In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word 'America' on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil. Vespucci, who explored South America between 14, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. The Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. However, in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America, there are indigenous populations continuing their cultural traditions and speaking their own languages. Owing to Europe's colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak European languages such as English, Spanish or French, and their cultures commonly reflect Western traditions. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves, immigrants from Europe, Asia, and South Asia, and the descendants of these groups. Christopher Columbus's arrival in 1492 sparked a transatlantic exchange which included migrations of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the early modern period. The first recorded Europeans to visit North America (other than Greenland) were the Norse around 1000 AD. The classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago (the beginning of the Archaic or Meso-Indian period). North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge approximately 40,000 to 17,000 years ago. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean.

It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of a single continent, America. North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. Map of populous North America showing physical, political and population characteristics as per 2018

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