Theme: The first discoverers of America, the ancestors of the American Indians, were small bands of hunters who crossed a temporary land bridge from Siberia and spread across both North and South America. They evolved a great variety of cultures, which ranged from the sophisticated urban civilizations in Mexico and Central and South America to the largely seminomadic societies of North America.

Theme: Europe's growing demand for Eastern luxuries prompted exploration in the hopes of reducing the expense of those goods with new trade routes. Exploration occurred incrementally, beginning with the Portuguese moving around the coast of Africa and establishing trading posts. Awareness of the New World and its wealth pushed exploration across the Atlantic. Spanish exploration continued in the same fashion, first in the Caribbean islands then expanding into South and North America.

Theme: Portuguese and Spanish explorers encountered and then conquered much of the Americas and their Indian inhabitants. This collision of worlds deeply affected all the Atlantic societiesEurope, the Americas, and Africaas the effects of disease, conquest, slavery, and intermarriage began to create a truly new world in Latin America, including the borderlands of Florida, New Mexico, and California, all of which later became part of the United States.