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New World before conquest

Europe gathering strength...

• Population is growing
• Political units are becoming more inclusive
• Competition among monarchies
• Growth of wealth and upper classes
• Strong emergence of trading classes

Immediate causes for European expansion

• Increasing demand for luxury goods
• cut-off supply
• Fall of Constantinople to the Turks
• Silk road cut off
• Venture capital lies waiting

Essay Question

Please discuss the situation in Europe prior to the beginning of exploration and conquest. Give special attention to general trends, and to immediate causes or "triggers" that prompted this movement.

example question

Which of the following are valid statements concerning the Muslim empire
1. Centered on the Nile valley, Arabic strength had been growing since before the Roman Empire existed.
2. Although the Muslim Empire expanded efficiently and rapidly, it never gained a foothold north of the Mediterranean.
3. In less than two centuries, small groups of nomadic pastoralists in the Arabian peninsula joined to build an empire which spanned from the Atlantic to China.
4. While the Muslim empire was able to incorporate territory quickly, they were unable to administrate it effectively because they did not have writing

The American Situation

• Long Term Trends
• Medium-term developments
• Immediate circumstances

Long term trends

From the first arrival of people
• Adaptation
• Sedentism
• Food Production
• Complex Societies

Clovis People

9500-9000 B.C.
• Mobile hunter-gatherers spread through North America
• Others spread throughout the continents
• Pleistocene extinctions?

The Archaic (8000 - 1000 B.C.)

• Adaptations to specific environments over a long period; increasing economic efficiency and sedentism
• Southeastern U.S.
• Desert Archaic
• Northwest Coast

The Emergence of food production in the New World

Began in the later Archaic in several areas Mesoamerica, 5000 B.C.

Agricultural products

Several areas of domestication, with later mixing and movement
• Corn, Beans, Squash
• Manioc, Yams
• Amaranth, chenopodium, squash, arrowroot
• Potatoes and beans

Domesticated animals

Why weren't there more?
• Camelids (Llamas, alpacas, etc.)
• Guinea Pigs
• Turkeys
• Dogs
• Agoutis, etc.

Emergence of Complex Societies

Occurred in the same regions that food production developed

Cycles of complexity in the Americas

Long-term patterns similar to the Old World -- rise, fall, rebirth

Where we’re heading...

In all areas of complex society in the New World there had been a long history of these cycles
• Mesoamerica
• South America
• North America

What brings on the collapse of civilizations?

• Elite overexploitation
• Environmental overshoot
• Conquest
• "radical simplification"

Time Lines in the New World

• Olmec (1250 - 100 B.C.)
• Maya (150 B.C. - 900 A.D.)
• Teotihuacán (100 B.C. - 600 A.D.)
• Aztecs (1350-1521 A.D.)

The Olmec

Established some of the dominant themes in Mesoamerican civilizations

• Mounds, ceremonial centers
• Elite with religious legitimacy
• Lowlands iconography of power - Jaguars
• Religious motifs - transformation, possession

Olmec ceremonial centers

Square, flat-topped pyramid mounds facing plazas
• San Lorenzo (1250 - 900 B.C.)
• La Venta (800-400 B.C.)

Teotihuacán (100 B.C. - 600 A.D.)

The first (and largest) urban center in the preconquest Americas

Teotihuacáno urbanism

By 500 A.D. it was a city of 120,000 people
• A multi-ethnic center
• A market center for satellite producing villages
• A political and military power

The Maya

The Maya elite

A society of great class disparity

Maya Writing

The Inca

An immense administrative organization that united the highlands and lowlands Inca
• Taxes

major areas of complex society

Early complex societies

Hopewell (100 B.C. to A.D. 400)

• emphasis on mortuary tradition
• more a ceremonial complex than a political system
• established some dominant themes for the Mississippian period

The Mississippian Period (A.D. 750-1350+)

Two models of emergence
• conquest from the center out
• parallel emergence

Mississippian Cities

Cahokia had over 100 mounds and a population of about 35,000

Mesoamerican connections

Aztec Empire

Re-imposing power on the Basin of Mexico.

Tenochtitlán

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comments to Wilson
Created 8/21/98, modified by SMW 9/17/98
©SMW