Grade 8 Assignment Week of 6-1-20

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Instructions:

Before Reading

Image Analysis: Look at the topographical map of South America. Use the map to reflect on the following questions:

• Notice the country of Peru. Based on its physical features, what could be an advantage of starting an empire in this region? • Based on its physical features, what could be challenges that an empire in this region would face?

• How do you think an empire started in Peru might adapt to its surroundings, and why?

Choose one of the following two articles about the Inca Empire:

• What endures from the ancient civilizations that ruled the Andes? • How the Inca Engineered a Road Across Extreme Terrain

As you read, highlight in BLUE any details about the Inca Empire’s geography. Highlight in YELLOW any ways that the Inca Empire adapted to their geography. Use the Annotation tool to reflect on how adapting to their surroundings helped the Inca Empire become successful.

Then read the following article about Brazil’s sugar and mining industries:

• Brazil's Quilombos: Where Slaves Ruled

As you read, highlight in YELLOW information that helps you understand what quilombos are. Highlight in GREEN information that shows ways that humans transformed the environment of Brazil throughout its history. Highlight in BLUE information that shows you how people today are still dealing with the impacts of these transformations.

After Reading

Pro/Con Analysis: Using the Pro/Con Analysis Graphic organizer, describe ways that human- environment interaction in this region was both a positive force (on the left) and a negative force (on the right). You should also complete the reflection on the bottom by arguing whether human- environment interaction in the region has tended to be more positive or negative, and why.

Writing Prompt: Using the information from the articles you read, Respond to the following writing prompt in 1-2 paragraphs:

• How can humans interact with the environment in positive ways? What lessons can we learn from the examples of Central and South American history to apply to our own interactions with the environment?

Topographical map of South America By Newsela staff on 03.12.20 Word Count 54 Level MAX

This map shows major landforms, cities and waters of the continent of South America. South American countries are Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. French Guiana is on the South American continent but is part of France.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. What endures from the ancient civilizations that ruled the Andes? By Smithsonian Institution, adapted by Newsela staff on 07.20.17 Word Count 920 Level 780L

Image 1. Archaeological site in Moray, Peru, where the ancient Incas lived. Photo from Wikimedia.

Huayna Capac was the ruler of the ancient Inca Empire in South America. The empire had control of many lands and peoples. Its capital, which was its most important city, was Cusco in the Andes mountains. Today, Cusco is in the country of Peru.

Huayna did not like this city because it was very cold. He ordered his people to build him a second capital in a warmer place. The chosen place was Quito, in today's country of Ecuador. The new palace was bigger and nicer than the one in Cusco, and the weather was nearly perfect.

Still, Cusco and Quito were more than a thousand miles apart, with steep mountains between them. Huayna Capac ordered his subjects to build a highway that connected Cusco and Quito. He was happy with the result, and ordered a second highway along the coast.

The Great Inca Highway

The Inca highway system was one of the biggest construction projects ever made. It ran for thousands of miles, and connected the countries of Chile and Ecuador. It was as long as the

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. distance between New York and Paris. It also went through just about every type of environment. It ran from icy mountains to hot jungles, from dry deserts to wet forests.

These roads surprised Spanish explorers. One explorer, Pedro de Cieza de León, wrote in the 1540s that no one had seen highways like this. He described a road called the Qhapaq Ñan, which means "Road of the Lord." Parts of this road still remain today.

Huayna Capac died around 1527. Spanish explorers arrived in 1532, searching for new riches. They brought diseases that the Incas had never faced before. More than half of the Incas died from these European diseases. For the next 300 years, Spain tried to wipe out the native culture. Yet, the native peoples held on to their culture and beliefs.

Ancient Cultures From Around The World

Today, most people learn about four ancient cultures. They learn about Mesopotamia in the Middle East and Egypt in Africa. They also learn about the Indus Valley in India and the Yellow River in China. Recently, experts have added the Andean people to this list.

The Andes area includes parts of Ecuador, Bolivia and most of Peru. The ancient people who lived here built pyramids and temples that are as old as the ones in Egypt. They had irrigation systems that were as good as those in Mesopotamia. These systems allowed them to water the fields and grow crops. People in the Andes also made art that lasted hundreds of years.

Andean People Thrived Despite Tough Conditions

It is strange that the Andean people were able to have such a rich culture. The area they lived in did not have stable weather. The coast of Peru and Chile is very dry. The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest place on Earth. In some places, it never rains at all.

The area can have dangerous rain and floods that last for years. Floods destroy crops and wash away fields. There are also many volcanoes and earthquakes in the area. Still, people were able to settle and survive.

North of the Atacama is Lima, the capital of today's Peru. Further north, there are 30 or more ancient cities. One of these is Sechín Bajo, which is 5,500 years years old.

A Peaceful Way Of Life

The early people in the Andes, who came before the Inca, were quite peaceful. Early cities in Peru did not have to defend themselves often. They did not have

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. strong walls to keep out invaders. One of the most famous cities is named Caral, where the Andean people built large pyramids. The buildings in Caral are about 5,000 years old. People lived in this city for 1,200 years in total peace.

People in cities like Caral ate fish. In the mountains, the main food was tubers and roots, such as potatoes.

Textiles were very important in the central Andes. Andean peoples grew cotton to make tools for fishing. They also built their temples from stones stuffed into bags, to make enormous building blocks.

Wrote Messages Using Rope

In Caral, Ruth Shady Solis studies old objects to understand how ancient people lived. She came across a strange invention. It is called the quipu, and is a long rope with strings dangling from it. Incas tied knots into the strings, and the way they tied these knots had a certain meaning. People could read the messages by running their hands along the knots.

The quipu were confusing for Spanish explorers, who ordered that they all be destroyed. About 750 survived, but no one has learned how to read them yet.

The culture of the Andes is ancient, and very different from the rest of the world. If history had been different, maybe we would be reading and writing with quipu strings today.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. How the Inca Engineered a Road Across Extreme Terrain By Smithsonian.com, adapted by Newsela staff on 07.20.17 Word Count 994 Level 880L

The Inca engineered a way to build and rebuild bridges along the massive Inca Road, a tradition that some Quechua villagers continue today. Photo by: Wikimedia/Public Domain

Every June, people from four small villages in Peru gather for a three-day festival. The villages are located high in the mountains, near the town of Huinchiri.

Before the festival begins, men, women and children spend days preparing. First, they collect piles of long grasses, which are soaked, pounded and dried in the sun. The tough fibers are then twisted and braided into narrow cords. In turn, these cords are woven together to form six heavy cables. Each cable is as thick as a man's leg and more than 100 feet long.

Once the festival begins, dozens of men lift the long cables over their shoulders. They carry them single file to the edge of a deep, rocky canyon. About 100 feet below, the Apurímac River flows past. Village elders murmur blessings to Mother Earth and Mother Water, then make offerings to the spirits.

Shortly after, the villagers set to work linking one side of the canyon to the other. Relying on a bridge they built the same way a year earlier, they stretch out four new cables. The ends of these

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. cables are tied to rocks on both sides of the canyon. The four cables will form the base of a new 100-foot- long bridge. That is about the length between bases on a baseball field.

"Tukuushis!"

The villagers fasten the remaining two cables above the others to serve as handrails. They lay down sticks and woven grass mats to to provide a floor for the bridge. The handrails are then firmly attached to the base.

At the end of the third day, the new hanging bridge is complete. The old bridge is cut and falls into the water.

The new bridge is capable of holding 5,000 pounds of weight. It could likely hold more than 30 people at a time. As soon as it is finished, village leaders from both sides of the canyon walk toward one another and meet in the middle. "Tukuushis!" they exclaim. "We've finished!"

Bridge Is A Special Link

The villagers are all Quechua Indians. Like many other native South Americans, they are descendants of the ancient Inca. The people of these mountain villages have been building and rebuild ing this twisted-rope bridge in the same way for more than 500 years. It's a living link to an ancient past.

To the Quechua, the bridge is linked to Earth and water, both of which are connected to the heavens.

Ramiro Matos is an expert on the famed Inca Road, of which this bridge is just one tiny part. He has been studying it since the 1980s.

For seven years, Matos and his team traveled through the six South American countries where the road runs. They interviewed more than 50 native people who still use and revere the road.

The Inca Road "Has A Spirit"

More than 100 years ago, the American explorer Hiram Bingham III came across part of the Inca Road leading to the fabled site of Machu Picchu. Yet, all he saw was the remains of an overgrown physical highway, nothing more than a means of transit. Roads are usually built for practical, not spiritual reasons. When we hit the road, we are usually just trying to get somewhere.

The Inca Road, however, continues to have a sacred importance.

"This roadway has a spirit," Matos says.

Walter Alvarez lives in Bolivia, a South American country near Peru. He is also a descendant of the Inca. He told Matos that the road is alive. "It pro tects us," he said. "Passing along the way of our ancestors, we are protected" by Mother Earth.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Seeking Out The Road

To this day, traditional healers make a point of traveling the road on foot. To ride in a car or bus would be unthinkable. The road itself is the source from which the healers receive strength and wisdom.

"Walking the Inca Trail, we are never tired," Quechua leader Pedro Sulca explained to Matos in 2009. "The llamas and donkeys that walk the Inca Trail never get tired, " he said. "The old path has the blessings of the Inca."

The road has other powers, too. Some think it can shorten distances. Matos knows of Bolivian healers who have hiked from Bolivia to Peru's central highlands, a distance of about 500 miles, in less than two weeks.

This vast ancient highway is known as Capac Ñan, or Royal Road. It was paved with blocks of stone and linked by as many as 200 rope bridges. The Inca engineers that built it cut through rain forests, deserts and high mountains.

Inca Engineers Used Many Tools

At its early 16th-century peak, the Inca Empire was the largest empire in the world. It stretched from modern-day Colombia down to Chile and Argentina. As many as 12 million people lived within its borders.

The road is an amazing and in some ways mysterious achievement. Inca engineers built it without the use of carts, a written language, draft animals or even metal tools.

The Capac Ñan linked Cusco, the Inca capital, with the rest of the empire. It stretched for nearly 25,000 miles and branched out in all directions.

Nowadays, about 500 communities in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and northwestern Argentina still rely on the road. Much of what remains is overgrown. Many parts have been destroyed by earthquakes or landslides.

In some places, Capac Ñan remains the only road, Matos says. While locals use it to go to market, it has always been more than just a means of transport.

"For them," Matos says, "it's Mother Earth, a companion." Travelers still make offerings at sacred sites along the route. They pray for safe travels and a speedy return, just as their ancestors have done for hun dreds of years.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Brazil's Quilombos: Where Slaves Ruled By National Geographic, adapted by Newsela staff on 10.10.17 Word Count 1,085 Level 830L

Escaped slaves in Brazil created thousands of hidden societies, or quilombos, in the heart of the country. Today these communities are winning rights to their land — and helping protect it. Here, two residents of a quilombo attend a meeting in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Photo by: Antonio Cruz, Agencia Brazil via Wikimedia.

Imagine flying over the Earth in the 1600s. History books describe it as the time when Europeans swarmed the Americas. Flying over the land, you would not actually see too many Europeans.You would see tens of millions of native people already living in the Americas and a huge flow of African slaves. Up until the early 1800s, the Americas had almost four times as many Africans as Europeans.

The center of the Atlantic slave trade was the Portuguese colony of Brazil. About 5 million slaves were brought to Brazil. For every African who landed in British North America, 12 arrived in Brazil. Most of them were bound for the gold mines and sugar plantations. About a third to a half of them died within five years, the result of brutal work they were forced to do.

Tens of thousands of slaves escaped. The ex-slaves and native peoples created settlements known as maroon communities. The word comes from the Spanish word "cimarrón," or runaway. Another word for the settlements is quilombo. It means "settlement" in Kimbundu, a language from the African country of Angola.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Protected by rivers and thick forest, the quimbolos lasted for decades, even centuries.

Thriving settlement

The most famous was Palmares. In the 1600s, it held 10,000 square miles in the north mountains. As many as 30,000 Africans and Indians lived in its villages.

Legend has it that Palmares was founded by Aqualtune, an African princess and general. By the 1630s, her son Ganga Zumba ruled Palmares from a fancy palace.

Portugal saw Palmares as a direct challenge to its colonial state. Maroon troops attacked Portuguese settlements and blocked further European expansion. Weary from Portuguese attacks, Ganga Zumba agreed in 1678 to stop taking in new fugitives and to move out of the mountains.

Ganga Zumba's nephew Zumbi rejected this agreement. Zumbi poisoned his uncle and tore up the treaty. The Portuguese destroyed Palmares in 1694, killing hundreds of its residents. The quilombo was never rebuilt, but Zumbi and Palmares remain powerful symbols of resistance.

Many thought they no longer existed

Brazil abolished slavery in 1888. It was the last nation in the Americas to do so. Brazil's maroon people, known as Quilombolas, continued to hide. They stayed far away from official sight, and by the middle of the 1900s most people believed they no longer existed. In the 1960s Brazil's military rulers decided to open the Amazon to construction, farming, and mining. Land developers poured in. Anybody found on the property was driven out. Countless quilombos were destroyed, but many managed to survive.

Today, the surviving quilombos retain elements of their residents' African homeland, mixed with European and native traditions.

Brazil has a number of spiritual practices that combine traditions from Africa, Brazil's indigenous peoples and Europeans. They include candomblé, umbanda, macumba and terecô. Afro-Brazilians dance, drum, and practice the dancing martial art of capoeira.

In their isolation, quilombos built their festivals on these spiritual traditions. The traditions tie different communities together with the bonds of shared memory.

Thousands of quilombos are coming out of the shadows. They want to legally own the land their ancestors lived on since the days of slavery. The stakes are high. Brazil is passing new laws. These communities will help determine the future of the Amazon forest.

Quilombolas get to stay on their land

In the 1970s, the world realized the rain forests were in danger. Activists led campaigns to save the Amazon forest and give rights to its traditional peoples. In 1988, Brazil passed a new constitution that protected the rights of the Quilombolas to stay their land.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Government officials imaged just a few quilombos in the forest, said Alberto Lorenço Pereira. He is a Brazilian government official. In reality, there may be 5,000 or more and covering at least 115,000 square miles. That is an area the size of Italy.

Ranchers, miners, plantation owners and others wanted the land for themselves. They said that the residents came recently and were only pretending to be the descendants of slaves. Manuel Almeida is the head of the Terras Quilombos de Jambuaçu. It is a group of 15 maroon communities in the lower Amazon. Some Brazilian lawmakers tried to help big farming and mining companies take quilombo land, he says. The Quilombolas continued to fight for their rights.

By 2012, a total of at least 1,700 quilombos had been officially recognized. The number is growing as more communities come forward. Jambuaçu got its land in the fall of 2008, but it took a long, bitter fight with ranchers and miners.

Family's farm faces challenge

Maria do Rosário Costa Cabral owns a farm in the state of Amapá. It is part of a quilombo. She and her siblings planted almost all the trees.

One day Costa Cabral found a group on her property. They wanted to divide up the land and sell it. She had to fight to prove that it was hers.

"These people are the reason the forest still exists," says Leslye Ursini. She works for INCRA. It is a government group in Brazil that deals with conflicts over land. People like Costa Cabral tend to a small number of their own trees and crops. This puts less pressure on the land than a huge ranch or logging business would.

Usually, families like Costa Cabral's know how to care for the land and tend to their crops without destroying it. Environmental organizations sometimes say that all human actions destroy the forest. In reality, pushing people off their land is what damages the forest, Ursini said.

In 2009, the Brazilian president signed a law that recognizes quilombos. It also gives land ownership to Quilombolas who have less than 200 acres. The law lets the government open schools and clinics in quilombos. The government can only do that if it recognizes that the quilombos exist.

When Costa Cabral learned about the law, she nodded and said, "It's about time."

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. Name: ______Class: ______Date: ______

PRO/CON ANALYSIS

PRO: CON: What are the benefits of this topic? What are the drawbacks of this topic?

Reflection: Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, or vice versa? What additional information would you need to make an informed choice?