New World Beginnings, 33,000 B.C.E.–1769 C.E
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chapter 1 New Worldr Beginnings 33,000 b.c.e.–1769 c.e. I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. Your Highnesses have an Other World here. Christopher Columbus, 1498 everal billion years ago, that whirling speck of of western North America—the Rockies, the Sierra dust known as the earth, fifth in size among the Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges—arose Splanets, came into being. much more recently, geologically speaking, some 135 About six thousand years ago—only a minute in million to 25 million years ago. They are truly “Ameri- geological time—recorded history of the Western world can” mountains, born after the continent took on its began. Certain peoples of the Middle East, developing own separate geological identity. a written culture, gradually emerged from the haze of By about 10 million years ago, nature had sculpted the past. the basic geological shape of North America. The con- Five hundred years ago—only a few seconds figu- tinent was anchored in its northeastern corner by the ratively speaking—European explorers stumbled on massive Canadian Shield—a zone undergirded by the Americas. This dramatic accident forever altered ancient rock, probably the first part of what became the future of both the Old World and the New, and of the North American landmass to have emerged above Africa and Asia as well (see Figure 1.1). sea level. A narrow eastern coastal plain, or “tidewa- ter” region, creased by many river valleys, sloped gen- tly upward to the timeworn ridges of the Appalachians. The Shaping of North America Those ancient mountains slanted away on their west- ern side into the huge midcontinental basin that rolled Planet earth took on its present form slowly. Some 225 downward to the Mississippi Valley bottom and then million years ago, a single supercontinent contained rose relentlessly to the towering peaks of the Rockies. all the world’s dry land. Then enormous chunks of ter- From the Rocky Mountain crest—the “roof of Amer- rain began to drift away from this colossal landmass, ica”—the land fell off jaggedly into the intermountain opening the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, narrowing Great Basin, bounded by the Rockies on the east and the Pacific Ocean, and forming the great continents of the Sierra and Cascade ranges on the west. The valleys Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and the Americas. of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and the Wil- The existence of a single original continent has been lamette–Puget Sound trough seamed the interiors of proved in part by the discovery of nearly identical spe- present-day California, Oregon, and Washington. The cies of fish that swim today in long-separated freshwa- land at last met the foaming Pacific, where the Coast ter lakes throughout the world. Ranges rose steeply from the sea. Continued shifting and folding of the earth’s crust Nature laid a chill hand over much of this ter- thrust up mountain ranges. The Appalachians were rain in the Great Ice Age, beginning about 2 million probably formed even before continental separation, years ago. Two-mile-thick ice sheets crept from the perhaps 350 million years ago. The majestic ranges polar regions to blanket parts of Europe, Asia, and the 4 49530_01_ch01_0002-0023.indd 4 10/27/11 5:40 PM The Effects of the Great Ice Age • 5 W1 Bailey/Kennedy 11e 4000 B.C. 4–8 B.C. 1607 1976 RECORDED JESUS VIRGINIA BICEN- HISTORY BORN FOUNDED TENNIAL BEGINS 1492 1607 1776 1945 1991 2000 115 years 169 years 169 years 46 years 9 years COLUMBUS'S VIRGINIA INDEPENDENCE WORLD WAR II COLD NEW DISCOVERY FOUNDED DECLARED ENDS WAR MILLENNIUM ENDS BEGINS FigurE 1.1 The Arc of Time Americas. In North America the great glaciers carpeted most of present-day Canada and the United States as Peopling the Americas far southward as a line stretching from Pennsylvania through the Ohio Country and the Dakotas to the The Great Ice Age shaped more than the geological his- Pacific Northwest. tory of North America. It also contributed to the origins When the glaciers finally retreated about 10,000 of the continent’s human history. Though recent (and years ago, they left the North American landscape trans- still highly controversial) evidence suggests that some formed, and much as we know it today. The weight of early peoples may have reached the Americas in crude the gargantuan ice mantle had depressed the level of the boats, most probably came by land. Some 35,000 years Canadian Shield. The grinding and flushing action of the ago, the Ice Age congealed much of the world oceans moving and melting ice had scoured away the shield’s into massive ice-pack glaciers, lowering the level of the topsoil, pitting its rocky surface with thousands of shal- sea. As the sea level dropped, it exposed a land bridge low depressions into which the melting glaciers flowed connecting Eurasia with North America in the area of to form lakes. The same glacial action scooped out and the present-day Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska. filled the Great Lakes. They originally drained south- Across that bridge, probably following migratory herds ward through the Mississippi River system to the Gulf of of game, ventured small bands of nomadic Asian hunt- Mexico. When the melting ice unblocked the Gulf of St. ers—the “immigrant” ancestors of the Native Ameri- Lawrence, the lake water sought the St. Lawrence River cans. They continued to trek across the Bering isthmus outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, lowering the Great Lakes’ for some 250 centuries, slowly peopling the American level and leaving the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio system continents (see Map 1.1). to drain the enormous midcontinental basin between As the Ice Age ended and the glaciers melted, the the Appalachians and the Rockies. Similarly, in the West, sea level rose again, inundating the land bridge about water from the melting glaciers filled sprawling Lake 10,000 years ago. Nature thus barred the door to fur- Bonneville, covering much of present-day Utah, Nevada, ther immigration for many thousands of years, leaving and Idaho. It drained to the Pacific Ocean through the this part of the human family marooned for millennia Snake and Columbia River systems until diminishing on the now-isolated American continents. rainfall from the ebbing ice cap lowered the water level, Time did not stand still for these original Ameri- cutting off access to the Snake River outlet. Deprived of cans. The same climatic warming that melted the ice both inflow and drainage, the giant lake became a grad- and drowned the bridge to Eurasia gradually opened ually shrinking inland sea. It grew increasingly saline, ice-free valleys through which vanguard bands groped slowly evaporated, and left an arid, mineral-rich desert. their way southward and eastward across the Ameri- Only the Great Salt Lake remained as a relic of Bonnev- cas. Roaming slowly through this awesome wilderness, ille’s former vastness. Today Lake Bonneville’s ancient they eventually reached the far tip of South America, beaches are visible on mountainsides up to 1,000 feet some 15,000 miles from Siberia. By the time Europeans above the dry floor of the Great Basin. arrived in America in 1492, perhaps 54 million people 49530_01_ch01_0002-0023.indd 5 10/27/11 5:40 PM ARCTIC OCEAN BERING 80°N 160°E LAND BRIDGE 40°E le c ir C ic ct Ar 180° 60°N 20°E 160°W 0° 40°N 140°W ATLANTIC OCEAN Tropic of Cancer 20°N 120°W 100°W PACIFIC OCEAN Equator 0° 20°W N MAP 1.1 The First Discoverers of 20°S America The origins of the first Amer- Tropic of Capricorn icans remain something of a mystery. According to the most plausible theory of how the Americas were populated, for some 25,000 years people crossed 0 500 1000 Km. the Bering land bridge from Eurasia 0 500 1000 Mi. to North America. Gradually they dis- Extent of land, 40°S persed southward down ice-free val- ca. 33,000–10,500 B.C.E. leys, populating both the American Glaciers, ca. 15,000 B.C.E. continents. © Cengage Learning Probable ancient shoreline Probable migratory route Selected Paleo-Indian site 80°W 60°W 40°W inhabited the two American continents.* Over the cen- than 2,000 separate languages, and developed many turiesHMCo they Map split Ms00225a into countless tribes, evolvedBleeds topmore and right diverse religions, cultures, and ways of life. Kennedy, The American Pageant 14/e ©2010 Align top at page trim Trade Routes with the East Align left at type block Incas in Peru, Mayans in Central America, and kennedy_01_01_Ms0225a Aztecs in Mexico shaped stunningly sophisticated civ- Trim 45p0 x 50p ilizations. Their advanced agricultural practices, based 1st proof 7/2/08 *Much controversy surrounds estimates of the pre-Columbian Native primarily on the cultivation of maize, which is Indian AmericanFinal: population. 8/7/08 The figures here are from William M. Denevan, ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, rev. ed. (Madison: corn, fed large populations, perhaps as many as 20 mil- University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). lion in Mexico alone. Although without large draft 6 49530_01_ch01_0002-0023.indd 6 10/27/11 5:40 PM Examining the Evidence Making Sense of the New World This map from 1546 by Sebastian Gradually the immense implica- what sixteenth-century Europeans Münster represents one of the earliest tions of the New World’s existence found remarkable (note the Land of efforts to make geographic sense out began to impress themselves on Giants—Regio Gigantum—and the of the New World (Nouus Orbis and Europe, with consequences for indication of cannibals—Canibali—in Die Nüw Welt on the map).