Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves, immigrants from Europe, 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 20,000 to 17,000 years ago. In human geography and in the English-speaking world outside the United States, particularly in Canada, "North America" and "North American" can refer to just Canada and the United States together. 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 kilometres (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of 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 a 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. 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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