Chapter 14 Notes

I. The Shaping of North America

Recorded history began 6,000 years ago. It was 500 years ago that Europeans set foot on the Americas to begin colonization
The theory of Pangaea exists suggesting that the continents were once nestled together into one mega-continent. They then spread out as drifting islands.
Geologic forces of continental plates created the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.
The Great Ice Age thrust down over North America & scoured the present day American Midwest.
II. Peopling the Americas

The Land Bridge theory.
As the Great Ice Age diminished, so did the glaciers over North America.
The theory holds that a Land Bridge emerged linking Asia & North America across what is now known as the Bering Sea. People were said to have walked across the "bridge" before the sea level rose and sealed it off; thus populating the Americas.
The Land Bridge is said to have occurred an estimated 35,000 years ago.
Many peoples
Those groups that traversed the bridge spread across North, Central, and South America.
Countless tribes emerged with an estimated 2,000 languages. Notably:
Incas: Peru, with elaborate network of roads and bridges linking their empire.
Mayas: Yucatan Peninsula, with their step pyramids.
Aztecs: Mexico, with step pyramids and huge sacrifices of conquered peoples.
III. The Earliest Americans

Development of corn or maize around 5,000 B.C. in Mexico was revolutionary in that:
Then, people didn't have to be hunter-gatherers, they could settle down and be farmers.
This fact gave rise to towns and then cities.
Corn arrived in the present day U.S. around 1,200 B.C.
Pueblo Indians
The Pueblos were the 1st American corn growers.
They lived in adobe houses (dried mud) and pueblos ("villages" in Spanish). Pueblos are villages of cubicle shaped adobe houses, stacked one on top the other and often beneath cliffs.
They had elaborate irrigation systems to draw water away from rivers to grown corn.
Mound Builders
These people built... [continues]

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