Mayans: The Maya established an empire about 2000 years ago in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Their city, Teotihuacan housed 100,000 people by the 5th century. They built urban centers, studied astronomy, and created an elaborate writing system. Constant warfare with neighboring tribes and an inadequate food supply lead to their demise in the 9th century.
Cahokia: Mississippian culture refers to the combined tribes of the Mississippi valley of the south-eastern US. They relied heavily on maize, squash, pumpkins and nuts. They established a hierarchal society with their largest city, Cahokia, covering 5 square miles near modern St. Louis. By its peak in the 11th and 12th centuries Cahokia housed 20,000, more than London at the same time. They developed an accurate calendar but by 1250 Cahokia was deserted, possibly due to climate change and overpopulation.
Aztecs: The Aztecs migrated from further south to the central valley of Mexico during the 12th century. The Aztecs were fearsome, conquering their neighbors and forcing them to pay tributes in textiles, food, and human sacrifices. Spanish conquered this, and this was crucial, because it gave Spain the largest land empire since Rome and the Aztec’s vast gold reserves.
Huitzilopochtli: This was the primary war god of the Aztec religion. Legend says that he directed the Aztecs to establish their capital on an island where they saw an eagle eating a serpent. This island became Tenochtitlan.
Sexual division of labor: Pre-Columbian societies assigned different tasks to women and men. Men were traditionally tasked with hunting, allotting gathering, food preparation, and clothing production to women. This is notable because it was true of all such hunting societies. Women cared for young children, while older children learned skills from the same-sex parent.
Upper Guinea: The northern region of West Africa, or Upper Guinea, where fishing, hunting and agriculture sustained its inhabitants for 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived in the 15th century. Muslim culture influenced the area heavily when Mediterranean traders first contacted the Africans. The northernmost portion cultivates rice, and the southern portion, which was much less populated and developed, produced wheat. In African societies, the sexes generally shared agricultural responsibilities. Men hunted, raised livestock, and fished. Women managed commercial networks, however, and were tasked with trading with other societies.
Dual-sex principle: Lower Guinea had a unique system referred to by historians as the dual-sex principle. In this system, male political and religious leaders governed men, and females governed women. Most of these societies practiced polygamy, so very few men and women lived as couples in marital households, but they were instead accountable to their own sex.
Ferdinand and Isabella: Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, jealous of Portugal’s success in Africa, agreed to Finance Columbus’s risky expedition west across the Atlantic, with the knowledge that a direct rout to the Far East would be hugely profitable for Spain.
Printing press: The 1400s brought technological change to Europe through the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, by making information more accessible.
Travels by Marco Polo: One of the first books to be distributed widely by means of the printing press, Travels was published in 1477 and recounted Polo’s adventures as a merchant who spent lots of time travelling through China and described the China as being bordered on the east by an ocean. This led the Europeans to believe that they could possibly reach China by sailing west and that this would be very helpful, because then they could circumvent the Muslim merchants.
The Mediterranean Atlantic: The Mediterranean seas were the training ground for European sailors. The complex winds were good practice for explorers. Here, mariners developed a new technique of sailing around the wind. This was key to making trans Atlantic travel possible.
Azores, Madeiras, and the Canaries: These are the major islands of the Mediterranean Atlantic. These are the islands that were first influenced by European expansion in late 1400s pre Columbus. Portuguese settled the Azores and Madeiras as trading posts. The Canaries had indigenous residents- the Guanche people, who traded animal skins and dies with Europeans. The French, Portuguese, and Spanish , and the seven islands fell to the Spanish.
Northeast trades and Westerlies winds: These winds in the Mediterranean Atlantic permitted sailors to travel efficiently. Returning from the Mediterranean to Spain, they would lead themselves against the wind northwest into the open ocean until they could catch the Westerly winds to carry them home.
Sao Tome: Portugal began exploring Africa in the late 15th century. The Portuguese established trading posts along the coast, the most successful being Sao Tome. Sao Tome proved an ideal location with great sugar producing capacity. The Portuguese developed the key colonization principles: 1) how to transplant crops and livestock 2) the natives could be conquered and exploited 3) the model of slavery on plantation like farms was productive.
Amerigo Vespucci: Vespucci was a Florentine explorer who led an expedition to South America following Columbus’s success. He was the first to publish on the discovery of a new continent in 1499, leading a German cartographer, Martin Waldseemuller, to label the continent “America” in 1507.
Leif Ericsson: About the year 1001, a Viking expedition led by Leif Ericsson reached North America after sailing only 200 miles from a Nordic base in Greenland. Attacks by natives as well as the barren land in Canada they landed on forced them out a few years later.
John Cabot: John Cabot is credited with discovering North America. Cabot, calculating that England would be eager to sponsor explorations of the new world, gained financial backing from Henry VII. He reached America in June 1497 and explored the coast of Newfoundland, claiming it for England.
Malinche: Malinche was a young, Mayan slave given to conquistador Hernan Cortez as a gift. She became his personal translator, bore him a child, Martin, one of the first mestizos, and eventually married one of his officers.
Spanish model of colonization: Spain began colonization immediately. On his second voyage, Columbus brought 1200 people to Hispaniola to a place named Isabella, which became the staging area for the Spanish invasion of the Americas. Spain established the model of colonization based on 3 major elements other countries would later adopt: 1) the Crown sought tight control over the colonies through a hierarchal colonial bureaucracy 2) European men constituted most of the colonies initially. They took native women as wives or concubines, which explains the racial makeup of Latin America today 3) The colonies wealth was based on the exploitation of the natives and African slaves.
The encomienda system: Cortez established the encomienda system, which granted plantations and even entire native villages to conquistadors in return for services provided. After criticism from colonial priest Bartholomew de Las Casas the crown restricted the enslavement of the nartives, leading the encomenderos to import African slaves for labor.
Spanish Missionaries: The missionaries followed the conquistadors with the intent of spreading Christianity throughout the Native populations. Indians were exposed to European customs and religious rituals designed to assimilate Catholic and pagan values.
The Columbian exchange: This is the term for the mutual exchange of diseases, plants, animals and other organisms resulting from the 16th century explorations and Spanish colonization of the New World. For example, many large animals, like horses and cattle, were native to the old world, while the New World had vegetable crops, like corn, beans, squash, and potatoes that were more nutritious and produced higher yields than Old World crops. However, diseases carried from Europe and Africa decimated the Native American population, killing as many as 95% in the years following Columbus.
Smallpox: Of all the imported diseases in N.A., Smallpox was the greatest killed of the natives. Smallpox, a virus, was highly infectious and deadly.
Syphilis: The Americans probably gave the Europeans syphilis. Although less likely to be fatal than smallpox, syphilis was debilitating. It was carried by soldiers, sailors, and hookers. It spread throughout the Old World and reached China by 1505.
Sir Walter Raleigh: The first English colonial planners desired to send to America English men who would be able to exploit the local resources for profit. Among these men was Sir Walter Raleigh. Queen Elizabeth I authorized Raleigh to colonize N. America.
Roanoke Island: After two preliminary expeditions, Raleigh sent 117 colonists to a territory he named Virginia. They established a colony on Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina. In 1590, a resupply ship found that all the colonists had vanished. Recent studies suggest an extreme drought forced the colonists to abandon Roanoke.
Harriot’s Briefe and True Report: Thomas Harriot was a noted scientist travelling on the second voyage to Roanoke. He revealed that, while the colonists relied on local Indians for food, they antagonized them by unjustly killing several on different occasions. Harriot advised future colonists to be more humane to the colonists, but then noted that his advice would most likely not be followed, because 1) the Americas offered more of the products Europeans already used, such as grapes, iron, and copper 2) exotic American products like tobacco and corn were very profitable 3) the Natives were easy to manipulate.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
In his book Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi, Pauketat gives insight into the 1,000 year old midwestern city of Cahokia, and how it became such a big city in such an ancient time.…
- 831 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Cahokia: Cahokia was a city in the southwest of Illinois that ran across the Mississippi River and emerged around AD 1000 (peaked in 1350). The spreading of maize to this region resulted in agricultural boom and, subsequently, a growth in urban population and complex society. Cahokia was significant because it became the center of the Mississippian culture, and its development resulted in a population increase from 10,000 to 30,000.…
- 69 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
Theme: The first discoverers of America, the ancestors of the American Indians, were small bands of hunters who crossed a temporary land bridge from Siberia and spread across both North and South America. They evolved a great variety of cultures, which ranged from the sophisticated urban civilizations in Mexico and Central and South America to the largely semi nomadic societies of North America.…
- 4233 Words
- 17 Pages
Good Essays -
Cahokia was the center, possibly the origin, of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture, a collection of agricultural communities that reached across the American Midwest and Southeast starting before A.D. 1000 and peaking around the 13th century. The idea that American Indians could have built something resembling a city was so foreign to European settlers, that when they discovered the mounds of Cahokia, the largest of which is a ten-story earthen colossus composed of more than 22 million cubic feet of soil, they commonly thought they must have been the work of a foreign civilization. Phoenicians or Vikings perhaps. Even to this day, the idea of an Indian city runs so contrary to American notions of Indian life that we can 't seem to absorb it, and perhaps it 's this ignorance that has led…
- 877 Words
- 4 Pages
Better Essays -
Like all the Mexican peoples, the Aztecs worshiped a multitude of gods, each of whom demanded offerings and sacrifices. Above all, the Aztecs considered themselves the chosen people of HUITZILOPOCHTLI, the sun and war god, in whose name they were destined to conquer all rival nations. Huitzilopochtli shared the main temple at Tenochtitlan with Tlaloc, the rain god, important to the farmers in a land where drought was a constant threat. Another important god was QUETZALCOATL, the feathered serpent, patron of arts and crafts and the god of self- sacrifice. Religion was ever present. Each place and each trade had its patron deity: each day, and each division of the day, was watched over by its own god. Priests were expected to live in chastity,…
- 320 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Religion conferred a substantial portion of the battle within the two groups. In the Aztecs religion, they believed that a human sacrifice was essential to be made so they could keep the gods pleased. They believed that the gods could be satisfied through animals, objects, and humans. Huitzilopochtli, the god of sun and war was mostly offered the human heart, which belonged to the Aztecs enemies and prisoners during these sacrifices. So when the Spanish arrived at the land of Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs considered that these Spaniards were exceptional for the human sacrifice. Though the emperor thought contrarily, Moctezuma believed that Cortes resembled their god Quetzalcoatl, including the magnificent coincidence regarding the arrival of Cortes and the…
- 1005 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
C. Mesoamerican Civilizations included the Olmecs (earliest) and Mayan people who built temple pyramids, advanced trading centers, studied astronomy and created the first writing system in the Americas.…
- 517 Words
- 3 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
American Indians built a city along the Mississippi River known as the City of Cahokia. It covered more than five square miles and was made of 120 earth mounds, or pyramids. It was a commercial and government center whose residents established trade routes through the Mississippi and Ohio River Valley.…
- 295 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
To support the evolutionary perspective, the division of labour was shown to be an advantage. Men were the hunter gathers, breadwinners, while the mother was at home acting as the ‘angel of the house’ and looking after the children. If a women was to hunt, this would reduce the group’s reproductive success, as the woman was the one who was pregnant or producing milk. Although, the women could contribute to the important business of growing food, making clothing and shelter and so on. This enhances reproductive success but it also important in avoiding starvation – an…
- 973 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Aztecs were an Native Indian tribe, located in modern day Mexico,who ruled a huge part of Mexican territory from the 1400’s to the 1500’s, before they were conquered by Hernando Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors. The Aztecs had one of the most advanced civilizations in the Americas and built cities as large as any in Europe at that time. They had a very unique culture compared to the Spaniards, for example they practiced a religion that affected every part of their lives and featured human sacrificed. Their impressive empire was destroyed by the spaniards in the year 1521, but the Aztecs left a lasting mark on Mexican life and culture.…
- 1101 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Empire was located in central Mexico. The Aztecs ruled from 950 C.E to 1520 C.E. They built…
- 1427 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The Maya was thought of to be one among the best ancient Native American civilizations within the Americas, and probably the planet. Archaeologists discovered and dug up and studied several of the civilization sites trace the Mayas to thousands of years ago. Their ancestors migrated from Asia across the Bering Sea and Alaska to the Americas and also the Yucatan Peninsula throughout the last ice age. Early Mayan settlements originate to 2400 B.C.. They engineered huge stone pyramids and temples to honor their gods and preserve their faith. They additionally accomplished advanced achievements in arithmetic and astronomy, that were recorded in hieroglyphs. Their lives rotated around their king and sacrificial blood. Their cultural achievements…
- 706 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
2000 years before Europeans began to arrive in the New World, the last era of the pre-Columbian development began. North American cultures such as the Mississippian culture, the Hopewell Tradition, and the Hohokam culture experienced growth and environmental adaptation throughout this era. Major contributions and innovations of Native Americans have developed and been passed on through generations of ancestors.…
- 1455 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
The Maya empire was a Mesoamerican civilization created in the preclassic period. The Mayan empire encompassed modern day Guatemala, Belize, the western portion of Honduras, the western portion of El Salvador, and southeastern Mexico. The Mayan people had a beautiful hieroglyphic writing system that could be considered an art in itself. The Maya are known for their art, architecture, mathematics, calendar and astronomical system. The Mayan people also had a beautiful hieroglyphic writing system that could be considered an art in itself. The Mayas had a highly advanced civilization.…
- 89 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
There is no record of what the people called themselves or their city, but archaeologists use the term "Mississippian" for them, as that was the cultural tradition of which they were a part. The name "Cahokia" was given to the site during the 1800s to commemorate a later sub-tribe of the Illinois (Illiniwek) Indians who had moved into this area in the seventeenth century, although they had not built the mounds. (Source: Prehistoric Cultures at the Confluence, William R. Iseminger) The Mississippian period begins to emerge around AD 800. The community pattern usually included groupings of houses and other structures arranged around a courtyard,…
- 1764 Words
- 8 Pages
Powerful Essays