TimeMaps

North America
2500BC

Farming, based on maize as the staple crop, is beginning to spread northwards from Mexico - though nowhere is it the primary source of food, and elsewhere in North America hunter-gatherer cultures prevail. In a few areas, where game and edible plants are particularly abundant, dense populations occur, most notably on the Pacific coast of the present-day USA and Canada. Here the plentiful marine life, combined with the rich flora and fauna of the mountains and streams, have allowed large permanent villages to develop.

In the far north, Arctic hunters have arrived from northern Siberia in North America in small boats across the Bering Sea. They are the ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Aleuts.

At about this time some peoples begin creating elaborate rock artworks on canyon walls and rock outcrops. The most famous of these are to be found along the Pecos river, in Texas.

North America
1500BC

Farming based on maize continues to spread in North America, and is now penetrating the eastern parts of the present-day USA.

In Mexico, farming has now become firmly established as the predominant way of life. Several distinct farming cultures are developing in different areas, and in certain places agricultural techniques are making important advances. In the tropical forests of the eastern lowlands, for example, farmers are learning to construct pools and water-courses to control the flow of water for the intensive growing of crops. On this productive base, the first civilization of North America will soon emerge.

North America
1000BC

In Mexico and neighbouring countries, regional farming cultures are flourishing, and amongst them, the first civilization of North America has appeared. This is the Olmec civilization.

At this date most peoples of present-day USA and Canada still live as hunter-gatherers. However, even at this early date irrigation farming is present in the arid South West.

At about this time, in the Mississippi valley, the Adena culture is emerging. It is characterized by the construction of large earthworks for religious and ceremonial purposes. This is the start of a tradition which will last right up to the coming of the Europeans.

North America
500BC

In Mexico and Central America, the influence of the Olmecs has spread over a wide area, creating centres of civilization in several widely-scattered locations.

In the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, the Adena culture, famous for producing remarkable ceremonial earthworks, continues to flourish.

North America
200BC

Having spread their influence over a wide area in Central America, the Olmecs is now being replaced by several regional centres of civilization, influenced by the Olmecs but with their own distinct characteristics - including, by this date, writing, amongst the Zapotec and Mixtec. This process is being stimulated by a dramatic growth in population, for which there is evidence in both the central basin of Mexico as well as in the Yucatan peninsula.

Farming is by now well-established in the arid landscape of the present-day south western USA. It is dependent upon irrigation - although, given the need to exploit all sources of sustenance in this hostile environment, hunting small game remains important. The Mogollon culture is emerging in the area about this time. In the eastern woodland region, the Hopewell people are developing a distinctive culture, derived from the Adena.

North America
30BC

In Central America, the old Olmec centres are now deserted, but several regional civilizations are flourishing. Population expansion continues at a fast rate in several areas, leading to the rise of major urban centres. The Mayan people are developing a city-based civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula, in present-day Mexico and Guatamala, and major cities are appearing at Teotihuacan, in the Central Basin of Mexico, and amongst the Zapotec, to the south.

In the dry environment of the south-western USA, two other farming cultures, the Hohokam and the Anasazi, have appeared, joining the already-exisiting Mogollon culture.

North America
200AD

In Mexico, the largest cities in all Pre-Columbian American history, Teotihuacan, has appeared. Meanwhile, the Mayan city-states have continued to develop their distinctive civilization, which is now entering its classic phase.

Further north, the Hopewell culture is spreading throughout the woodlands of the present-day eastern USA.

In the south-west, the Hohokum are developing elaborate irrigation systems - including dams and a complex network of canals, some taking water 10 miles from water source to fields. Large settlements are appearing; one, Snaketown, covers more than 300 acres. The presence of ball courts, one of the most distinctive elements of Mesoamerican civilization, is strong evidence for contact between this region and Mexico.

North America
500AD

In Mexico, the great city of Teotihuacan continues to flourish, and the Mayan city-states are reaching a peak of prosperity. Their civilization is becoming one of the most remarkable civilizations in world history, boasting extraordinary technological and artistic achievements.

By this date, the Hopewell culture has vanished. The large, stable communities that were capable of building the large earthworks of the Hopewell have dispersed, perhaps due to over-exploitation of their local food sources.

North America
750AD

In Mexico and Central America, the extraordinary Mayan civilization continues to thrive, while that of the magnificent city of Teotihuacan has vanished.

In the south-west of the present-day USA, the Anasazi are developing the famous Pueblo culture, with its remarkable constructions of multi-story, hundred-room houses made of stone and adobe mortar and bricks.

Meanwhile the peoples of the lower Mississippi are developing more complex societies than previously. Their increasingly elaborate culture involves the building of huge flat-topped pyramid mounds, made of earth, upon which wooden temples are erected.

North America
979AD

In Mexico and Central America, many of the historic Mayan city states have fallen into catastrophic decline. Mayan civilization continues amongst the cities in the north of the Mayan homeland, but its classic phase is reaching its end.

In central Mexico, a people called the Toltec dominate a large area, ruling from their capital city, Tula.

The peoples of the Mississippian culture are developing far-ranging trading networks which spread out to cover the whole area between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. Large towns are appearing along the banks of the great rivers of the region, centres of trade, religion and probably political power.

North America
1215AD

In central America, the Toltec empire has vanished, its capital, Tula, sacked by the Mexica, a people from the north,

To the north, population growth has continued, and with it competition for land and resources, more complex societies, and more powerful chiefdoms. Long-range trade networks have reappeared, spanning the continent from coast to coast. In the present-day eastern USA, the largest Pre-Columbian towns north of Mesoamerica have grown up, especially the town of Cahokia, which straggles for miles along the banks of the Mississippi.

In the south-western USA, the Pueblo culture has experienced a militarization of its society; villages are being relocated to more defensible sights.

In the far north, the Inuit have spread out over the Arctic region as far as Greenland. There they encounter the first European settlements in the New World, belonging to the Norse colony in Greenland, founded in 987.

North America
1453AD

The dominant people in Mesoamerica are now the Aztecs, an alliance of groups of whom the Mexica are the leading element.

In the South-West of the present-day USA, a long dry spell has had a disastrous impact upon the agricultural societies of the Hohokam and the Anasazi. Many farming villages have been abandoned and people have moved away from their historic homelands.

Climate change may also have been responsible for changes in societies of the east. There has been a marked upswing in violence between communities, and urban centres such as Cahokia have been

abandoned. Other centres continue in being, though none are on the same scale as before.

The Norse settlements on Greenland have vanished, possibly victims of a colder climate and of the continued Inuit expansion across the Arctic region.

North America
1648AD

In the late Sixteenth century, the Iroquois Confederacy was formed, a remarkable political formation covering a large area of the eastern present-day USA. Meanwhile to the south, the Spanish had been building their huge empire in the Americas. Spanish explorers ventured up into the southwest USA from Mexico, where they have been followed by a handful of missionaries and traders. There has been little by way of settlement in this arid region.

Much more recently, northern Europeans - mostly from the British Isles -  have been settling a group of colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America. Their populations are increasing rapidly, and soon more colonies will be founded.

As the European population rises, that of the Native Americans falls sharply. Deadly European diseases, to which the natives have no resistance, fan out across the continent, carrying away a majority of their people.

North America
1789AD

Most of the British colonies on the eastern seaboard have rebelled to form a new nation, the United States of America. The small British colonies in present-day Canada, together with the old French colony (which had previously fallen to the British), remain under British rule. Much of the rest of the continent is under Spanish rule. Mexico is a wealthy and populous country of flourishing cities. European penetration of the central regions of North America, however, is limited to isolated forts, trading posts and mission stations.

Several Native American groups near the eastern seabord have been drawn into European conflicts as allies of one side or another, French, British or American. On the Great Plains, meanwhile, the spread of escaped Spanish horses has transformed many societies. Tribes who previously lived as sedentary farmers now form highly mobile groups, hunting the vast herds of bison from horseback. Such is the bonanza that many Native American groups have pushed into the plains from surrounding areas and adopted this lifesyle.

North America
1837AD

The dominating theme of these years is the westward expansion of the USA, aided by the acquisition of vast new lands in the Louisiana Purchase and the strong, steady westward migration of settlers. Land hunger from whites is leading to growing friction between settlers and Native Americans. In 1830, the Federal Government starts a policy of removing Indians to west of Mississippi.

To the north, society in Canada remains anchored to the east, but fur trappers have pushed along the rivers and lakes far into the interior.

Mexico, which covers a vast area of the continent, has now become independent from Spain. White settlement in the interior remains very scattered, however.  The Great Plains are the domains of bison-hunting Native American peoples.

North America
1871AD

The USA has continued to acquire vast new territories, taking the nation right to the Pacific. It has been an unstoppable movement against which Mexico has been completely unable to stand, and which, even more decisively, is overwhelming the Native American cultures.

The geographical expansion of the USA is accompanied by dramatic economic and demographic growth. It has also been punctuated by a terrible Civil War between northern and southern states (1861-65).

To the north, Canada has seen similar geographical expansion. In the process, it has been evolving a political system which will tie the different provinces together in a loose federation, and define its relationship with the mother-country, Britain. In the far north-west of the continent, the USA has purchased Alaska from the Russians (1867).

North America
1914AD

These are years of unprecedented industrial expansion, laying the foundations for the continent's pre-eminence in the 20th century.  Transcontinental systems of transport and communications - the railroad, the telegraph and finally the telephone - tie the economies of the USA and Canada into an integrated whole. The continued westward movement of peoples focusses on the settling of the US Mid-West and the Canadian prairies. Millions of new immigrants boost the population. New cities arise, and older ones expand out of all recognition.

Mexico does not share in this growing prosperity, and is now experiencing the start of its two-decade long Revolution (1910-29). North of the Rio Grande, Native Americans (or First Nations) do what they can to resist the dispossession of their ancestral lands (a process which is arguably milder in Canada than south of the border), and score some successes - most famously at the Little Big Horn in 1876. These are isolated incidents, however, and gradually they are rounded up and confined to reservations, or (sometimes forcibly) assimilated into white society.

North America
1960AD

For the USA and Canada, their experience of these past few decades has been broadly similar, though with significant differences. For both nations, despite the Great Depression of the 1930s, the general trend has been towards greater and greater prosperity: the spread of automobiles and good roads; of radios, TVs, refrigerators and other consumer goods; of industrial mass-production, and skyscrapers changing the skylines of all North American cities. Both nations fought in World War 1 and 2. However, Americans went through the Prohibition years, whilst Canadians did not; and Canadians, with their close ties to Britain, entered both wars at the very beginning, whilst in each case the US came in later (but then made a decisive difference).  

As of 1960, both the USA and Canada stand together as close allies and as members of NATO against the Communist threat.

Mexico remains far poorer than her two northern neighbours; however, she has made substantial progress, both economically and politically, since the end of her Revolution in 1929.

North America
2005AD

The past few decades have seen North American living standards, already the highest in the world, continue to climb. The signing of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed 1994) has welded Canada, the USA and Mexico more closely into one pan-continental economic area. Canadian and US economic integration, already strong, has been enhanced still further, and the presence of Mexico within the agreement has provided a major boost to that country's prosperity. Other less welcome links between these countries have been apparent in the illegal drugs trade, which has undermed law and order in significant portions Mexico and caused immense misery there, and the increasing flows of migration, much of it illegal.