1.1 crossing to the americas
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Crossing tothe AmericasMAIN IDEA WHY IT MATTERS NOW TERMS & NAMES
11
The World in 1500 27
ONE AMERICANS STORY
For many years, Solveig Turpin has searched Texas for paintings that
ancient people drew on rock walls. Turpin is an archaeologist. That is a
scientist who studies the human past by examining the things people left
behind. Turpin believes that one of the paintings she found shows a
religious leader who turned himself into a panther.
A VOICE FROM THE PA ST
This is the Shaman [religious leader] who transforms into the largest and most
powerful animal here. . . . I like to call [the shamans] supramen because theywere over everything.
Solveig Turpin, quoted in In Search of Ancient North America
Archaeologists make theories about the past based on what they learn
from bones and artifacts. Artifacts are tools and other objects that humans
made. Section 1 discusses some theories about early Americans.
The First People in AmericaAs many societies do, many Native Americans have stories explaining
the origin of their people. Some believe the gods created their ancestors.Others believe their ancestors were born of Mother Earth. In contrast,scientists think that the first Americans migrated, or moved, here from
Asia. But scientists disagree about how and when this move took place.Some ancient people may have crossed a land bridge that joined Asia
and North America during the last Ice Age. The Ice Age was a time ofextreme cold that lasted for thousands of years. Glaciers trapped so much
water that ocean levels dropped. A bridge of land, now called Beringia,appeared where the Bering Strait is now. (See map, page 28.) When theearth grew warm again, the glaciers melted and flooded Beringia. Some
scientists who hold this theory believe the earliest Americans arrived
AMERICAS
WESTAFRICA
EUROPE
Trade
Ancient peoples came from Asia to
the Americas and over time
developed complex civilizations.
Archaeologists and other scientists
continue to make new discoveries
about these ancient people.
archaeologist
artifact
migrate
culture
domestication
civilization
irrigation
Mound Builders
Taking Notes
Use your chart to
take notes about
the Americas.
CALIFORNIA STANDARDS
CST1 Students explain how majorevents are related to one anotherin time.
CST3 Students use a variety ofmaps and documents to identifyphysical and cultural features ofneighborhoods, cities, states, andcountries and to explain the histori-cal migration of people, expansionand disintegration of empires, andthe growth of economic systems.
REP3 Students distinguish relevantinformation, essential from inci-dental information, and verifiablefrom unverifiable information inhistorical narratives and stories.
REP4 Students assess the credibilityof primary and secondary sourcesand draw sound conclusions fromthem.
HI1 Students explain the centralissues and problems from the past,placing people and events in amatrix of time and place.
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28 CHAPTER1
Early migrationsPrior to 22,000 years ago
Later migrationsLess than 12,000 years ago
Beringia land bridge
Area totally covered byice sheet, 21,000 years ago
Area exposed by partial melting ofice sheet, 12,000 years ago
PA C I F I C O C E A N
AT LA NT IC
OCEAN
A S I A
N O R T HA M E R I C A
S O U T HA M E R I C A
Beringia
80E
120E
160E
160W
120W
80W
40W
Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Cancer
Equator
40N
Arctic Circle
40S
0
0
0
2,000 Miles
4,000 Kilometers
GEOGRAPHY SKILLBUILDER Interpreting Maps
1. Movement The oldest artifacts have been found in Chile, in western South
America. Which set of migrations probably led to human settlement there?
2. Human-Environment Interaction What geographic feature, shown on the map,
do you think motivated ancient people to keep moving south?
Early Migration to the Americas
Vocabularywoolly mam-moth: a hairy
ancestor of the
elephant, now
extinct
12,000 years ago. Other scientists believe humans came to the Americas
much earlier. They have found artifacts in South America that testsshow to be 30,000 years old.These scientists believe that people came tothe Americas by many routes, over thousands of years. Some came byboat, sailing short distances from island to island. This theory may alsochange as scientists find more evidence of ancient Americans.
Agriculture Leads to CivilizationA culture is a way of life shared by people with similar arts, beliefs, andcustoms. The first Americans lived in hunting and gathering cultures.
They hunted small animals, such as rabbits, and large animals, such as
the woolly mammoth. They gathered wild seeds, nuts, and berries.In time, people started to plant the seeds they found. This was the
beginning of agriculture. About 5,000 years ago, humans began domes-tication. Domestication is the practice of breeding plants or taming ani-mals to meet human needs. By trial and error, people in central Mexicolearned which seeds grew the best crops. By selecting the right seeds,they improved the quality of maize, or corn, until its ears were large.Dried and stored for future use, corn became a main food source.
Knowledge of agriculture spread throughout the Americas. Having astable food supply changed the way people lived. Once they no longer
had to travel to find food, they built permanent villages. Farmers wereable to produce large harvests, so that fewer people needed to farm.
Ancient hunters
used spear points
such as this one,
which is about
10,000 years old.
Skillbuilder
Answers
1. the early migra-
tions by boat,
shown by the
yellow arrow
2. the ice sheets
Some people migrated overthe Beringia land bridge. Most
likely, they were tracking
game and didnt know they
crossed to a new continent.
Some people may have migrated
by boat. They probably traveled
short distances at a time.
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Some people began to practice other crafts, such as weaving or makingpots. A few people became religious leaders.
Slowly, some cultures grew complex and became civilizations. Acivilization has five features: (1) cities that are centers of trade, (2) spe-
cialized jobs for different people, (3) organized forms of government andreligion, (4) a system of record keeping, and (5) advanced tools.
Early Mesoamerican CivilizationsAbout 1200 B.C., an advanced civilization arose in Mesoamerica, aregion that stretches from central Mexico to present-day Nicaragua. For800 years, a people called the Olmec thrived along the Gulf of Mexico.
The Olmec set up a network of trade routes and constructed earthenmounds shaped like pyramids.They built large, busy cities like La Venta.
A VOICE FROM THE PA ST
La Venta was not just an empty ceremonial spot visited by Olmec priests andnobles but a prosperous community of fishers, farmers, traders, andspecialists, such as the artisans and the sculptors.
Rebecca Gonzlez, quoted in New Light on the Olmec, National Geographic
Around 400 B.C., the Olmec abandoned La Venta and other cities.Scientists dont know why. By then, Olmec culture had spread along traderoutes and influenced others. Later people in Mesoamerica adaptedOlmec religious practices and carved designs inspired by Olmec art.
ByA.D. 250, about 650 years after the Olmec vanished, the Maya haddeveloped a great civilization. Their cities were in southern Mexico andGuatemala, where they built pyramid mounds topped by temples. Fromartifacts, archaeologists know that the Maya had an accurate yearly cal-endar. They were the first people in the Americas to create a numbersystem using zero. Their written language used picture symbols.
By 900, the Maya had abandoned many of their cities. Scientists thinkthat revolts, disease, or crop failures may have caused their society to fail.
The Hohokam and the AnasaziDuring the Mayan period, an agricultural peopleinhabited the American Southwest. The Hohokam
lived in what is now Arizona from about 300 B.C. toA.D. 1400.That desert region has little rain, so farm-ing is difficult. But the Hohokam altered their dryenvironment. They dug hundreds of miles of canalsto carry river water to their crops. The practice ofbringing water to crops is called irrigation.
The Hohokam raised corn,beans, and squash.Theyalso gathered wild plants and hunted animals. Theytraded widelywith people in Mexico, the Southwest,and California. Hohokam pottery and religious prac-
tices show the influence of Mesoamerican cultures,which they learned about through trade.
Ancient peoples
of the American
Southwest used
images like this to
communicate with
each other. Such
images are called
petroglyphs.
The World in 1500 29
A. Drawing
Conclusions Why
would a culture
need to learn
agriculture beforeit could develop a
civilization?
A. Possible
Answer Unless it
could produce a
food surplus, it
could not develop
specialized jobs or
engage in much
trade.
BackgroundMathematicians
in India also
developed the
idea of using a
symbol for zero.
Traders later car-
ried the idea
from Asia to
Europe.
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30 CHAPTER1
The Mound BuildersDuring the 1700s, Europeans discovered several mysterious earthen
mounds in what is now the American Southeast and Midwest. They
believed a lost civilization had built the mounds. Historians now know
that different Native American groups, known as the Mound Builders,
built these structures. The builders may have used the mounds for burial
tombs, as a tribute to their gods, or for some other religious purpose.
One famous mound is the Great Serpent Mound in present-day Ohio.
The Adena, Fort Ancient, or Hopewell cultures possibly built it. An aerial
photograph of the Great Serpent Mound is shown below.
CONNECT TO HISTORY1. Drawing Conclusions Review
the five characteristics of a
civilization on page 29. Whichof these characteristics would
a culture need to be able to
build something like the
Great Serpent Mound?
See SkillbuilderHandbook, page R13.
CONNECT TO TODAY2. Researching How do modern
monuments to the dead differ
from those constructed by the
Mound Builders?
For more about Mound Builders . . .
RESEARCH LINKSCLASSZONE.COM
Workers dug with large, flat
stones and shoulder-blade
bones from deer and elk.
They used about 300,000
baskets of soil to build the
mound. Construction most
likely took between five and
ten years and required
hundreds of laborers.
The mound is a quarter mile
long, averages 20 feet wide,
and is about 5 feet high.
0 1/4 mile
The ancient builders carefully
outlined the shape of the serpent
using rocks and clay mixed with
ashes. This allowed them to
design the image accurately and
to give it a strong foundation.
CALIFORNIA STANDARDS
REP1Students frame questionsthat can be answered by
historical study and research.
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Beginning about A.D. 100, the Anasazi lived in the area where Utah,Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico now meet. Scientists dont knowtheir origin. Like the Hohokam, the Anasazi were mainly farmers whoalso traded widely.
The Anasazi built houses with hundreds of rooms and many stories.For protection, they placed some buildings against overhanging canyon
walls. The 800-room Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,housed perhaps 1,000 people. In the 1500s, when Spanish explorers firstsaw these houses, they called them pueblos, meaning villages. Around1300, drought or warfare caused the Anasazi to leave their homes.
The Mound BuildersIn the eastern part of what is now the United States lived several groupsof people called Mound Builders. The Mound Builders were early
Native Americans who built large earthen structures.The two oldest Mound Builder societies were the Adena and theHopewell. Archaeologists know little about the Adena. The Hopewell,located in what is now the Midwest, lived from 400 B.C. to A.D. 400.Like the Hohokam, they grew corn. Artifacts show that they had a largetrade network. It stretched from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains,and from the Great Lakes to Florida. Hopewell mounds served as bur-ial sites. Their tombs contained jewelry and other gifts for the dead.
The last group of Mound Builders, the Mississippians, lived fromA.D. 800 to 1700. They built some of the first cities in North America.For example, Cahokia in Illinois has more than 100 mounds. One ofthem, Monks Mound, rises 100 feet and covers 16 acres. In some cities,the Mississippians built flat-topped, pyramid-shaped temple mounds.
By the 1700s, most of the Mississippians had died from diseases theycaught from Europeans. But many Native American groups continuedto thrive throughout the United States, as you will read in Section 2.
The World in 1500 31
2. Using Graphics
Use a chart like the one
below to list ancient culturesof Mesoamerica and NorthAmerica and their locations.
Which of these cultures wasclosest to where you live?(HI1)
3. Main Ideas
a. By what land bridge did
some ancient people migrateto North America, and howwas it created? (HI2)
b. How did the developmentof farming lead to thegrowth of civilization? (HI2)
c. How did trade help tospread culture? (HI2)
4. Critical Thinking
Comparing How did the
Hohokam and the Anasaziadapt to living in theirenvironment? (HI1)
THINK ABOUT
Hohokam agriculture
Anasazi dwellings
1. Terms & Names
Explain the
significance of: archaeologist
artifact
migrate
culture
domestication
civilization
irrigation
Mound Builders
Section Assessment
ACTIVITY OPTIONS
SCIENCE
LANGUAGE ARTS
Research the growing of corn. Draw a diagram of a corn plant with its parts
labeled or write a description of how corn grows. (REP1)
1
B. Answer the
Olmec and the
Maya
B. Comparing
What other
ancient American
cultures builtpyramid-shaped
mounds?
Ancient Culture Location
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