sentences:  The Pre-Columbian era is the term generally used to encompass all period subdivisions in the history of the Americas spanning the time from the original settlement of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic up until the European colonization of the Americas during the early modern period.While technically referring to the era before the voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1504, in practice the term usually includes the history of American indigenous cultures until they were conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or even centuries after Columbus' initial landing.The pre-Columbian archaeological record in the Americas is conventionally divided into five large phases according to an enduring system established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips's 1958 book "Method and Theory in American Archaeology".