The first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia.

Habitation sites are

known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, with suggested
ages of up to 40,000 years.[26][27][28] Beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian
migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes
traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. [29] Widespread
habitation of the Americas occurred during the late glacial maximum, from
16,000 to 13,000 years ago.[28][30]
Statue representing the Americas at Palazzo Ferreria, in Valletta, Malta

The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the
Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around
40,00017,000 years ago,[31] when sea levels were significantly lowered due to
the Quaternary glaciation.[29][32] These people are believed to have followed herds
of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched
between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.[33] Another route proposed is
that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast
to South America.[34] Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a
sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age. [35] Both routes
may have been taken, although the genetic evidences suggests a single
founding population.[36] The micro-satellite diversity and distributions specific to
South American Indigenous people indicates that certain populations have been
isolated since the initial colonization of the region. [37]
A second migration occurred after the initial peopling of the Americas; [38] Na
Dene speakers found predominantly in North American groups at varying
genetic rates with the highest frequency found among the Athabaskans at 42%
derive from this second wave.[39] Linguists and biologists have reached a similar
conclusion based on analysis of Amerindian language groups and ABO blood
group system distributions.[38][40][41][42] Then the people of the Arctic small tool
tradition a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula,
around Bristol Bay, and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait around
2,500 BCE (4,500 years ago) moved into North America.[43] The Arctic small tool
tradition, a Paleo-Eskimo culture branched off into two cultural variants,
including the Pre-Dorset, and the Independence traditions of Greenland.[44] The
descendants of the Pre-Dorset cultural group, the Dorset culture was displaced
by the final migrants from the Bering sea coast line the ancestors of modern

Inuit, the Thule people by 1000 Common Era (CE).[44] Around the same time as
the Inuit migrated into Greenland, Viking settlers began arriving in Greenland in
982 and Vinland shortly thereafter, establishing a settlement at L'Anse aux
Meadows, near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland.[45] The Viking settlers
quickly abandoned Vinland, and disappeared from Greenland by 1500. [46]