Chapter 1: When Old Worlds Collide: Contact, Conquest, Catastrophe Outline

Chapter 1: When Old Worlds Collide: Contact, Conquest, Catastrophe—Outline

Peoples In Motion

Native immigrants of North and South America roamed their way into a new world.
In 1492, long before Columbus, immigrants migrated across the oceans and continents, coming from Asia, Pacific Islands, and Northern Europe.
After the end of the Ice Age 14,000 years ago, humans, animals, and, plants drifted to live in an exposed are left behind all the ice soon named Beringia.
As glaciers receded for the last time, humans spread throughout South and North America during 8000-9000 B.C.
There were Asians who came in three waves, in who migrated about 4000 years ago from the Aleutian Islands and Alaska to the Americas.
As the climate became warm, large animals such as bison and mammoth, roamed the plains in the Americas and Alaska about 9000 years ago and had no instinctive fear of humans.
In the Americas because of survival of humans the number of species were decreasing and along that, humans were affected by diseases that animals had such as smallpox and the bubonic plague and the humans who survived developed immunities.
Around 5000 B.C., in Europe was a culture that collapsed that no oneknows why.
Some native peoples settled in many place without becoming farmers like in North America, Brazil, Mexico, and New England; these people lives off of fishing, hunting, and gathering nuts plants and berries.
Many of the North Americans could no longer sustain themselves by just finishing, hunting, and gathering so it is thought that women started to harvest crops, and in places like Asia and Africa this practice is linked with the domestication of animals which was called the “Neolithic Evolution” but for its first 3,500 farmers ate the same but between 4000 and 1500 B.C. permanent farmers began to take over parts of North and Southern America planting different foods from those in Europe and Asia.
In around 1600 B.C. the Polynesians sailed from southeast Asia to open ocean, while taking their plants safely and making it to Hawaii, but by A.D. 300 they colonized Eastern islands and developed a new culture called Fiji.
Although Polynesians seem to have traveled almost everywhere, they left no signs of going to the Americas mainland, however sweet potato did spread either by an Indian or a Polynesian.
While Polynesians settled in the Eastern islands the, Europeans also began to travel , Asian invaders pushed out the Germanic people , and the Norse (Germanic people) began to move westward across the ocean
Around A.D 874, Erick the red was accused of manslaughter and mayhem in Norway and Iceland which caused his Norse followers to travel up to West Greenland there they settled and became in contact with Inuits for the first time in Europe.
Around 1014 Leif Erik’s son made three voyages and found and land where they settled and started colony called Vinland after a murder the Norse abandoned Vineland, however they continued to travel to North America for at least a century
Between 1350 and 1492 the Norse were decreasing in population back in Europe due to no contact back in homeland they slowly withered away and reached a dead end.

II. Europe and The World in the 15th Century

In the 1400s, Europe began its expansion.
China under the Ming Dynasty had the most complex culture in the world.
The government of China was staffed by well-educated bureaucrats in the 15th century.
Between 1405 and 1434, Cheng Ho led six fleets from China to East Indies and coast of East Africa.
During the 1400s, Europe faced many disadvantages.
Europeans traded with China during the 1400s.
Between 1453 and the 1520s, Europe conquered Islamic states like Constantinople and threatened Vienna.
During the Middle Ages, European economy experienced great advantages.
During the Renaissance period, Europe became known for their new printing innovation.
Between the 15th and 17th centuries, European societies began competing on who got access to new technological innovations and new techniques.
Between 1244 and 1492, after Christian Europeans were driven from the Holy Land, Europeans used the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Malta, Crete, and Rhodes as locations for sugar plantations where slaves were used.
Before 1492, Europe used its colonies to produce a cash crop economy with having some workers as slaves and others as not, but the labor was not as intense as it would be in the Americas.
In 1400, the Portuguese lived in a small country with little maritime expedition.
Compared to the rest of Europe, Portugal had a stable government and was located in between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Portuguese sailors had to sail around the dangerous Cape Bojador in order to reach the wealth in Africa.
In 1434,Gil Eannes , the captain of one of Prince Henry's voyages, succeeded in passing the cape and returned safely to Europe.
By the 15th century, the Portuguese had surpassed the maritime capabilities of their rivals by adopting and improving upon Arab technology.
The Portuguese added cannons to their ships, allowing them to attack from a distance at a time when battles on the ocean required boarding an opponent's ship.
Later in the 15th century, Portuguese sailors found gold and wealth south of Africa's Sahara Desert.
Around 1450-1550 there was a rise and decline in West Africa’s political history.
During the 1400s, the Portuguese began to settle in Africa and Madeira Islands bringing the practice of slavery with them.
The Portuguese built small posts where they would operate and maintain their slaves in the African coast during the 1400s
In the 15th century in Africa, the enslavement of Africans by other Africans was less brutal than the enslavement of Africans by Europeans.
In the 15th century, there wasn’t a universal religion in Africa that might have stopped them from selling other Africans into slavery.
In the 1400s, the Portuguese paid for its explorations through gold, ivory, and slaves.
In the late 1400s, the Portuguese secured the Asian trade by establishing a chain of naval bases.
In the early 1500s, out of all the Asian holding, the natives always heavily outnumbered the Portuguese.
After the Norse failure to navigate the high seas, the Portuguese would learn ways to navigate other nations followed suit.
There was a rising desire in Europeto obtain both colonies and slaves for potential profit before Columbus sailed in 1492.
After 1492, Europeans viewed the New World as an opportunity to reach notably and move up in social class.

III. Spain, Columbus, and the America

1.In 1400's, Spaniards sent its first settlers to colonize the Canary Island spent the 1500's to colonize the local inhabitants.

2. In 1469, Aragon formed the modern kingdom of Spain and the Castile had taken the Iberian Peninsula, to conquest in order to lead Spain overseas.

3. Christopher Columbus was convinced that the world was going to end approximately around 1648, however, certain things had to happen before it came to that point, for instance, God's gospel would have to be established.

4. In the year of 1492, Columbus spotted land for the first time on their voyage from the port of Palos, which they had been searching for months.

5. In Portugal, during the 1500s, Christopher Columbus pleaded for years to Portugal, England, France, and Spain to get him ships and men to attempt his accomplishment. Christopher said he’d be able to reach eastern Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean.

6. In the 1500s, Portugal completely disagreed with Christopher’s estimated earth size. Christopher believed its circumference was only 16,000 miles while they thought it was 26,000 miles. Also, Isabella put Christopher Columbus in charge of the Niña and the Pinta; Christopher then made the Santa Maria his flagship.

7. From August 1492, Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain across the Atlantic Ocean to the Canary Islands in hopes of seeking land while keeping two logs of his adventure.

8. Columbus and the Spaniards sailed to San Salvador now known as the Watling's Islands, during the 1400’s for trade, but believed he was in the West Indies, Japan, or China.

9. In 1493 Spain, Portugal, and the Philippines gained land around the world causing Spain to be unable to gain direct access to the African slave trade.

10. The Castilians (Spaniards) never trusted Columbus because he was a poor administrator to boot and the colonists defied him, but later restored to royal favor and died in 1506.

11. The Spaniards caused a decline in the Indians population by forcing them to work, leaving Hispaniola with only about 22,000 adult Indians, but soon replaced by African slaves brought from Portuguese in 1514.

12. In the time period 1513-1522, The Spaniards continued their New World exploration. Juan Ponce de Leon tramped through Florida, Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean after crossing Isthmus of Panama in 1513. Which caused the gain of wealth in Spain from those new possessions.

13. Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba, invaded Mexico, and found the treasure the Spaniards had been seeking. In 1519, he landed at Veracruz, where over the next months he tracked down the fabulous empire of the Aztecs.

IV. The Emergence of Complex Societies in the Americas

For thousands of years, the cultures of America had thrived in their ancient way causing the imagination of wealth but in the same way, leading to rivalry between the European exploration because of the Aztec and the Inca empires.
After 400 B.C., in the Valley of Mexico, Central America, or the Andes, Indians’ lives were slowly being transformed by agriculture as it became a growing and foremost source of food that by the time that Columbus sailed, agriculture was being used by most Indians.
While the Indians became completely sedentary, those who lived North of Mexico, lived a semi sedentary life migrating for part of each year where men often planted tobacco and women planted and harvested food crops.
The system of “slash and burn” where farming became women’s work and men were in charge of hunting and fishing, caused the entire tribe to move after a decade or two because of exhausted resources therefore their response to capitalism with Europeans.
In sedentary societies, most Indians were appointed lands by their chiefs and even though some were fully sedentary, not all of them created powerful states or construct massive temples.
By 1492, at least 50 million people were living in the western hemisphere because of the fast spread of farming.
Although Indians made some use of metals, this metalworking skill didn’t spread a few centuries before Columbus and by 1520, Indians had assembled enough gold and silver to provide Europeans with fortunes.
In the 1980s when archaeologists reconstructed part of the prehistoric Andean irrigation system, they discovered that it was a much more productive system than a system using fertilizers and machines.
During the Pre-Classic Chavin culture (1000 B.C.-300 B.C) monumental architecture and urbanization appeared, such as communities were built around a U-shaped temple about three stories high and pyramids growing more than 10 stories high.
The Chavin culture had two offshoots: the Mochica culture (A.D 300), northwest coast of Peru, who produced pottery and built pyramids as centers of worship, and the city of Tiwanaku (around A.D 300) in the mountains, who grew variety of food plants, planted cotton, raised maize/corn, grazed alpacas and llamas and invented freeze-dried food.
The Tiwanaku Empire grew until its great irrigation system could not survive the extreme drought that began at the end of the 10th century A.D. , this lead to the Classic Andean cultures to collapse as they were provided water by the Tiwanakans.
Post-Classic cultures soon thrived north and west of Tiwanaku, such as the Nazca people, who engraved outlines of birds and animals in the desert.
The Incas emerged as the new imperial power in the Andes around 1400 A.D. And controlled an empire that extended more than 2,000 miles from the south to the north.
Mesoamerica’s Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic cultures included both upland and lowland societies.
The Olmec’s three major cities, San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, ruled the Gulf Coast region after appearing at about 1200 B.C.
Certain aspects of the Olmec culture became diffused throughout Mesoamerica; they were the first people to build pyramids and ballparks in Mesoamerica, eventually spreading their gamein what is now southwestern United States.
The Olmecs developed a dual calendar system that they feared ending each year due to their belief that if the gods did not receive a worthy human sacrifice they would not set the sun in motion for the new cycle and let the sun and all life on Earth to be destroyed, which they believed happened multiple times before.
The belief of the gods allowing all life on earth to be destroyed stayed in Mesoamerica for about 3,000 years and this creation myth was similar to that of the Andean people, which suggested a common origin.
The city and empire of Teotihuacan formed by present day New Mexico and the culture was known for its temples, murals, apartments made comfortable for ordinary people and not just rulers, and their form of senate government, before their destruction in A.D. 750.
In the lowlands Mayan culture flourished with large cities like Tikal controlling commerce with Teotihuacan and housing 100,000 before A.D. 800, Mayan engineers building canals to water crops, and the Mayan structure the Danta pyramid, the biggest structure in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
Mayan recorded history was not done in detail until about A.D 300 and their art reveals their religious beliefs as well as the place of human sacrifice.
50 years after the fall of Teotihuacan, Mayan trade with the Valley of Mexico was disrupted, cities were abandoned between 800 and 820, and the last recorded date of Tikal was in 869; Classic Mayan culture began to collapse.
In the northern lowlands of Yucatán around A.D. 900 there was a kind of Mayan renaissance with Mayan traits that merged with new influences from the Valley of Mexico.
By 1400 in a Valley of Mexico power was passing to the Aztecs where the great city of Tenochtitlán was built on a lake, which raised the Aztecs agricultural productivity.
By the 15 century Tenochtitlán had forged an alliance with Texcoco and Tlacopan, together they dominated an area providing a clear path for the Aztecs but felt a need to prove themselves worthy heirs of the ancient culture of the Valley of Mexico so they adopted the old region practicing it constantly.
In 1519 Indians in Mesoamerica would help Spaniards bring down the Aztecs, this helped the Spanish find new allies in the Andes.
Around 3000 B.C to about A.D 1700, 3 different kinds of “mound builders” placed a great influence in places in North America. Known for huge earthen mounds they created, these cultures came to existence near Ohio and Mississippi River. Earlier mound builders became motionless before knowing how to plant crops.
The oldest mound-building culture existed in what is now northeastern Louisiana around 3400 B.C, called Watson Break.
This culture condemned ordinary people as “stinkards” and the “Great Sub” was held important to the culture and held authority and was moved by litter from place to place.
In the city of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, thrived from 900 to 1250 A.D. Have 30,00 residents and it's finest. and had an enormous central mound, about 100 ft. high, deemed as the world’s largest earthen worth.
The Hohokam Indians, settled in the central of Arizona between 300 B.C and A.D. 300, produced two harvests per year, wove cotton cloth, made pottery with a distinct red color, and derived a version of the Mesoamerican ball game but because of continuous irrigation increased the saltiness of the soil, the culture after lasting more than 1,000 years had gone into a deep plunge by 1450.
The Anasazi constructed apartment houses in their caves and cliffs and were also known to be great astronomers as they created a calendar that tracked summer and winter solstices and the 19 cycles of the moon, however, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the Anasazi abandoned their homes due to drought and violent invaders.

V. Contact and Cultural Misunderstandings

After the voyage of Columbus, the peoples of Europe and America didn’t have a really good understanding on each other's culture or history.
In the 1500s, Christians had a hard time understanding how the Indians in America existed.
In the 1500s, the Europeans saw Indian (Native American) culture in the Americas as something different and potentially satanic.
On Columbus’ second voyage, missionaries were sent to the Americas to preach their religion to the Indians (Native Americans).
At one point the Europeans tried to educate the Indians on the Eucharist, which took an interesting turn seeing how the Indians took the representation of the Eucharist literally.
Europeans that were in the Americas were trying to convert the Indians to Christianity.
The Europeans and Indians went into war on a battlefield because they thought each other’s cultures were horrible.
As Europeans took control over parts, such as the north of Mexico, they began setting rules and owned almost all property, as they changed gender roles in Indian culture and established a hierarchy.

VI. Conquest and Catastrophe