The Pre-Columbian Belize history is the period from initial indigenous presence, across millennia, to the first contacts with Europeans - the Pre-Columbian or before Columbus period - that occurred on the region of the Yucatán Peninsula that is present day Belize. Many aspects of this culture persist in the area despite nearly half a millennium of European presence. All evidence, whether from archaeology, history, ethnography, or linguistics, points to a cultural continuity in this region. The descendants of the first settlers in the area have lived there for at least three millennia.