Chapter 1 Flashcards
(16 cards)
In 1492, the year Columbus landed on a tiny Caribbean island, perhaps _____ people – nearly equal to the population of Europe at that time – lived on the continents of North and South America, most of them south of _____. They belonged to hundreds of groups, each with its own _____.
- 70 million
- the present border between the United States and Mexico
- language or dialect, history, and way of life
From the start, the original inhabitants of the Americas were peoples in _____. The first migrants arrived at least _____ years ago, traveling from _____ and slowly making their way to _____. These people, and subsequent migrants from Eurasia, probably traveled across _____. During the _____, much of the earth’s water was frozen in huge glaciers. This process lowered sea levels, exposing a 600-mile-wide land bridge between Asia and America. Recent research examining genetic and linguistic similarities between Asian and Native American populations suggests that there may also have been _____.
- motion
- 15000
- central and northern Siberia
- southern South America
- a land bridge that emerged across what is now the Bering Strait
- last Ice Age
- later migrations
The earliest Americans adapted to an amazing range of environmental conditions, from the frozen Arctic to south-western deserts to dense eastern woodlands. At first, they mainly subsisted by _____. Archaeologists working near present-day Clovis, New Mexico, have found carefully crafted spear points – some of which may be more than 13000 years old. Such efficient tools possibly contributed to _____, which, along with _____, led to the extinction of many large game species. By about 9000 BCE, the world’s climate began to _____, turning _____ and _____ the animals’ food supply. Humans too had to _____.
- hunting the mammoths, bison, and other large game that roamed throughout North America
- overhunting
- climate change
- grow warmer
- grasslands into deserts
- reducing
- find other food sources
Between roughly _____, Native American societies changed in important ways. Native populations steadily _____, and men and women assumed _____. Men did most of the _____. Women _____.
- 8000 BCE and 1500 BCE
- increased
- more specialized roles in their villages
- hunting and fishing, activities that required travel
- remained closer to home, harvesting and preparing wild plant foods and caring for children
Across the continent, native communities also developed _____. They not only exchanged material goods, but also _____. Trade networks sometimes extended over large distances. Ideas about _____ also passed between groups. So too did certain _____ practices, such as the placing of valued possessions in the grave along with the deceased person’s body. In some areas, _____ encouraged concentrations of political power. Chiefs might _____ for groups of villages rather than for a single community.
- complex networks of trade
- marriage partners, laborers, ideas, and religious practices
- death and the afterlife
- burial
- the increasing complexity of exchange networks, as well as competition for resources,
- manage trade relations and conduct diplomacy
No Native American adaptation was more momentous than _____. Native Americans may have turned to farming when _____. Women, with their knowledge of wild plants, probably discovered _____, becoming _____.
- the domestication of certain plants and the development of farming
- population growth threatened to outrun the wild food supply
- how to save seeds and cultivate them
- the world’s first farmers
Wherever agriculture took hold, important social changes followed. Populations grew, because farming produced _____ than did hunting and gathering. Permanent villages appeared as farmers settled near their fields. In central Mexico, agriculture eventually sustained the population of large cities. Trade in agricultural surpluses flowed through networks of exchange. In many Indian societies, women’s status _____ because of their role as the principal farmers. Even religious beliefs _____ to the increasing importance of farming.
- a more secure food supply
- improved
- adapted
The adoption of agriculture further enhanced _____ that developed over centuries within broad regions, or culture areas. Within each area, inhabitants shared _____. Most, but not all, of them eventually _____ farming.
- the diversity of Native American societies
- basic patterns of subsistence and social organization, largely reflecting the natural environment to which they had adapted
- relied upon
Agriculture was impossible in the challenging environment of the Arctic and subarctic. There, nomadic bands of Inuits and Aleuts moved seasonally to fish or hunt whales, seals, and other sea animals and, in the brief summers, to gather wild berries.
1.
Along the Northwest Coast and the Columbia River Plateau, one of the most densely populated areas of North America, abundant natural resources permitted native peoples to prosper without farming. Local rivers and forests supplied fish, game, and edible plants.
1.
Farther south, in present-day California, hunter-gatherers once lived in smaller villages, which usually adjoined oak groves where Indians gathered acorns as an important food source. Nomadic hunting bands in the Great Basin, where the climate was warm and dry, learned to survive on the region’s limited resources.
1.
Mesoamerica, the birthplace of agriculture in North America, extends from central Mexico into Central America. A series of complex, literate, urban cultures emerged in this region beginning around 1200 BCE. The Olmecs, who flourished on Mexico’s Gulf Coast from about 1200 to 400 BCE, and their successors in the region built cities featuring large pyramids, developed religious practices that included human sacrifice, and devised calendars and writing systems. Two of the most prominent Mesoamerican civilizations that followed the Olmecs were the Mayans in the Yucatan and Guatemala and the Aztecs of Teotihuacan in central Mexico.
1.
Mayan civilization reached its greatest glory between about 150 and 900 C.E. in the southern Yucatan, creating Mesoamerica’s most advanced writing and calendrical systems. The Mayans of the southern Yucatan suffered a decline after 900, but there were still many thriving Mayan centers in the northern Yucatan when Europeans arrived in the Americas. The great city of Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico from the first century to the eighth century C.E., and influenced much of Mesoamerica through trade and conquest.
1.
Some 200 years after the fall of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs, a warrior people, rose to prominence, dominating central Mexico from about 900 to 1100. In the wake of the Toltec collapse, the Aztecs migrated from the north into the Valley of Mexico and built a great empire that soon controlled much of Mesoamerica. The magnificent Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was a city of great plazas, magnificent temples and palaces, and busy marketplace. In 1492, Tenochtitlan was home to some 200,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in the world at the time.
1.
The great pyramid in Tenochtitlan was the center of Aztec religious life Here Aztec priests sacrificed human victims to offer to the gods. Human sacrifice had been part of Mesoamerican religion since the time of the Olmecs. People vented them from destroying the earth. The Aztecs, however, practiced sacrifice on a much larger scale than ever before.
1.
The Aztec empire expanded through military conquest, driven by a quest for sacrificial victims and tribute payments of gold, food, and handcrafted goods from hundreds of subject communities. But as the empire grew, it became increasingly vulnerable to internal division. Neighboring peoples submitted to the Aztecs out of fear rather than loyalty.
1.
