Geographical position

The United States is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: the contiguous U.S. stretches from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Atlantic Ocean on the east, with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast; it is bordered by Canada on the north and Mexico on the south. Alaska is the largest state in area; separated from the contiguous U.S. by Canada, it touches the Pacific on the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America. After Russia and Canada, the U.S. is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, ranking just above or below China. Including only land area, the U.S. is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada. The U.S. also possesses several insular territories scattered around the West Indies (e.g., the commonwealth of Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (e.g., Guam).

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and a territorial water border with Russia in the northwest. The contiguous forty-eight states are otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Alaska borders the Pacific Ocean to the south, the Bering Strait to the west, and the Arctic Ocean to the north, while Hawaii lies far to the southwest of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.

Physiographically, the US is divided into a number of distinct regions. These include the Appalachian Mountains (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island), Atlantic Coastal Plain (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland), Gulf Coastal Plain (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee), Central Lowlands (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia), Great Plains (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma), Rocky Mountains (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho), Great Basin (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada), Pacific Coast Range (Washington, Oregon, California), Alaska, and Hawaii.

Early America

At the height of the ice Age, between 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the world’s water was contained in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was below its current level, and a land bridge connected Asia and North America.

The first people to reach North America almost certainly did so without knowing they had crossed into a new continent, perhaps, following game. Reliable evidence of early life in North America can be dated approximately 12,000 B.C. – the finely crafted spear points and items were found in northern Alaska, and New Mexico. Indians in what is now central Mexico cultivated corn, squash and beans.

By 3,000 B.C. the first signs of irrigation began to appear, and by 300 B.C., signs of early village life.

The first Indian groups to build mounds are often called the Adenans. They began constructing earthen burial sites and fortifications around 600 B.C. Some mounds are in the shape of birds or serpents, and probably served religious purposes.

The Adenans were displaced by Hopewellians. One of the most important centers of their culture was found in southern Ohio, where some of the mounds remained.

By around 500 A.D. the Hopewellians, too, disappeared, giving way to a broad group of tribes known as the Mississippians or Temple Mound culture. One city, Cahokia, just east of St. Louis, Missouri, had a population of about 20,000 at its peak in the early 12^th century.

In those days people lived on hunting, foraging, trading and agriculture.

The ancestors of the modern Hopi Indians began to build stone and adobe pueblos around the year 900. The most famous of them – Mesa Verde, Colorado - had over 200 rooms.

When the first Europeans came to America the population of the continent was as big as the population of Western Europe – about 40 million. (The number of Native Americans living in the U.S. at the onset of the European colonization ranges from 2 to 18 million.) The reason why the effect of the colonization was so devastating is not wars or skirmishes, but mainly disease – smallpox, for, example.

Indian tribes lived on hunting, gathering and the cultivation of maize and other products. Women were responsible for farming and the distribution of food, men hunted and participated in war. They were closely tied to the land. Identification with nature and the elements was integral to religious beliefs. Their life was clan-oriented and communal; their culture was primarily oral, a great deal was devoted to tales and dreams.