Topics
• Review: Theories explaining origins of Native
Americans
• Columbus & the Rise of the Atlantic World
True or false
• The Spanish were the first to practice agriculture in the
Los Angeles area.
• Columbus was the first European to reach the western
hemisphere.
• The main purpose of Columbus 1492 voyage was to
prove that the world was round.
Cultural Diversity, 2500 B.C.E.-C.E.1500
• The Eastern Woodlands
– 1200 B.C.E. Poverty Point emerges on the Mississippi
River, LA (population of 5,000).
• Mississippians
– Mississippians become first agriculturalists by 700 C.E.
• Incorporates ideas from Mesoamerica
• Center Cahokia
• 13th century food shortage leads to decline.
Cultural Diversity, 2500 B.C.E.-C.E.1500
• Nonfarming Societies
– From Alaska to northern California, Native Americans fish
for salmon, dry, and store catch year-round; established
permanent villages.
– California Native Americans reside in permanent villages
sustain themselves by collecting and grinding acorns.
– Only the Mohave and Yuma Indians practiced agriculture in
California
1492
• population of Western Hemisphere 75 million
• North America 7 to 10 million
• Hundreds of tribes and languages, CA the most diverse
Native American Peoples
• Kinship and Gender
• Extended family far more important than nuclear family
• Women farm (except in Southwest)
• Spiritual and Social Values
• All nature, including humanity, is interrelated suffused with spiritual
powers.
• Native Americans rely on reciprocity: giving gifts, trading goods in
exchange for prestige, deference, authority
• First contact between Europe and America 980s
• Norse colonized Greenland: trade for furs and walrus ivory.
• 1001 Leif Ericson establishes Vinland (Newfoundland).
• Hostile relations with natives forced the Scandinavians to abandon in
1015.
• Evidence ruins dating back to 1000’s in Newfoundland, Canada
The Rise of the Atlantic World
1400-1625
• The "New Slavery" and Racism
• The Portuguese entered the slave trade in the mid-15th
century
• Strong connection between the growth of sugar industry and
the rise of this new slavery.
• Slavery exists in West Africa before Europeans arrive; not
based on racial difference
The Columbian Exchange
"Columbian exchange" movement of plants, food, crops, diseases and people
From Old World to New World
• Chicken cow dog goat goose
horse rabbit (domestic) pig
sheep
• Apple banana coffee
• Bubonic plague influenza
measles smallpox typhoid
yellow fever
From New World to Old World
• Llama turkey
• Avocado cocoa maize (corn)
peanut potato tobacco
tomato vanilla
• Syphilis?