United quite recently, it was believed that the earliest known settlers of the Americas had first crossed the Bering Straight land bridge around 15,000 years ago. However, a recent joint British and Canadian study tells a different story; researchers studied hundreds of artifacts collected from a site known as Bluefish Caves (in northern Yukon near the Alaska border) and deduced that the cave site is now the earliest known human settlement in North America, dating back to 24,000 years. Future excavations and studies of other sites may yield results of even earlier settlements. The point is, the very fact that the Americas have been inhabited for such a long period of time has allowed for more people to disperse farther afield and create separate and distinct civilizations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/science/prehistoric-humans-north-america-california-nature-study.html
The Americas represent two huge land masses. Given that the total area of the Americas constitutes over 16 million square miles—and the total area of Europe only 3.9 million square miles—it is only to be expected that the diversity of societies in the Americas should surpass that of societies in the far smaller area of Europe. Just as societies on the Russian border differed enormously in the fifteenth century from societies in the UK on the other edge of Europe, societies in South America, driven by significant differences in climate and topography, developed completely differently from those on other ends of the continent. All societies ultimately evolve to ensure people have the best chance of survival in their particular environment; it is a symptom of European exceptionalism to expect societies in the Americas to be less diverse than those in Europe.
Those Native American societies which do still exist continue to practice different religions, wear different types of clothing according to their climates, farm different crops and exercise different social rituals according to their geographic location. The only reason there are no longer as many surviving societies in the Americas as there were before the European conquest is that Europeans destroyed the majority of these societies through either disease or war.
The diverse societies in the Americas were mainly caused due to climate and geographical differences in the New World. There is a growing interest in the history of pre-Columbian America, as historians now focus more on the Native Americans as having a history apart from Europeans. While there were advanced trade networks throughout the Americas, to the point that Mexican conch shells have been found in New England burial sites, the Native Americans in the Americas had unique cultures. Some, such as those in the West, lived like hunter-gatherers and also by raiding other tribes. Others, such as those in New England, cleared land by burning small patches of forests in order to create fields and clearings for deer and other wild game. The first Pilgrims who came to this region described what they thought were natural clearings in the forests and the constant smell of smoke as the Native Americans were clearing their fields for planting.
While none of these people practiced Christianity before the arrival of Europeans, many tribes followed their own religious beliefs that reflected their values and beliefs. Some, such as the Aztecs, practiced human sacrifice; this practice sometimes spread to tribes farther north, such as the Pawnee. Other religions were more peaceful, though the Europeans attempted to end them and replace them with Christianity.
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