erent kinds of evidence of ancient American
people have been uncovered, and some of the evidence has
been diffi cult to interpret. Scientists have therefore developed
a variety of theories and have disagreed about the time of fi rst
arrival. In the 20th century alone, professional and amateur
anthropologists proposed dates ranging from 200,000 to
12,000 years ago. However, the vast majority of the evidence
dates back to a time somewhere between 14,000 and 12,000
years ago.FROM SIBERIA TO ALASKA
From about 18,000 years ago the last ice age began to wane.
Glaciers slowly melted and sometimes refroze in centu-
ries-long cold snaps. Th is general warming trend continued
for more than 8,000 years, and ocean levels began to swell
with glacial meltwater. Even as they were fed by the melting
glaciers, the oceans at that time were still well below theirAlbert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Th e Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863; Paleo-Indians seemed to have migrated along the base of the North
American Rockies and then the Mexican Sierras and the Andes, hunting on the plains in sight of the sheltering mountains. (Copyright the
Metropolitan Museum of Art)
migration and population movements: The Americas 719