North and South America

About this topic

The Americas stretch from the Arctic to Cape Horn. North America includes Canada, the US, Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean; features include the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, Great Lakes and Mississippi. South America has the Andes, the world's longest mountain chain on land, the Amazon rainforest and river, which carries more water than any other, and grasslands such as the pampas.

Indigenous civilisations (Maya, Aztec, Inca) preceded European colonisation, and many cultures blend Indigenous, European, African and other heritage. Spanish and Portuguese are widely spoken in the south, while English and French are common in the north. Climates range from polar and tundra in Canada to tropical rainforest near the Amazon, and dry desert in places like the Atacama, one of the driest on Earth.

Economies range from the US, with the world's largest, to developing countries. Issues: inequality, deforestation, and drug trafficking. Large cities such as Mexico City, Sao Paulo and New York are among the biggest in the world. A common misconception is that Latin America is a single culture; it contains many countries, languages and Indigenous peoples. Geographers also note that the Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific, making the Americas central to world trade.