Early American History Chapter Summary

It is interesting to read first chapter of American History, about Native American People; West Africa & Europe in fifteenth century; and Spanish conquest of America’s greatest empire. I always wondered why Native Americans are called Indians. Now I know after reading this chapter that Columbus gave them the name ‘Indians’ as he mistakenly believed he sailed westward all the way to Asia. As the first Americans believed to have come from Asia, so unknowingly his theory was right too. This chapter focuses on Native American life and early exploration of America.
The early settlers of America were hunters & gatherers in 18,000-15,000 B.C. and mostly based in Mexico and South America. When agriculture arrives in 2,000 B.C., hunting was still a practice. As the time demanded, Native Americans adapted to highly demanded environments to meet their needs. And after the arrival of Europeans in the New World, Native Americans struggled raptly to preserve the essentials of their diverse cultures while adapting to drastically changing conditions. Native American lived in Western hemisphere. They created cultures that ranged from centralized empires (the Incas and Aztecs) to societies, which combined hunting, fishing, and
In the Americas and Africa, all the societies were both Sedentary and semi sedentary. While in Europe they were mostly Sedentary. All three continents had complex political structures. As Spanish and Portuguese explored the Atlantic, a happy accident and a miscalculation led to transatlantic exploration, which no one could have planned. In tropical Caribbean and Brazil, Europeans enslaved Native Americans and quickly drove them into extinction. And soon the agriculture demands led Europeans to import slave from Africa. And two great empires, Aztec and Incan, collapsed in response to unseen biological