The
Americas, or
America, are the lands of the
Western hemisphere or
New World, comprising the
continents of
North America and
South America with their associated
islands and
regions.
America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more
commonly used to refer to the
United States of America. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
History
Formation
South America broke off from the west of the
supercontinent Gondwanaland around 135
million years ago (
Ma), forming its own continent. Starting around 15
Ma, the collision of the
Caribbean Plate and the
Pacific Plate resulted in a series of volcanoes along the border that created a number of islands. The gaps in the archipelago of
Central America filled in with material eroded off North America and South America, plus new land created by continued volcanism. By 3 Ma, the continents of North America and South America were linked by the
Isthmus of Panama, thereby forming the single landmass of the Americas.
Settlement
Humans crossed the
Bering land bridge comparatively late in prehistory. Discoveries in
Siberia's
Altai Mountains have led some
anthropologists to theorise that humans were largely prevented from crossing to Alaska due to large numbers of
spotted hyenas. Archaeological finds establish the widespread presence of the
Clovis culture in North America and South America around 10,000 BCE. Whether this is the first migration of humans into North America and South America is disputed, with
alternative theories holding that humans arrived in North America and South America as early as around 40,000 BCE.
The
Inuit migrated into the
Arctic section of North America in another wave of migration, arriving around 1000 CE. Around the same time as the Inuit migrated into North America,
Viking settlers began arriving in
Greenland in 982 and
Vinland shortly thereafter. The Viking settlers quickly abandoned Vinland, and disappeared from Greenland by 1500.
Large-scale
European colonization of the Americas began shortly after the voyages of
Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The spread of new diseases brought by Europeans and Africans killed most of the inhabitants of North America and South America, with a general
population crash of Native Americans occurring in the mid-sixteenth century, often well ahead of European contact. Native peoples and European colonizers came into widespread conflict, resulting in what
David Stannard has called a
genocide of the indigenous populations.
[Staff. of American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (by David Stannard), on the website of the Oxford University Press (the publishers)] Early European immigrants were often part of state-sponsored attempts to found colonies in the Americas. Migration continued as people moved to the Americas fleeing
religious persecution or seeking economic opportunities. Millions of individuals were forcibly transported to the Americas as
slaves,
prisoners or
indentured servants.
Naming
The earliest known use of the name
America for this particular landmass dates from April 25, 1507. It appears first on a small globe map with twelve time zones, and then a large wall map created by the
German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France. An accompanying book,
Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the
Latinized version of the
Florentine explorer
Amerigo Vespucci's name,
Americus Vespucius in its feminine form,
America, as the other continents all have feminine names.
Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear. Some sources say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass. Waldseemüller may have been misled by the
Soderini Letter, claimed by some to be a forgery, which implies that it was discovered first by Amerigo Vespucci.
Christopher Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of
Renaissance era voyagers, had died in 1506 (believing, to the end, that he had discovered and colonized the Indies he had set out looking for) and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8328878.stm].
Map of America by Jonghe, c. 1770
An alternate proposal, first advanced by
Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist
Jan Carew, is that the name
America derives from the district of
Amerrique in
Nicaragua. The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold.
Another theory, first proposed by a
Bristol antiquary and
naturalist, Alfred Hudd, in 1908 was that
America is derived from
Richard Amerike (Richard ap Meurig), a Bristol merchant of Welsh descent, who is believed to have financed
John Cabot's voyage of discovery from
England to
Newfoundland in 1497.
Geography
Extent
The northernmost point of the Americas is
Kaffeklubben Island, which is the northernmost point of land on Earth. The southernmost point is the islands of
Southern Thule, although they are sometimes considered part of
Antarctica. The easternmost point is
Nordostrundingen. The westernmost point is
Attu Island.
The mainland of the Americas is the longest north-to-south landmass on Earth. At its longest, it stretches roughly 14,000 kilometres, from the
Boothia Peninsula in northern Canada to Cape Froward in Chilean
Patagonia. The westernmost point of the mainland of the Americas is the end of the
Seward Peninsula in Alaska, while
Ponta do Seixas in northeastern Brazil forms the mainland's easternmost extremity.
Topography
Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas
The western geography of the Americas is dominated by the
American cordillera, with the
Andes running along the west coast of South America and the
Rocky Mountains and other
Pacific Coast Ranges running the western side of North America. The 2300 km long
Appalachian Mountains run along the east coast of North America from
Alabama to
Newfoundland. North of the Appalachians, the
Arctic Cordillera runs along the eastern coast of Canada.
Between its coastal mountain ranges, North America has vast flat areas. The
Interior Plains spread over much of the continent with low relief. The
Canadian Shield covers almost 5 million km² of North America and is generally quite flat. Similarly, the north-east of South America is covered by the flat
Amazon Basin. The
Brazilian Highlands on the east coast are fairly smooth but show some variations in landform, while further south the
Gran Chaco and
Pampas are broad
lowlands.
Hydrology
With coastal mountains and interior plains, the Americas have several large
river basins that drain the continents. The largest river basin in South America is that of the
Amazon, which has the highest volume flow of any river on Earth. The largest river basin in North America is that of the
Mississippi, covering the second largest
watershed on the planet. The second largest watershed of South America is that of the
Paraná River, which covers about 2.5 million km².
Demography
Population
São Paulo is the second populous city in the Americas.
The total population of the Americas is 858,000,000 people per the , and is divided as follows:
- South America: 2001 with 352 million and in 2002 with 357 million
See also:
Ethnology
The population of the Americas is made up of the descendants of seven large
ethnic groups and their combinations.
- Those of European ancestry, mainly Spanish, British, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Polish, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian people.
- Mestizos, those of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry.
- Mulattoes, people of mixed Black African and European ancestry.
- Zambos (Spanish) or Cafusos (Portuguese), those of mixed Black African and Amerindian ancestry.
The majority of the population live in
Latin America, named for its predominant cultures whose roots lie in
Latin Europe (including the two dominant languages,
Spanish and
Portuguese, both
neolatin), more specifically in the
Iberian nations of
Portugal and
Spain (hence the use of the term
Ibero-America as a synonym). Latin America is typically contrasted with
Anglo-America (where
English, a
Germanic language, is prevalent) which comprises
Canada (with the exception of
francophone Canada rooted in Latin Europe (
France): see
Québec and
Acadia) and the
United States. Both are located in North America and present predominantly
Anglo-Saxon and
Germanic roots.
Religion
The most prevalent faiths in the Americas are as follows:
- Christianity (North America: 85 percent; South America: 93 percent)
- * Roman Catholicism (practiced by 89 percent of the Mexican population;
[[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#People CIA - The World Factbook - United States]] and more than 40 percent of all of Canadians)
- * Protestantism (practiced mostly in United States, where half of the population are Protestant, and Canada, with slightly more than a quarter of the population; there is a growing contingent of Evangelical and Pentecostal movements in predominantly Catholic Latin America)
- * Eastern Orthodoxy (found mostly in the United States and Canada— 1 percent of the US citizenry; this Christian group is growing faster than many other Christian groups in Canada and now represents roughly 3 percent of the Canadian population)
- * Other Christians and non-denominational Christians (some 1,000 different Christian denominations and sects practiced in the Americas)
- Irreligion (includes atheists and agnostics, as well as those who profess some form of spirituality but do not identify themselves as members of any organized religion)
- Judaism (practiced by 2 percent of North Americans—approximately 2.5 percent of the U.S. population and 1.2 percent of Canadians; 0.23 percent of Latin Americans—Argentina has the largest Jewish communities in Latin America with 200,000 members)
- Islam (2 percent of Canadians (580,000 persons), 0.6% percent of the U.S. population (1,820,000 persons)
Other faiths include
Sikhism;
Buddhism;
Hinduism;
Bahá'í; a wide variety of indigenous religions, many of which can be categorized as
animistic; and many African and afro-derived religions. Syncretic faiths can also be found throughout the continent.
Languages
thumb|right|300px|Languages spoken in the AmericasVarious
languages are spoken in the Americas. Some are of European origin, others are spoken by indigenous peoples or are the mixture of various idioms like the different creoles.
The dominant language of
Latin America is
Spanish, though the largest nation in Latin America,
Brazil, speaks
Portuguese. Small enclaves of French- and English-speaking regions also exist in Latin America, notably in
French Guiana and
Belize respectively, and
Haitian Creole, of French origin, is dominant in the nation of
Haiti.
Native languages are more prominent in Latin America than in
Anglo-America, with
Nahuatl,
Quechua,
Aymara and
Guaraní as the most common. Various other native languages are spoken with less frequency across both Anglo-America and Latin America.
Creole languages other than Haitian Creole are also spoken in parts of Latin America.
The dominant language of Anglo-America, as the name suggests, is
English.
French is also official in
Canada, where it is the predominant language in
Québec and an official language in
New Brunswick along with English. It is also an important language in the
U.S. state of
Louisiana. Spanish has become widely spoken in parts of the
United States due to heavy immigration from Latin America. High levels of immigration in general have brought great linguistic diversity to Anglo-America, with over 300 languages known to be spoken in the United States alone, but most languages are spoken only in small enclaves and by relatively small immigrant groups.
The nations of
Guyana,
Suriname, and
Belize are generally considered not to fall into either Anglo-America or Latin America due to lingual differences with Latin America, geographic differences with Anglo-America, and cultural and historical differences with both regions; English is the primary language of Guyana and Belize, and
Dutch is the official and written language of Suriname.
- Spanish – spoken by approximately 310 million in many nations throughout the continent.
- Portuguese – spoken by approximately 185 million in South America, mostly Brazil
- Haitian Creole – creole language, based in French and various African languages, spoken by 6 million in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora in Canada and the United States.
- Chinese languages are spoken by at least 5 million people living mostly in the United States, Canada, Peru and Panama.
- German – Some 2.2 million. Spoken by 1.1 million people in the United States plus another million in parts of Latin America, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay.
- Aymara – native language spoken by about 2.2 million speakers in the Andes, in Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
[Chile National Census 2002, figures cited in ][, Ethnologue, retrieved October 10th, 2007]
- Nahuatl – native language of central Mexico with 1.5 million speakers. Also was the language of the Aztec People of Mexico.
- Tagalog has been present in the continent since the Spanish empire. It is now spoken by 1.5 million people mostly living in the United States and Canada.
- Vietnamese is spoken by 1 million recent immigrants to the United States.
- Korean has recently become a major language in the United States with about 1 million speakers.
- Japanese was once a major minority language in the United States but has recently dwindled in terms of population. Also found in Brazil and Peru.
- Hmong is an indigenous language in Southeast Asia, whose largest number of speakers outside Asia is in the United States
- American Sign Language – An estimated 100,000–500,000 people within the Deaf Community use ASL as their primary language in the United States and Canada.
- Mapudungun (or Mapuche) – native language spoken by approximately 440,000 people in Chile and Argentina.
- Navajo – native language spoken by about 178,000 speakers in the Southwest U.S. on the Navajo Nation (Indian reservation). The tribe's isolation until the early 1900s provided a language used in a military code in World War II.
- Miskito – Spoken by up over 180,000 Miskitos. They are Indigenous people who inhabit the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and the easternmost region of Honduras.
- Pennsylvania Dutch – Some descendants of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the Northeast U.S. speak a local form of the German language which dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They number about 85,000.
- Inuit – native language spoken by about 75,000 across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador.
- Danish – and Greenlandic (Inuit) are the official languages of Greenland; most of the population speak both of the languages (approximately 50,000 people). A minority of Danish migrants with no Inuit ancestry speak Danish as their first, or only, language.
- Cree – Cree is the name for a group of closely-related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 50,000 speakers across Canada.
- Garífuna (or Garinagu) - native language spoken by the Garífuna people who inhabits parts of the caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The vast majority of them live in Honduras.
- Welsh – In Argentina, two towns of Trelew and Rawson were settled by Welsh immigrants in the late nineteenth century and the Welsh language remains spoken by about 25,000, including the towns' older residents.
- Cherokee – native language spoken in a small corner of Oklahoma, U.S. by about 19,000 speakers. The use of this language has rebounded in the late twentieth century. It is known to possess its own alphabet, the Cherokee syllabary.
- Gullah – a creole language based on English with strong influences from West and Central African languages spoken by the Gullah people, an African American population living on the coastal region of the U.S. states of South Carolina and Georgia.
- Sranan Tongo, also known as Taki Taki, is the most used spoken language of Suriname. It is not usually used in its written form. It is a creole language based on Spanish, English, Dutch, Hindustani, and various other languages.
Most of the non-native languages have, to different degrees, evolved differently from the mother country, but are usually still mutually intelligible. Some have combined, however, which has even resulted in completely new languages, such as
Papiamentu, which is a combination of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch (representing the respective colonizers), native
Arawak, various
African languages, and, more recently, English. Because of immigration, there are many communities where other languages are spoken from all parts of the world, especially in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada, four very important destinations for immigrants.
Terminology
America/Americas
In many parts of the world,
America in the
singular is commonly used as a name for the United States of America; however,
(the) Americas (
plural with
s and generally with
the definite article) invariably refers to the lands and regions of the Western hemisphere. Usage of
America to also refer to this collectivity remains fairly common; for example, the
International Olympic Committee reckons
America as one of the five inhabited continents, which is depicted in the
Olympic logo.
While many in the United States of America and other countries generally refer to the country as
America and US residents/citizens as
Americans, many people elsewhere in the Americas resent what they perceive as misappropriation of the term in this context and, thus, this usage is frequently avoided.
["America." Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage. (ISBN 0-19-541619-8) Fee, Margery and McAlpine, J., ed., 1997. Toronto: Oxford University Press; p. 36.] In Canada, their southern neighbor is seldom referred to as "America", with
the United States,
the U.S., or (informally)
the States used instead.
English dictionaries and compendiums differ regarding usage and rendition.
American
English usage
Whether usage of
America or
the Americas is preferred,
American is a self-referential term for many people living in the Americas. However, much of the English-speaking world uses the word to refer solely to a
citizen,
resident, or
national of the United States of America. Instead, the word
pan-American is sometimes used as an unambiguous adjective to refer to the Americas.
In addition, many Canadians resent being referred to as Americans because of mistaken assumptions that they are U.S. citizens or an inability—particularly of people overseas—to distinguish
Canadian English and
American English accents.
Spanish usage
In Spanish,
América is the name of a region considered a single continent composed of the
subcontinents of
Sudamérica and
Norteamérica, the
land bridge of
Centroamérica, and the islands of the
Antillas.
Americano/a in Spanish refers to a person from
América in a similar way that
europeo or
europea refers to a person from
Europa. The terms
sudamericano/a,
centroamericano/a,
antillano/a and
norteamericano/a can be used to more specifically refer to the location where a person may live.
Citizens of the United States of America are normally referred to by the term
estadounidense instead of
americano or
americana, and the country's name itself is often translated as
Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Also, the term
norteamericano may refer to a citizen of the United States. This term is primarily used to refer to citizens of the United States, rarely those of other North American countries.
Portuguese usage
In Portuguese, the word
americano refers to the whole of the
Americas. But, in Brazil and Portugal, it is widely used to refer to the citizens of the United States. The least ambiguous term,
estadunidense (used more frequently in Brazil) or
estado-unidense (used more frequently in Portugal), something like "United Statian" or "estadounidense" in Spanish language), and "ianque"—the Portuguese version of "Yankee"—are rarely used.
América, however, is rarely used as synonym to the country, and almost never in print and in more formal environments, where the US is called either
Estados Unidos da América (i.e. United States of America) or simply
Estados Unidos (i.e. United States). There is some difference between the usage of these words in Portugal and in Brazil, with the Portuguese being more prone to apply the term
América to the country.
French usage
In French, as in English, the word
Américain can be confusing as it can be used to refer either to the United States, or to the American continents.
The noun
Amérique sometimes refers to the whole as one continent, and sometimes two continents, southern and northern; the United States is generally referred to as
les États-Unis d'Amérique,
les États-Unis, or
les USA. However, the usage of
Amérique to refer to the United States, while technically not correct, does still have some currency in France.
The adjective
américain is most often used for things relating to the United States; however, it may also be used for things relating to the American continents. Books by United States authors translated from English are often described as "traduit de l'américain".
Things relating to the United States can be referred to without ambiguity by the words
états-unien,
étasunien, or
étatsunien, although their usage is rare.
Dutch usage
In Dutch, the word
Amerika mostly refers to the United States. Although the United States is equally often referred to as
de Verenigde Staten or
de VS,
Amerika relatively rarely refers to the Americas, but it is the only commonly used Dutch word for the Americas. This often leads to ambiguity and to stress that something concerns the Americas as a whole, Dutch uses a combination, namely
Noord- en Zuid Amerika (North and South America).
Latin America is generally referred to as
Latijns Amerika or, less frequently,
Zuid Amerika (South America).
The adjective
amerikaans is most often used for things or people relating to the United States. There are no alternative words to distinguish between things relating to the United States or to the Americas. Dutch uses the local alternative for things relating to elsewhere in the Americas, such as
Argentijns for Argentinian etc.
Russian usage
In the 19th century in Russia the word "America" was used for a traditional continent such as Europe and Asia. In the 20th century these traditional continents are known as "parts of the world". Now the term "continent" means any of six large continuous landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Australia). Now the word
Ameriсa refers to the United States more often than to America as a "part of the world". There is no term equivalent to "Americas" in Russian.
Countries and territories
Map showing the dates of independence of the countries of the Americas. Black shows areas not independent.
Sovereign states
There are 35
sovereign states in the Americas, 23 in North America and 12 in South America:
Overseas regions and dependencies
Multinational organizations in the Americas
See also
Footnotes
