Chapter 1: New World Beginnings Planetary Perspectives o 6000 years ago (I min ago in geological time) Western world began o 500 years ago European explores stumbled on American continents. (altered both old / new Africa/Asia) o United States was then born leaving imprints upon rest of world. Enormous economic output gave power. Achievements in arts, science and technology shaped the world and lives.
o American Republic started from a vast and virgin continent. Native people scattered. Opportunity should never come again. No other huge fertile uninhabited areas left. The Shaping of North America o Slowly forming planet earth was once dry land.
Chunks of terrain drifted away. Opening Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Created landmasses Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and the Americas. o Appalachians came when earth’s crust thrust mountains Rockies, Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and Coast Range o 10 million years ago North America was shaped anchored by a under girded landmass.
Appalachians slanted away to the west into a huge mid continental basin downward to Mississippi Valley bottom. Rose towering peak of Rockies. The land met the Pacific where the Coast Ranges rose from the sea. o 2 million years ago 2 miles of thick ice sheets.
Covered parts of Europe, Asia, and Americas. Glaciers covered Canada and the U. S. in the Great Ice Age. o When glaciers retreated 10, 000 years ago melting glaciers formed lakes. Filled Great Lakes.
Only Great Salt Lake remained from the evaporation The First Discoverers of America o Icepack glaciers lowered the level of the sea and exposed a land bridge connecting Eurasia with North America. Migrating herds of game brought small group of nomadic Asian hunters o Climatic warming drowned the bridge to Eurasia and opened ice free valleys across the Americas. o By the time Europeans arrived in 1492 about 72 million people inhabited the 2 American continents o Eventually split into tribes, evolved more than 2 thousand languages and developed diverse religion, cultures, and life o Incas (Peru), Mayans in Central America, Aztecs in Mexico shaped civilizations o Their advanced agricultural practices fed large population with maize lacking draft animals and simple technology such as the wheel the built elaborate cities. o Mathematicians created accurate astronomical observations, sought favor from Gods by human sacrifice, mostly captives (cutting their hearts while alive) The Earliest Americans o Agriculture, corn growing, was important to the Mexicans and South Americans 5000 B. C.
The Essay on Literature In America Freedom American Nature
When I think of America, I think of freedom. We live in a country where we can do what we choose. We can express our opinions and live our own lives. Individuals can form their own individual beliefs and they can do what they want and pursue what they wish. They can play basketball, go to school, get a job, have a family, buy a house, or go to church. We are free. We have opportunity to be ...
hunter-gathers developed staple crop of corn… o Pueblo’s constructed irrigation to water cornfields o Mound Builder and Mississippian culture sustained large settlements in the first millennium A. D. but mysteriously declined year 1300 o Maize, bean, and squash provided farming technique produced some of the highest population on the continent (Creek. Choctaw, and Cherokee people) o Iroquois Confederacy developed the political and organizational skills to sustain a robust military alliance that menaced it neighbors N. A.
and Europeans o Women tended to crops, men hunted gathered fuel, and cleared fields for planting. o.
