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People in Motion the First Americans P M01_KEEN6879_1_SE_01pp4.qxd 5/22/09 1:21 AM Page 2 CHAPTER 1 People in Motion The First Americans p. 4 The Atlantic World to 1590 To the people who had lived in the Americas for “Your Magnificence must know that millennia, the idea that theirs was a “New World” herein they are so inhuman that they would have seemed strange. Scientists continue to debate when the first people arrived in the Americas outdo every custom (even) of beasts; from Asia, but estimates range from between forty for they eat all their enemies whom they thousand and fourteen thousand years ago. In the kill or capture ... and are libidinous millennia that followed, the peoples of the Americas fanned out and established a range of societies. beyond measure.” Yet to the Europeans who arrived in the Americas PIERO SODERINI, toward the end of the fifteenth century, America was attributed to Amerigo Vespucci, 1497 indeed a “brave new world,”as William Shakespeare wrote, inhabited by exotic plants, animals, and peoples. In images and words Europeans portrayed this extraordinary land in the most fantastic terms. Some accounts spoke of America as an Eden-like earthly paradise inhabited by good-natured, but primitive, peoples. Others emphasized themes like those featured in this engraving, Amerigo Vespucci Awakens a Sleeping America. Vespucci, an Italian-Spanish navigator from whose first name the New World came to be called the Americas, gazes upon a naked native woman rising from her hammock. Her nudity symbolizes the wild sexuality Europeans believed characterized the native inhabitants of the Americas. The cannibals behind her, devouring human flesh, represent savagery, a second prominent element of the European vision of the New World. Neither vision of the Americas was accurate, but both would greatly complicate Europeans’ understanding of the American civilizations they encountered, leading to a legacy of violence, exploitation, and conquest. The European arrival in the Americas was part of a process of exploration and colonization pursued primarily by Portugal, Spain, France, and England. This impulse was driven both by a hunger for riches as well as by profound changes in European society, religion, economics, and politics brought on by the Renaissance and Reformation. Africa was eventually drawn into this vast trading network encompassing the entire Atlantic world. Colonization almost always involved the severe exploitation of native peoples, including dispossession of land and coerced labor. Eventually Europeans turned to the international slave trade and the labor of enslaved Africans to draw the wealth from the mines and fields of the New World. How did Europeans envision America? M01_KEEN6879_1_SE_01pp4.qxd 5/22/09 1:23 AM Page 3 European Civilization in Columbus and the West African Worlds European Colonization Turmoil p. 10 Columbian Exchange p. 21 of the Atlantic World p. 16 p. 25 3 M01_KEEN6879_1_SE_01pp4.qxd 5/22/09 1:24 AM Page 4 4 CHAPTER 1 PEOPLE IN MOTION: THE ATLANTIC WORLD TO 1590 The First Americans In one sense America was the New World—or at least a newer one in terms of human habitation. The oldest traces of human life have been found in Africa, where the earliest human fossil remains date to more than 100,000 years ago. In contrast the oldest human fossils found in North America are roughly 14,000 years old, far more recent than those found in Europe, Asia, or Australia. The ancient inhabitants of America, Paleo-Indians, were an Ice Age people who survived largely by hunting big game and to a lesser extent by collecting edible plants and fishing. Within a few thousand years of their arrival in America from Asia, they had fanned out across the Americas. S 1.1 Migration from Asia to America Most scholars believe Present-day shore lines Land migration theory the first inhabitants of BERINGIA Ancient shore lines Pacific coast route theory America migrated Glacial ice sheets Key archeological sites from Asia across the Bering Strait by way Bering of the land bridge that Strait once connected Asia and North America. NORTH AMERICA Head-Smashed-In, PACIFIC Alberta OCEAN Kennewick, WA Meadowcroft, PA Folsom, NM Cactus Hill, VA Migration, Settlement, and Topper, SC Present-day shore lines Land migration theory Clovis, NM the Rise Ancientof Agricultureshore lines Pacific coast route theory Aucilla River, FL ATLANTIC Glacial ice sheets Key archeological sites Most scholars agree that humans first migrated to OCEAN North America from Asia across a land bridge that formed during the Ice Age (1.1) about twenty human thousand years ago. An alternative theory holds that migration humans may have traveled to the New World by boat southward and eastward even earlier; this has attracted some support as well, into what is now Canada but the majority of scholars favor the land bridge and the United States. Over theory. With much of the world’s oceans frozen in time this migration reached S OUTH massive glaciers, ocean levels during the Ice Age were the very tip of South America. AMERICA almost 360 feet lower than present-day levels, Armed with spears tipped resulting in dry land where the Bering Strait is now. with flint, a hard, dark stone, Nomadic hunters simply crossed what to them Paleo-Indians roamed in search appeared an endless 600-mile wide tundra in pursuit of big game. These spear heads, of migratory big game animals like the woolly called Clovis points, named after mammoths—huge, long-tusked members of the the New Mexico town in which scientists first elephant family that provided furs for warm clothing discovered them, were one of the Stone Age tools and ample stocks of meat. used by the ancient inhabitants of America. Clovis Temperatures slowly warmed as the Ice Age point arrowheads like those shown in (1.2) were passed, causing the great glaciers to melt and sea lashed to poles to make simple spears. Paleo-Indians levels to rise. Sometime between 11,000 and 12,000 also used other simple stone tools such as stone axes BCE, the rising waters covered the Bering Strait land and scrapers for hunting and preparing meat, a bridge, cutting off migration from Asia. But the variety of bone tools such as antler harpoons for recession of the glaciers also opened the way for fishing, and bone needles for sewing hides. These What theories account for the mass extinction of large mammals in the Americas? M01_KEEN6879_1_SE_01pp4.qxd 5/22/09 1:24 AM Page 5 THE FIRST AMERICANS 5 ancient peoples generally hunted in small bands of harvesting shellfish from lakes, streams, or coastal perhaps twenty to thirty people in cooperative kin waters. The gendered division of labor found in groups. Hunting parties pursued a wide range of Stone Age societies persisted into the Archaic Era: prey, including the woolly mammoth. They also women cared for children and did much of the hunted the oversized ancestors of many modern gathering and preparing of food while men hunted species, such as beaver, bison, caribou, and and fished. forerunners of the camel. Hunting, gathering, and Some Archaic Era Indians even took the first other activities among Stone Age peoples were steps toward agriculture. At first they encouraged the probably divided along gender lines. Men hunted growth of edible plants, such as sunflowers and wild and fished, while women reared children, gathered onions, by simply weeding out inedible plants nuts and berries, and made clothing. around them. Over time Archaic Era Indians learned Many of the mammals that Paleo- how to collect and plant seeds and Indians hunted, including developed basic ideas about mammoths, forerunners of irrigation. These primitive camels, and primitive horses, cultivation techniques led 1.2 Clovis Point eventually became extinct (the to increased food supplies The range of tools available to Paleo- Spanish reintroduced modern and diminished reliance Indians was limited, horses from Europe into the on hunting. but included stone Americas thousands of years By about 5,000 BCE tools, such as arrowheads, axes, later). Three competing fixed agricultural scrapers, and bone scientific theories exist settlements appeared in needles and to account for the mass what is now Mexico. harpoons. Clovis extinctions of large mammals There native people point arrowheads were attached to in the Americas. Some learned how to grow spears for hunting. scientists believe overhunting maize (corn), squash, led to the demise of the large and beans, leading to mammals. Others argue that the development of food dramatic climate change— surpluses and conse- the rising temperatures that quently large increases accompanied the passing of the in population. Planting, Ice Age—killed off certain animals tending, and defending that were unable to adapt to the crops necessitated the new warmer environments. The most recent creation of larger permanent settlements, leading to explanation for the mass extinctions focuses on urbanization, the creation of towns and cities. diseases that may have been brought to the New Increased food surpluses allowed the ancient peoples World by humans and the animals that accompanied of the Americas to devote more resources to a variety them, most notably dogs and possibly rats. Whatever of cultural, artistic, and engineering projects. The the cause of the mass extinctions, the decline in large combination of agriculture, urbanism, and game eventually led Paleo-Indians to search for new increasing social complexity set the foundation food sources and develop new modes of providing for the emergence of the first great civilizations of food and other necessities. the southern region of North America, an area Approximately nine thousand years ago, a stretching from modern Mexico to Nicaragua period known as the Archaic Era began. Lasting known as Mesoamerica. approximately six thousand years, it ushered in The most advanced societies in Mesoamerica significant social changes that began with increased included the Olmecs (1500 BCE to about 400 BCE), efforts by native peoples to shape the environment to Maya (peaked in 300 BCE–900 CE), and Toltecs (800 enhance food production.
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