A. Several billion years ago, the whirling speck of dust known as the earth...uh never mind. Nomadic Asian hunters traveled across the Bering Strait 35,000 years ago arriving in North America and eventually reaching the far tip of South America
B. Native Americans
1. Split into countless tribes w/ diverse languages, religions, cultures and ways of life
2. Incans (Peru), Mayans (Central America), and Aztecs (Mexico)
a. advanced agricultural practices allowed development of sophisticated civilizations
b. centered around the cultivation of maize
3. North America
a. Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee
1. “three-sister” farming
b. Iroquois Confederacy
1. Developed political, military and organizational skills
c. however most were living in small, scattered & impermanent settlements
4. Revered the physical world and endowed nature with spiritual properties
II. Discovering the New World
A. Norse landed in Newfoundland in 1000 AD
B. Europeans enter Africa
1. Marco Polo ~ stories about Asia
2. Portuguese arrive first
a. Bartholomeu Dias rounds tip of Africa
b. Vasco da Gama reaches India
c. est. Africa as a source of cheap slave labor for plantation agriculture
C. 1492 ~ Columbus “discovers” the Americas (or more accurately the Bahamas)
1. Discovery would eventually convulse four continents --- Europe, Africa, and of course North and South America
III. When worlds collide
A. Old World received gold, silver, corn, tobacco, and syphilis from the New World
B. New World was met with wheat, sugar, rice, horses, smallpox, and a whole bunch of other illnesses from the Old World
1. Consequently, Native Americans were ravaged by disease
C. The Spanish Conquistadores
1. Treaty of Tordesillas (divided new world lands b/t Portugal and Spain)
2. Francisco Pizarro crushed the Incan civilization
3. Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs
4. “Gold, God, and Glory”
5. Encomienda ~ allowed government to give native Americans to colonists in return for the promise to try to Christianize them
