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Chapter 11
The Americas
The Peoples of North America
 People from Asia crossed the Bering Strait to get to
North America
 3000 BC the Inuit moved into N.A. from Asia
 skilled hunters, had specific skills to survive the cold and
harsh environment
People of North America
 Eastern Woodlands
 Hopewell
 Ohio Valley river
 Mound Builders, built large earth mounds used as tombs and
ceremonies
 Farming villages but also gathered wild plants
People of North America
• Northeast of Mississippi
– Iroquois
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villages of longhouses
men hunted deer, bear, caribou and small animals
women gathered wild plants and grew crops
corn, beans, squash
war was common between Iroquois groups
alliance was created
– Iroquois League - five groups
People of North America
 Plains Indians
 West of Mississippi River
 Hunted buffalo (important
animal)
 Lived in tepees
People of North America
• Southwest
– Anasazi
• farming society
• used canals and earthen dams to turn the desert into fertile
gardens
• lived in pueblos
• center of their civilization at Chaco Canyon was Pueblo Bonito
• over 50 year drought, they abandon the center
• moved to community in Mesa Verde
• eventually abandoned region from long period of drought
Mesoamerica
• Olmec culture (oldest society)
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1st known civilization around 1200 BC
farmed along riverbanks – trade with other mesoamericans
large cities - religion rituals - oldest city San Lorenzo
skilled workers of stone- around 400 BC civilization collapsed
• Olmec played a ceremonial game on a stone ball court
• Maya culture would continue many of the Olmec fascination
and adopt the calendar and numerical system
Mesoamerica
• Major city Teotihuacan
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capital of early kingdom around 250 BC – 800
had temples and palaces
most people were farmers
center of trade
for unknown reasons it collapsed and the city was
destroyed and abandoned
Mesoamerica
• Maya civilization 300 - 900 AD
• East on the Yucatan Peninsula
• built temples and pyramids, complicated calendars
• farming people - centered their culture in city-states
• Maya cities were built around a central pyramid topped by a shrine
to the gods
• city-states were governed by a ruler, may wars between towns
• people - rulers, nobles, townspeople, peasants
• crucial to Maya civilization was its spiritual perspective
Mesoamerica
• Believed in Gods and had human sacrifice to appease
them
• created writing system based on hieroglyphs
• calendar was written from the hieroglyphs
• called Long Count
• based on a belief in cycles of creation and destruction
• Solar and sacred calendar
Mesoamerica
 they recorded important events in Mayan history
 civilization declined and eventually disappear,
researchers believe people overused the land and
crops stopped growing
Mesoamerica
•Toltec
•AD 950-1150
•Center of empire was at Tula
•Aztec later plundered the city and destroyed much
historical evidence
 people irrigated their fields
Toltec
- grew beans, maize and
peppers
 warlike people
 constructed pyramids and
palaces
 two important gods Quetzalocatl (took two
different forms)
 Empire to decline AD 125
from fighting among
different groups
Mesoamerica
Aztecs
• not sure of their origins
• established a capital at
Tenochtitlan
• ruled until Spanish conquest
Mesoamerica
• When arrived in the Valley of Mexico they were told by their
god when they saw an eagle perched on a cactus growing
out of a rock, their journey would end
 they would be driven by attackers to islands of Lake
Texcoco where on one island they saw the eagle
 Next 100 years the Aztec built temples, houses, public
buildings.
 They built roadways of stone across Lake Texcoco
linking the island to the mainland
Aztec
• state was authoritarian
• people - ruler - nobles - commoners - workers – slaves
• men in noble families were sent to military school
• trade of merchants was big cause of canals built
• believed in gods – Ometeotl
• with help of two other city-states, Tenochtitlan formed a
Triple Alliance - this enabled Aztec to dominate an empire
Early Civilizations in South
America
 Inca
 late 1300s, Cuzco in the
mountains of Peru
 Ruler Pachacuti launch a
campaign of conquest
 empire included about 12
million people
 Inca state was built on war,
all young men were required
to serve in army
Inca
• Pachacuti divided empire into four quarters each ruled by a governor
• forced labor - important feature of the state
• people lived by farming, watered by irrigation systems, houses built of
stone
• great builders
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roadways over mountains and tunnels through them, bridges and
aqueducts
• famous city Machu Picchu
• no writing system, recorded using a system of knotted strings call
quipu