When Christopher Columbus' discovered' the New World in 1492, he thought he had reached the continent of Asia and had landed in India. He called the people he found in this new land 'Indians' -the ancestors of the American. Indians had come from Asia thousands of years before Columbus saw them. Thousands of years ago, the Earth was in an ice age. (76) People who lived in northeastern Asia found their homeland growing colder. Huge sheets of ice were spreading over the land and animals people hunted for food were being forced away. The people also had to move, to stay near the animals. Some groups of people crossed Bering Strait from Asia to North Pacific Ocean, which separates northeastern Asia from Alaska. (77) These people slowly traveled east and south, searching for areas where hunting was good. Their children and all those who came after them continued to spread throughout the New World. The Indians do not have yellowish skin that many Asian people have. Their skin is reddish brown. But like the people of Japan and other countries of Asia, Indians usually have high cheekbones and straight black hair. In 1492, Christopher Columbus ______.