ERA 1: THREE WORLDS MEET, BEGINNINGS TO 1660 Introduction People who study history are similar to detectives. They search the evidence looking for clues that will help them to solve mysteries and answer questions about people who lived many years—or even centuries—ago. As you will demonstrate to your students in the weeks ahead, the evidence historians use is much more than written documents: drawings and photographs, tools, clothing, toys, music, etc. In fact, everything created by human beings is evidence that can provide important clues about how people lived long ago. As you will see, scientific discoveries also can provide important clues for historians. The major theme of Era 1 is “Three Worlds Meet,” the story of how people from Asia, Europe, and Africa arrived, settled, and interacted in the Western Hemisphere. Since no pre- human remains have ever been found in North or South America, we can conclude that all people who lived in that part of the world (including the land that became the United States) had ancestors who migrated from elsewhere. Who were those ancestors? When did they arrive and why and how did they come here? How did they interact with the environment—and with each other? Era 1 is the study of those people and their “arrivings.” As we shall see, Europeans and Africans arrived in the Americas in the historical era, and so we have a great deal of historical evidence about the respective backgrounds, motives, and lives of people from these major groups. But those people who Christopher Columbus misidentified as “Indians” have a history that has only recently begun to be uncovered. Comparatively recent scientific breakthroughs have begun to answer the above questions. In 1949 chemist Willard Libby invented radiocarbon dating, which allowed archaeologists and other scientists to determine how old a particular object was (a stone, an arrow head, a skeleton, etc.). Radiocarbon dating told historians how long ancient peoples had lived in the Western Hemisphere. Those discoveries were supported by the work of historical linguists (scholars who study the history of languages) who approximated how many years it would have taken for the roughly twelve general language groups with around 2,000 dialects to evolve in the Indians’ new hands. Therefore, historians now know approximately how long these peoples had been living in the Western Hemisphere. 1 But where did they come from? In 1590 Jesuit José de Acosta reasoned that those people we now call (incorrectly) “Native Americans” were not native to the Western Hemisphere at all, but had walked those lands from elsewhere, leading the Jesuit educator to guess that the Americas and Asia “must join somewhere.” Recently geologists have determined that Acosta was nearly correct: pre-European settlers had come from East Asia, either across a temporary land bridge that was exposed around 11,000-12,000 B.C. when an ice age had lowered ocean levels around 250-300 feet, or by boat from northern Siberia to what is present-day Alaska. Even more recently, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) evidence has linked almost all Indian peoples with East Asian ancestors. 2 1 Libby received a Nobel Prize in 1960. The first radiocarbon dating laboratory was established at the University of Arizona in 1958. For historical linguists see Thomas D. Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 246. 2 Acosta reasoned that since Adam and Eve were natives of the Middle East, Indians had migrated from Asia. See Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005), 156-57. Some Christians believed that Indians were descended from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, a theory disproved by Danish botanist Peter Wilhelm Lund, who in 1840 found human skeletons in Brazil side by side with skeletons of extinct Pleistocene mammals, thousands of years before the dispersal of the 1 Therefore, although scientists as well as history teachers don’t have all the answers to several important questions, 3 we do know enough to introduce our students to the major theme of “three worlds meet” AND (and it is a very important “AND”) help our students to understand that the historical colors of America were red, white, and black and that each of these major population groups contributed to the history of what would become the United States. Student Content Goals – 4th Grade 1. Identify the ancient civilizations of the Americas at the time of European arrival (Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Aztec, Mayans, Olmec, Mound Builders). Identify Native American groups in Tennessee. 2. Explain the culture of the Western Hemisphere’s native peoples prior to European contact. Explain how those cultures changed as a result of contact with European cultures. 3. Identify the major geographical features of North America and tell the importance of each to humans. 4. Understand the geographic, technological, economic, cultural, and scientific factors that contributed to the European age of exploration and settlement in the Americas. Describe the motives for exploration and settlement. 5. Describe the immediate and long-term impact of Columbus’s voyages on native populations and on European colonization. 6. List the characteristics of Spanish and Portuguese exploration and settlement of the Americas. 7. Identify the accomplishments of significant explorers and explain their impact on the settlement of Tennessee. Student Content Goals – 8th Grade 1. Identify the ancient civilizations of the Americas. 2. List the causes and examples of migration to the Western Hemisphere (including people later known as Native Americans). 3. Recognize the role of science and technology in European settlements of North America (compass, etc.). 4. Recognize Tennessee’s role in the early development of the Americas. Student Skills Goals – 4th Grade 1. Locate Native American groups on a map of the Western Hemisphere. 2. Read and interpret facts from a historical passage about an early American Spanish mission. tribes of Israel. The temporary land bridge spanning the Bering Strait has been named Beringia by scientists. The dates of the first migrants to cross Beringia are very controversial, with some scholars claiming migrants as early as 38,000 B.C. See Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas , 1. 3 One important unanswered question has to do with the fact that almost all of the large mammals in the Western Hemisphere vanished within a comparatively short time (11,500-10,900 B.C.) whereas humans who had already arrived were not wiped out. What could have caused such a mass extinction? Human hunters? Rapid climate change? Another critically important mystery has to do with the DNA of ancient Indians. Of the four major DNA strains found in prehistoric Indian remains, one of the four cannot be traced back to the peoples of East Asia. Who were these people? Where did they come from and when did they arrive? How did they interact with the other human migrants (intermarriage, friendship and trade, warfare)? As with so many questions having to do with the prehistory of the Western Hemisphere, the answer—so far—is “we don’t know.” 2 Student Skills Goals – 8th Grade 1. Determine the difference between a primary and secondary source. 2. Understand the place of historical events in the context of past, present, and future. 3. Use historical information acquired from a variety of sources to develop critical sensitivities, such as skepticism regarding attitudes, values, and behaviors of people in different historical contexts. 4. Construct and read a timeline. Teacher Development Goals 1. Historical Context . Teacher improves content knowledge of the prehistory of the Western Hemisphere and the history of Africa prior to European intrusion. 2. Use of Primary Sources . Teacher clarifies the understanding of a primary and a secondary source and understands the strengths and weaknesses of each type of source. 3. Historical Thinking . Teacher is able to encourage students to understand the motives for migration and settlement in the Western Hemisphere and the major factors responsible for the evolution of advanced cultures (agriculture, etc.). 4. Integration of Technology . Teacher encourages students to understand technology as a learning tool and not just a series of recreational games. Timeline c. 36,000-20,000 B.C. First settlers arrive in North America via the Bering land bridge c. 8,000-5,000 B.C. Beginnings of agriculture in the Americas c. 2,500 B.C. Ancestors of Hopis and Zunis establish farming communities in the Southwest c. 500 B.C.-500 A.D. Hopewell “Mound Builder” culture flourishes in the Ohio Valley c. 700-1400 Mississippian chiefdoms dominate central and southeastern parts of North America c. 1000 Vikings c. 1100 Mississippian city of Cahokia, population 20,000 reaches its apogee c. 1200 “Pueblo” culture emerges in the Southwest 1271-1295 Marco Polo’s Journey to Asia 1325 Aztecs Build Tenochtitlan c. 1400-1600 Renaissance Period 1440’s Gutenberg Press c. 1450 Founding of the Iroquois League Late 1400s Portuguese School of Navigation 1492-1504 Columbus’ Voyages 1513 Ponce de Leon makes first Spanish visit to Florida 1519-1522 Magellan’s Voyage 1520s First epidemic diseases from Europe and Africa reach North America 1521 Capture of Tenochtitlan 1531-1533 Fall of the Incas 1534-1535 Cartier sails up St. Lawrence River Valley 1534-1541 French colonization attempts in the St. Lawrence River Valley 1539-1543 Hernando do Soto leads a Spanish army throughout the Southeast 1540-1542 Francisco Vazquez de Coronado