Cultures in Contact
ANT 326L (30410) Spring, 2008
Samuel M. Wilson
Global Historical Themes
Understanding our place in time and Space
• Where people came from...
• How they got to the Americas...
• How similar or different were Old and New World societies?
Humans’ recent arrival in much of the world
• A 4-million-year-old species has only been in much of the world for 40,000
years, 1% of that time
• Distant realms
–
Australia & Polynesia
– The Arctic
– The Americas
– (the remote Atlantic islands)
• “anatomically modern people”
Where we came from. . .
• “Eve” vs. Multi-regional models
• Either way, our roots are in Africa
• Living in the rest of the world required cultural ways of coping
Coming to America...
• The controversy over early dates
• Two competing ideas:
– 12,000 years ago - Pre-Clovis hunters across Beringia
– ~25,000 years ago - small earlier groups
The First American Colonization
• A rapid movement across continents that were radically different from
today
Colonization of the Americas
Adaptation and Specialization
How isolated were they?
• Inuit colonization
• Norse in Vinland
• Constant controversial claims
• White Legends and Lost Tribes
Norse Greenland
A general pattern of emerging complexity
• Food production
• Complex society
• Kingship
• Urbanism
• Social and political stratification
Economy
Markets
Urbanism
New World - Old World comparisons
The most amazing thing...
With striking similarities
Religion
Military
Social Hierarchy
Bureaucracy
Literacy
Justice
Taxes
Taxes
Where and when did states emerge?
How to account for these similarities?
Hard wired?
Limited possibilities?
Other kinds of complex society
One Conquest-period consequence...
Next...
Europe at 1000 A.D.
Organization and relationships with others.
Europe and others...
• Europe was internally diverse
• It was disorganized and economically weak
• It was flanked by other more powerful groups