The Earliest Americans
First Migration to the Americas
Bering Land Bridge: glaciers kept sea levels low and revealed land near Alaska/Russia border
Paleo-Indians: crossed the bridge between 38,000 and 10,000 bce
Migration: movement of people or animals from one region to another
First Migration to the Americas (continued)
Hunter-gatherers: people who hunted animals and gathered wild plants for food
Environment: climates and landscapes that surround living things
Culture: a group’s set of common values and traditions, including language, government, and family relations
BW: Society is people in general as a group.
Early Mesoamerican and South American Societies
Olmec and Maya
Mesoamerica: southern Mexico and northern Central America
Developed earliest known civilization in mesoamerica
Sculptures of huge heads
Olmec and Maya (continued)
Mayan
Grew maize
Small villages
Had pyramids, palaces, bridges, and plazas
Aztec
Fierce warriors and superior military
Central Mexico
Tenochtitlan was their capital in Lake Texcoco
Most powerful state in mesoamerica
Inca
Andes mountains of South America
Capital: Cuzco
No written language-knotted strings called quipu kept records
System of highways
Native American Cultures
Early Societies
Anasazi
Four corners region
Used irrigation
Pueblos, aboveground houses made of heavy clay called adobe
Kivas: underground ceremonial chambers
Mound Builders
Hopewell: Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri
Agriculture and trade
Mississippian: 1000 temple and burial grounds at Cahokia
10,000 mounds found at Ohio river valley
Native American Culture Areas
North and Northwest
Inuit: lived in igloos
Aleut: multifamily houses partially underground
Both relied on dogs
Totems: ancestor or animal spirits
West and Southwest
Ground acorns into our
Gathered seeds, dug roots, and trapping small animals for food
Hopi/Zuni/Apache/Navajo
Religious rituals for rain
Great Plains
Hunted bu alo
Teepees: cone-shaped shelters
Matrilineal: traced their ancestry through their mothers, not their fathers
Northeast and Southeast
Cherokee/Creek/Seminole/Algonquian
Wampum: strings of beans for money
Iroquois League: confederation or alliance established by the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca
Shared Beliefs
Spiritual forces everywhere
Earth and Sky were
sustainers of life
Ownership applied only to crops, not the land: right to use was temporary
No desire to form alliances
Trading Kingdoms of West Africa
Big Idea
Using trade to gain wealth, Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were West Africa’s most powerful kingdoms.
Main Idea 2
The Empire of Ghana was the rst of three great West
African trading kingdoms.
Like Ghana, the empires of Mali and Songhai grew strong by controlling trade
Kingdom of Mali
Developed along the fertile banks of the upper Niger River
Controlled trade along the river
King Mansa Musa led the kingdom to the height of its wealth, power, and fame by building important trade cities like
Timbuktu
Mansa Musa also encouraged the spread of Islam in West Africa by building mosques, buildings for Muslim prayer,
and by making a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca
Declined after death of Mansa Musa
Kingdom of Songhai
Lived along the Niger River
Came to power as the Mali empire weakened
Greatest ruler was Askia the Great, he was a devout Muslim, supported education and learning, and worked to
develop a strong government
After Askia’s death the kingdom declined and was invaded by Moroccans from the north.
Greek Philosophers and Government
Greatest Greek thinkers: Socrates (teacher) Plato (the republic) Aristotle (taught reason)
Reason: clear and ordered thinking
Classical period: 400-300 bye
Democracy: a form of government in which people rule themselves
Roman Law and Government
Roman republic (509 bce)
Power for 1 year
Created three parts to their government (judicial, executive (president), legislative)
Innocent until proven guilty
Equal in the eyes of the law
How did Roman/Greek governments in uence USA: (three government branches)
Feudalism
Nobles had to defend lands: their power grew as the kings waned
Knights: warriors who fought on horseback
Knights given land in exchange for protection
A system of promises for protection and obedience
Life revolved around church
The Crusades
Turks captures Palestine
Christians don’t feel safe on pilgrimage
Travel, Trade, and Towns
Nation-states evolve
Silk Road: Marco Polo to china
Black Death: disease that killed 25 million people in Europe
Peasants demand money (supply)
As travel became safer and trade developed people began to move to cities, as they left farms and manors the feudal
system fell into decline
Crusades, trade, transfer of rats, peasants, city, bad sanitation
Plague creates low supply of workers and high demand for them: payment for work
Renaissance
Renaissance: rebirth
Ends the Middle Ages
Rulers increase power over nobles
Scholars eeing from the Turkish conquest brought Classic Writings with them from the Byzantine Empire to Italy
Search for Knowledge
Scholars ee to Italy as Turks take over Byzantine
Rediscovered Greece and Rome
Emphasized people over religion
Michelangelo: painter, sculpture, architect
Leonardo da Vinci: painter, sculpture, architect, inventor, engineer, and mapmaker
Dante’s Inferno: in Italian, not Latin
Johannesburg Gutenberg: printing press
Economic Changes A ect Trade
Florence, Genoa, Milan, and Venice become trading centers
Joint-Stock companies: businesses in which a group of people invest together
DONE
