The Earliest Americans

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The Earliest Americans
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The Land and the People

• The physical setting
• Mountains Rocky, Andes
• Rivers Mississippi, Amazon
• Bering Strait - Land bridge between the Americas
  and Asia
• First arrivals
• From Asia as early as 10,500 B.C.

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The Development of American Agriculture

• Hunters became farmers after large prehistoric
  animals became extinct
• Mammoths
• Earliest known farming started in Mexico
• Never invented the plow
• Led to development of civilizations

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Cultures of North America
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Western North America

• The Northwest
• Fishing
• Weaving
• Carving totem poles
• The Southwest
• Hohokam people
• Irrigation
• Beans, corn, and cotton
• Adobe
• Dried sand bricks
• The Great Plains
• Used buffalo for food and clothing and teepees

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The Eastern Woodlands

• Hopewell were skilled artists
• Built burial mounds
• Mississippians were successful farmers and traders

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Mesoamerica and Andean South America
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Early Civilizations

• Chavin (400 200 B.C.)
• Andes Mountains- Peru
• Few elite, had divine connection

• The Olmec (1200 400 B.C.)
• Southern Mexico
• First known major civilization
• Few elite, many farmers
• Art- Giant carved heads, jade masks
• Rubber people

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• The Maya (200 B.C. 900 A.D.)
• Developed writing system and calendar
• Pictograph and hieroglyphics
• Studied astronomy
• Built pyramids
• Chichen Itza ?
• The Toltec
• Pyramids
• Metalworking

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• The Aztec 1200- 1521 A.D.
• Settled on Lake Texcoco
• Built their capital Tenochtitlan
• Warriors who borrowed from cultures they
  conquered
• Farmed using chinampas mud from bottom of lakes
• Defeated by Spaniards (Hernan Cortes) allied with
  other natives in 1521 AD

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• The Inca 1400-1533 A.D.
• Lived in the Andes mountains- Chile, Peru,
  Bolivia, Columbia
• Called the children of the sun
• Spoke Quechua
• Had extensive road and trade network
• Brought conquered people into one imperial
  culture
• Conquered by Spaniards and various epidemics
• Smallpox, typhus, measles, influenza

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