Chapter

Chapter 1: New World Beginnings (33,000 b.c – 1769 a.d)

• The Shaping of North America

 225 mya Pangea separated into the 7 continents

 10 mya North America had taken shape

 2 mya was the great ice age, blanketing most of Canada and northern America in snow and ice

 10,000 ya present day north America had formed

• Peopling the Americas

 Around 35,000 ya the ice age lowered sea levels, exposing the land bridge between Asia and North America

 Nomadic hunters following game most likely ventured onto the north American continent

 After the ice melted, it allowed peoples to travel further south

o People developed more than 2,000 languages and different cultures, religions and ways of life

 By the 14oos and estimated 54 million people inhabited the Americas

 The Incans, Aztecs and Mayans culture was based around maize (Indian corn)

o Even though they lacked in technology, these peoples built great cites, conducted commerce and were intellectual

• The Earliest Americans

 The domestication of corn (5000 bc) in central Mexico planted the foundation for the complex and large scale Aztec and Incan nations

 The spread of corn spread slowly and unevenly throughout the Americas

o Because corn cultivation reached North America much later, Native American societies were much less developed

• therefore the Europeans had no trouble subduing them

 On the Eastern coast lived the densest populations

o This is because of the development of “3-sister farming”- the culmination of growing maize, beans and squash

o These populations included the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaw and Iroquois

 In native cultures, women were authoritative and they had a matrilineal culture

• Indirect Discoverers

 Scandinavians discovered Newfoundland in 1000 ad, but abandoned settlements there because their nation-state did not wish to expand

 Christian Crusaders fought the Muslims for the holy lands and developed a taste for luxury goods from Asia

 Goods...