Amrican History question?

Question

In my American History honors class we have been learning about ancient America and how people got here. We were taught that during the ice age th sea levels dropped and man was able to walk across the "Bering Land Bridge from Siberia to America. My question is if Native Americans migrated from present day Russia why do they look so different from the people who live there now? Is it because of the change in environment or what? I'm just kind of curious.

Answer 1

We are too, but it's a Christian class. How do you know that they weren't there before ? They are not Russian more like real americans , unlike us today.

Answer 2

It could be because of number of reason's why Russian who live in Russia now don't look like Native Americana's:

1- When the people came from the Russia they may have found other people living in the America's and populated the land with them!

2- Maybe the Russian's that live in Russia now came from somewhere else and settles in Russia.

Answer 3

Keep asking questions like this  in school.  What you are being taught is just theory.  There are others.  However, if you look at photos of the Laplanders they look more like the Eskimos than the present day Russians do.  Also how does one explain the appearance of the Iroquois and Seminoles.  They were much more European looking.  Now that we have DNA testing it would be interesting to see if origins can be traced that way.

Answer 4

Native Americans did not migrate from present day Russia. 40,000 years ago there was no Russia nor the people who live there now.

They crossed from Asia to America through what is now called the Bering Strait. But you can't think about it as if they where living there and some of them suddenly decided to see what was on the other side and left the rest behind. The people that crossed the bridge left that territory for others to migrate from elsewhere. So when ones where moving south through the American continent others where moving west through the Asian continent.

There where many peoples moving everywhere.