First Americans: How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas?

A large black, red and white wood carved totem pole shows a large face with black eyes and white teeth with feathers on either side. — A painted totem pole in Ketchikan, Alaska. (Image credit: Medioimages/Photodisc via Getty Images)

The Americas have been home to humans for tens of thousands of years, with the first people arriving during the last ice age, when woolly mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats roamed the land.

These Indigenous Americans left behind clues about their lives, including prehistoric footprints of a caregiver and a squirmy toddler in what is now New Mexico and a heartbreaking cremation burial of a 3-year-old child in what is now Alaska.

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Laura is the managing editor at Live Science. She also runs the archaeology section and the Life's Little Mysteries series. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a site on autism research. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly newspaper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in science writing from NYU.

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