Chapter 1 Subheading
When Old Worlds Collide: Contrast, Conquest, Catastrophe
I. The “Amerind”. “Inuits” and the “Na-Dene” were the first Peoples in Motion in the
Americas who learned to accommodate to the lifestyle and evolved through agriculture
known to be the Neolithic Evolution, conquering different parts of North and South America,
Europe and East Asia with their goods and crops.
1. About 14,000 years ago 3 distinct waves of immigrants traveled From Beringia to the
Americas which were the “Amerind”, “Inuits”, and the “Na-Dene”.
2. The Great Extinction and the Rise of Agriculture was due to climate change (global
warming), improvement in hunting with the usage of the spear point which led to a decline in
food source causing the human population to learn to domesticate animals and farm crops
leading to the rise of agriculture.
3. From about 1600 B.C, during the next 2,00 years Polynesians sailed from Southeast Asia
into the Pacific carrying families and their essentials safely across the sea in which they
eventually settled in various islands leading the Polynesians and Hawaii to create stratified
societies and chiefdoms from which it is not known if they reached the Americas because
they left no ‘discernible influence’ on the Indian societies already there.
4. Erik the Red, who was outlawed for committed murder and mayhem led The Norsemen,
Germanic people who occupied Scandinavia, further west to Greenland in which they made
first contact with Inuits and that led to Erik’s son, Liet, to sail west from Greenland to
explore the coast of North America, where they made a colony named ‘Vinland’, which they
destroyed by quarreling among themselves, until 1300 where they began to decline and lose
settlements, in 1492 the last Norse settler died a lonely death who, although settles in
America, had no impact on American history.
Ⅱ. ???Europe and The World in the 15th Century
1. China by the Rejection of Overseas Expansion secluded itself with all their tea, silk, and
complex culture from the rest of the world because the world, such as foreigners, did not
have much to offer China for its riches, therefore China did not need the rest of the world.
2. Maritime routes made Europe versus Islam because Islamic societies controlled overland
trade with Asia and the only known seaborne route, and later Europe could cut sail and
fight all rivals in 1520.
3. The Legacy of the Crusades is that they had their own kingdom of Jerusalem, they soon
went back to Mediterranean islands and used slaves to grow sugarcanes and grapes.
4. The small kingdom of Portugal seemed unlikely to be a part to the world’s economical
trade, but they were sent Crusades to West Asia and the middle east as to expand its trade
and become the unlikely Pronners of Portugal’s.
5. A growing society takes hard work to thrive, in such case if the New World, the
advantages taken from Africa for the Colonies using the Slave Trade didn’t only grow
this developing world, but it created controversy between religious and capitalist peoples.
6. The Portuguese used gold, ivory and slaves to support their quest to Asia in which the
Portuguese traded spices, Vasca de Gama secured their Asian trade when he went around
the Cape of Good Hope making Portugal’s Asian Empire, since they mainly traded with
Asia and used Asian goods.
7. The Early Lessons learned were varied between technology, language, maritime skills,
farming, etc., and they learned from each other and the mistakes they made.
III. When Spain, Columbus, and the Americas came into contact, the Spaniards exploited the
Indians living in the Caribbean by enslaving them in hope of finding forms of wealth.
1. ???Columbus enslaved the Indians to help gain wealth and information.
2. ???Spain and the Caribbean came across America to claim new land, gain resources,
increase mineral wealth, and expand their empires.
IV. There were various Ancient civilizations of the Americas who upon establishing permanent
dwellings, building irrigation systems and developing their agriculture and agricultural
techniques gave The Emergence of Complex Societies in the Americas; now living a
sedentary life, these civilizations gave birth to a richer culture and more structured society.
1. The Rise of Sedentary Cultures after 4000 B.C was influenced by Indians that settled in
land that they didn’t own, but claimed it as a tribe where they adapted and learned skills to
hunt, grow, plant, and make new weapons (tools) which lead to Indians having enough gold
and silver by 1520 to plunger Europeans with fortune.
2. The Andean tribes invented extremely productive agricultural systems and built very
complex communities in the high mountains of The Andes where the tribes established
Cycles of Complex Cultures.
3. Around A.D 1400, The Inca Civilization emerged as the new imperial power in the Andes,
building their capital at Cuzco, and taking control over an empire that eventually extended
more than 2000 miles from South to North bounding it together with an efficient network of
roads and suspension bridges.
4. Mesoamerica the Cycles of Complex Cultures began with the Pre-Classic era, the Olmec,
who were considered the parent culture of the Gulf Coast, leading to the Classic era, the
Mayan Culture and ending with the Post-Classic era which was seen as a kind of Mayan
renaissance.
5. By 1487, The Aztecs and Tenochtitlan marked history for the Valley of Mexico by being
one of the first to start raising their own agricultural products and forming alliances with
Texoco and Tlacopan, which dominated by the 15th century, which led to the Aztecs
adopting an old religion and practicing its rituals very intensely by beheading and opening
people up and letting their bodies roll down the Great Pyramids.
6. There were 3 distinct cultures that had powerful influences in Ohio and Mississippi during
3000 BC and 1700 AD, these peoples were called the North American Mound Builders,
named after the earthen mounds they erected, which served as burial sites.
7. The Hohokam, the Anasazi (Navajo), and the Pueblo tribes had relationships and traded
with the Mesoamericans. The southwest tribes also built “apartment” houses five stories high
which were their Urban Cultures of the Southwest.
V. The Europeans’ arrival to the Americas created Contact and Cultural Misunderstanding
through religion, war, culture, and gender.
1. Christians encountered Religious Dilemmas as they intended to understand the cultural
depth of the Indian society.
2. War as Cultural Misunderstanding occurred when the Europeans were expecting to kill
many enemies and the Indians were only fighting to obtain captives for sacrifices.
3. When Europeans came to the Americas, there was Gender and Cultural Misunderstanding:
for example, Indian men had no patriarchal ambitions like European men had.
VI. Conquest and Catastrophe completely sums up this section from the conquest of the
Tenochtitlan by the Spanish conquistadors up to the rise of the African slave market in Brazil
to the new systems of laboring set by the Spaniards.
1. The Conquest of Mexico and Peru was both conquest and catastrophe caused by Cortes
because it cause Catholicism over Tenochtitlan along with bringing in Spanish conquistadors
who forcibly took all the gold and silver they could find and built Mexico City over the
Tenochtitlan ruins.
2. North American Conquistadors and Missionaries believed in reviving the Indian land , they
managed to convert many Indians and great missionaries, but it was hard and little by little they
tried to make the Indians move like them, leaving their Indian culture behind.
3. The Spaniards took over existing systems and brought new systems of labor like
encomienda, religious institutions, and microbes to their overseas colonies during the 16th
century leaving a mark of both The Spanish Empire and Demographic Catastrophe.
4. The Portuguese had 14 provinces, the bandeirantes enslaved Indians and made them work on
sugar plantations and then Indians were replaced by African slaves which made Brazil the
largest market for African slaves until the 1640’s.
5. Global Colossus and Global Economy were both generally affected in European lands as
American silver provided power to that of which owned it. Peasantry was either free or
extremely low paid workers, as large pools of labor kept wages low, and sugar production
reduced Indians to bondage in the Caribbean and Brazil until they died and African slaves
began to be imported.
VII. The Europeans showed Explanations: Patterns of Conquest, Submission, and
Resistance by spreading their diseases to the Indians, killing them off because they had no
resistance to such diseases; likewise, their conquest through most of the continental US
demonstrated this even further.