The : A Separate World, 4000 B.C. to 700 A.D. Chapter 9, Pages 232 to 259 World History: Patterns of Interaction McDougal-Littell 2007

How the original inhabitants of , , and arrived is not clear. Most hypotheses center around a possible land-bridge between northeastern and Alaska.

Several civilizations are among the earliest in the Americas. The Olmec lived south of the Bay of , the southernmost edge of the Gulf of . Arising around 1200 B.C., they thrived between 800 B.C. and 400 B.C., and knew how to work with iron. They planted and raised maize.

The Zapotec civilization was somewhat later, arising around 1000 B.C. in a mountainous a few miles southwest of the Olmec, and by 500 B.C., the Zapotec developed primitive writing and calendar systems. From 250 A.D. to 700 A.D., a major Zapotec city flourished, with a peak population of almost 25,000.

In South America, the Chavin culture flourished from 900 B.C. to 200 B.C. in the Mountains in what is now Peru.

At lower elevations, the Nazca culture flourished from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D. along the southern Peruvian coastline. The Nazca developed extensive irrigation systems, including underground canals. They are famous for an extraordinary but puzzling set of creations known as the Nazca Lines, large-scale images on the ground which are comprehensible from heights reached only by modern aircraft.

Along the northern Peruvian coastline, the Moche culture flourished from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D., and like the Nazca, developed irrigation systems. In addition to corn, they grew peanuts, squash, potatoes and beans.

The Americas would remain a patchwork of separate civilizations for many centuries, not uniting into a larger culture. All of these civilizations, however, engaged in the practice of human sacrifice, hoping to persuade an imagined deity to grant fertility to their farming efforts, or help them find game as they hunted, or help them win military victories over neighboring tribes. Warfare between tribes was frequent, and some tribes disappeared completely when all their members were killed by competing tribes.

Chapter 9 – Page 1 There was also cannibalism among the tribes of North, Central, and South America: specifically, historians and archeologists have found instances of cannibalism among the Aztec, the Karankawa tribe of Texas, various Amazonian tribes, Iroquois, Mohawk, Huron, Hopi, and other tribes. The native cultures of the Americas did not give legal or social equality to women. Young ‘Indian’ (Native American) men caught young women to be their wives; the women had no choice in marriage. The Native Americans explored a variety of hallucinogenic and other pharmaceutical plants. One subspecies of the ‘Morning Glory’ flower was suined by Zapotec and Aztec; the ‘Jimson Weed’ was spread from Central to North America; a plant called ‘Kava’ was farmed in the Pacific Northwest; the Mazater tribe believed that ‘Salvia Divinorum’ had magical properties; different species of hallucinogenic mushrooms were already habitual around 1000 B.C.; Peyote was common among the tribes of Texas by 3780 B.C.; a plant known as ‘Yage’ or ‘Ayahuasca’ is commonly by Amazonian tribes; the Inca chewed the leaves of the Coca plant. These drugs were used to prepare warriors for battle; under the influence of these plants, the warriors were thought to be less inhibited – not hesitant to attack or kill. Some of these plants were used after battle: to help the warriors ‘calm down’ and process the horrors they’d seen and committed. Perhaps the most dangerous plant of all was tobacco. Regularly farmed since around 1000 B.C., it has been responsible for millions of deaths around the world.

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