ABSTRACT
The first humans in what is commonly referred to as the New World likely arrived tens of thousands of years ago, during the ice age, from across a land bridge that then linked Alaska to Asia. The Europeans who conquered most of the New World were primarily Iberians—people from the southwestern peninsula that is home to Portugal and Spain. The Moorish invasion was most significant, and it left lasting impressions on the lands that would eventually become Spain. Moors were independent conquerors, and remained in Iberia on their own terms, without answering to a distant metropolis or state. The collapse of the Arawak population in the Caribbean helped drive the Spaniards to further exploration. Roughly five hundred years after the Spanish conquests of the New World, most of Latin America can claim at least a fraction of the region’s Indian past. Pure-blooded Indians live primarily in the same regions heavily occupied before the Spanish Conquest: Mexico and the Andes.
