Post on 12-Jan-2016
Key Concept 1.1: As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their
diverse environments.
• I. Different native societies adapted to and transformed their environments through innovations in agriculture, resource use, and social structure.
• A) The spread of maize cultivation from present- day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification among societies.
• B) Societies responded to the aridity of the Great Basin and the grasslands of the western Great Plains by developing largely mobile lifestyles.
• C) In the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard some societies developed mixed agricultural and hunter- gatherer economies that favored the development of permanent villages.
• D) Societies in the Northwest and present-day California supported themselves by hunting and gathering, and in some areas developed settled communities supported by the vast resources of the ocean.
First Inhabitants
Theories--approximately 35,000 years ago, people
migrated across the Bering Land Bridge and eventually spread throughout North and South American continents
-perhaps even earlier (40,000) people came by boat http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-migration-coming-to-america-1.10562
Peopling the Americas
• The Incas of Peru, Mayans in Central America, and Aztecs in Mexico shaped the Mexico area:– These people built elaborate cities and carried on
far-flung commerce– They were talented mathematicians– They offered human sacrifices to their gods.
The Earliest Americans
• Social life was less elaborately developed.• Nation-states did not exist, except the Aztec
empire.• The Mound Builders were in the Ohio River
Valley.• The Mississippian settlement was at Cahokia.
The Earliest Americans
• Three-sister farming—maize, beans and squash.
• Iroquois Confederacy developed political and organizational skills.
• The natives had neither the desire nor the means to manipulate nature aggressively.
Geography influences developmentCultural diversity
• Maize cultivation (Mexico/American Southwest ) and Foraging and hunting (Northwest/California)– Led to economic development and social diversification.– (Pueblo)
• Lack of natural resources led to mobile lifestyles in Great Basin and western Great Plains.
• Northeast and Atlantic Seaboard- mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economy- led to permanent villages.
-Iroquois