Pre-Columbian Societies Ch. 1 of the American Pageant, New World Beginnings, Pp. 1-14

Pre-Columbian Societies – Ch. 1 of The American Pageant, “New World Beginnings,” pp. 1-14

Overall main idea: As a result of European technology and demand for trade, in 1492 Columbus established contact with the Americas, which had developed widely spread and diverse societies after Asian migration during the Ice Age.

Part One: Founding the New Nation

Main idea: British colonists in America were divided in many ways, but were united in their long fight to win independence from Great Britain and create the new United States of America after years of self-rule and subjugation of Native Americans and African slaves.

The Shaping of North America

Main idea: North America broke off from a supercontinent and was geologically changed by the Great Ice Age.

Some dates for perspective:

Several billion years B.C.E. - Earth formed

225 million B.C.E. - Pangea supercontinent broke apart

10 million B.C.E. - North America had basic geological shape

2 million B.C.E.-8,000 B.C.E. - Great Ice Age

5,000 B.C.E. - corn agriculture developed

1492 C.E. - Columbian Exchange

Appalachian Mountains are much older than Rockies and other American mountains

Glaciers of the Ice Age moved down from Canada as far as Ohio and Pennsylvania, then retreated as the Ice Age ended, scraping away topsoil and forming many lakes

Lake Bonneville was an ancient lake formed by the glaciers that eventually drained and shrank to become the Great Salt Lake

Peopling the Americas

Main idea: The Ice Age opened a land bridge that allowed Asians to migrate to the Americas between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago, spreading across the continent to form diverse cultures.

Some Asians may have come to America in crude boats, but most probably came by land across the Bering Land Bridge, probably following herds of game

Bering Land Bridge - between Asia and Alaska; formed when some of the Earth’s ocean waters froze and lowered sea levels; recovered by water when the Ice Age ended, stranding the Asian immigrants

Asian immigrants formed thousands of different cultures, adapting to environment and becoming “Native Americans”

Meso-American (Middle American) cultures built large, complex civilizations around agriculture, especially corn, without draft animals or the wheel - Aztecs, Mayans

The Earliest Americans

Main idea: Though some large civilizations existed, most Native Americans lived in small, widely dispersed societies with little effect on the environment.

Some Native American civilizations rivaled those of Europe - Cahokia (near present day St. Louis, MO), the Anasazi (New Mexico), Iroquois Confederacy (NE United States), the Aztecs (Mexico) and Incas (Peru, South America); again, built around corn farming

As corn farming spread, so did stable societies; also beans and squash

Women tended crops while men did more manual tasks; many Native societies were matrilineal

Besides deliberate forest fires to improve hunting habitat, Natives did not affect the environment much

Natives were widely and thinly spread across the Americas; probably around 4 million at time of European contact

Indirect Discoverers of the New World

Main idea: Europeans sought to find a cheaper trade route to Southeast Asia for new developing consumer goods.

Norsemen (“Vikings”) from Scandinavia founded the first known European settlement in America in Newfoundland, Canada, around 1,000 C.E.; it did not last and was abandoned

Christian crusaders attempted to take the Holy Land away from Muslims; in their defeat, they increased trade with Asia, seeking new goods

Asian goods: silk, drugs, perfumes, fabric, spices, sugar

Europeans Enter Africa

Main idea: New technologies and discoveries allowed the Portuguese to sail to southern Africa and beyond to Asia, increasing trade, desires, and plantation slavery.

Marco Polo - Italian whose tales of China and Asia increased European desires for trade and exploration; may not have actually made it there in 1295

Caravel - newly developed ship with shallow depth and triangular lateen sails; easier navigation against winds and along shallow shores; developed by Portuguese

Portuguese sailed south of Sahara in Africa, establishing trading posts and bringing back gold and slaves; slaves were used on plantation farms on African islands

Timbuktu - Large African city in Mali Empire; trading post and center of Islamic learning

Africans and Arabs had been involved in slave trading for centuries before Portuguese arrived

Spain was united in the late 1400s; Reconquista - Spanish Catholics drove all Muslims from Spain by 1492; Spain grew more powerful and expansionist

Columbus Comes upon a New World

Main idea: Christopher Columbus’s contact with the Americas was a result of multiple causes and would bring together four different continents.

Factors leading to the shift of history caused by Columbus’s contact:

1. European demand for goods outside of Europe

2. African precedent of slave labor and plantation agriculture

3. Arabic and Portugese sailing experience, technology and precedent

4. Spanish unification into nation of wealth and power

5. Printing press spread knowledge and news faster

Christopher Columbus - English version of Cristoffa Corombo, Italian explorer who sailed for Spain to find a new oceanic route to Asian trade; he underestimated the size of the ocean but instead accidentally landed in the Americas

“Indians” - Columbus thought he was just off the coast of Asia and India and so misnamed the Native Americans as Indians

Columbus’s voyages were important because they began European interest, exploration, and colonization of Americas and globalization of multiple continents and cultures