First People of the Americas

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First People of the Americas

• Lecture 2
• Part I

2
Outline

• First People of the Americas
• Worlds Collide

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In the News..

• Travel
• http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
  le/2005/05/27/AR2005052700555.html?referreremail
• Energy
• http//biz.yahoo.com/cnw/050601/amicroplanet_pilot
  pro.html?.v1
• Natural Hazards
• http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
  le/2005/05/19/AR2005051901081.html?subAR
• Fishery
• http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
  le/2005/05/21/AR2005052100589.html
• Media
• http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic
  le/2005/05/24/AR2005052401361.html
• It does not only happen in Latin America
• http//news.yahoo.com/news?tmplstorycid514u/a
  p/20050601/ap_on_re_us/laguna_beach_landslide_16

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First People

• Asian Migration Hypothesis- the American first
  settlers came from Asia.
• The routes and timeframe is in dispute. New
  research suggests that humans hunted and gathered
  their way across the Bering Straits all the way
  to Southern Chile.

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First People
Source Bergman and Renwick, 2003
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Aztec Migration Legend

• In the 14th century, the Aztecs, also known as
  Mexica, settled in the Valley of Mexico. The
  eagle representing the sun and the serpent
  representing the earth were the ancient symbols
  of the basic forces of the cosmos.
• According to legend, the Aztecs were told to look
  for an eagle perched on a cactus eating a
  serpent. They were to settle at that site.
• They founded Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico
  City. Tenochtitlan was built in an area
  surrounded by the marshes of Lake Texcoco. In
  A.D. 1325 they built a city on the site of the
  island in the lake this is now the center of
  Mexico City.

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Aztlan
http//www.azteca.net/aztec/aztlan.html
http//www.pvbr.com/Issue_1/aztlan.htm,
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Nation of Aztlan

• According to legend, Aztlan was the ancestral
  homeland of the Aztecs which they left in
  journeying southward to found Tenochtitlan.
• Today, the "Nation of Aztlan" refers to the
  American southwestern states of California,
  Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, portions of Nevada,
  Utah, Colorado, which Chicano nationalists claim
  were stolen by the United States and must be
  reconquered (Reconquista) and reclaimed for
  Mexico.5
• The myth of Aztlan was revived by Chicano
  political activists in the 1960s as a central
  symbol of Chicano nationalist ideology. In 1969,
  at the Chicano National Liberation Youth
  Conference in Denver, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
  put forth a political document entitled El Plan
  de Aztlan (Spiritual Plan of Aztlan).6 The Plan
  is a clarion call to Mexican-Americans to form a
  separate Chicano nation
• http//www.diversityalliance.org/docs/Chang-aztlan
  .html

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New Aztlan

• In the spirit of a new people that is conscious
  not only of its proud historical heritage, but
  also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our
  territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and
  civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from
  whence came our forefathers ...declare that the
  call of our blood is...our inevitable destiny....
  Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds,
  water the fields, and gather the crops, and not
  to the foreign Europeans.
• We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the
  bronze continent.... Brotherhood unites us, and
  love for our brothers makes us a people whose
  time has come .... With our heart in our hands
  and our hands in the soil, we declare the
  independence of our mestizo nation. We are a
  bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the
  world, before all of North America, before all
  our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a
  nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are
  Aztlan.7
• http//www.diversityalliance.org/docs/Chang-aztlan
  .html

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New Aztlan
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Migration Legend?

• The State Emblem was first adopted in 1823 and
  the eagle and snake have served ever since the
  Emblem of Arms of then successive republics and
  empires.
• It will be immediately apparent that the three
  hundred years of Spanish rule have been
  judiciously ignored, and in fact the Emblem
  recalls an old Indian legend The Aztec people
  were guided by god Huitzilopochtli to seek a
  place where an eagle landed on a prickly-pear
  cactus, eating a snake... After hundreds of years
  of wandering they found the sign on a small
  swampy island in Lake Texcoco. Their new home
  they named Tenochtitlan ("Place of the Prickly
  Pear Cactus"). The emblem was re-approved in 1934
  and slightly modified in 1968 the plant is a
  nopal cactus.

http//www.fotw.us/flags/mx).html
http//www.settlement.org/cp/english/mexico/alook
.html
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Early Civilizations

• Olmecs
• Zapotec
• Teotihuacan
• Mayans
• Toltecs
• Aztecs
• Incas
• Tainos

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Olmec

• Flourished from 1150-600 B.C.
• Settlements, involving ceremonial centers, burial
  mounds, and huge
• Olmec Stone heads.
• The Olmecs used a calendar and hieroglyphic
  writing.

http//www.dudeman.net/siriusly/ac/map/olmec.jpg
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Zapotec Civilization

• 500 B.C. in the semi-arid Oaxaca Valley of
  Central America.
• Monte Alban was surrounded by two miles of stones
  walls, and the city included stone temples,
  pyramids and a ball court.

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Teotihuacan City

• Larger than Monte Alban
• was the city of Teotihuacan which
• developed into an important city-
• state.
• The planned city which included streets, plazas,
  markets, houses, and large stone pyramids,
  covered several miles and was astronomically
  organized to cover 8 squared miles.
• As many as 200,000 people lived between 300-700
  B.C.

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Mayans

• Highly developed agriculture and water irrigation
  systems.
• Maya developed glyph writing with phonetic and
  pictographic elements, mathematic system (based
  on 20 and with a Zero), and complex series of
  calendars.

http//www.civilization.ca/civil/maya/images/mmgeo
enb.gif
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Toltecs

• They were invaders from the North that dominated
  central Mexico and parts of the Yucatan between
  900 and 1300 A.D.
• Their arrival is thought to mark the rise of
  militarism in Mesoamerica, as their army used its
  superior force to dominate neighboring societies.
• Established a capital at Tula. According to
  legend, a rival Toltec deity, Tezcatlipoca, drove
  Quetzalcoatl and his followers out of Tula about
  ad 1000. The legend holds that Quetzalcoatl and
  his band migrated eastward.
• Developed trade (cocoa, feathers, and cotton)
  between the highlands and tropical lowlands in
  middle America.

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Aztecs

• At the height of their power, the Aztec
  controlled a region stretching from the Valley of
  Mexico in central Mexico east to the Gulf of
  Mexico and south to Guatemala.
• Native American state that ruled much of what is
  now Mexico from about 1428 until 1521, when the
  empire was conquered by the Spaniards.

http//www.fsmitha.com/h3/map16-az.html
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Aztecs

• The Aztec built great cities and developed a
  complex social, political, and religious
  structure. Their capital, Tenochtitlán, was
  located on the site of present-day Mexico City.
• An elaborate metropolis built on islands and
  reclaimed marsh land, Tenochtitlán was possibly
  the largest city in the world at the time of the
  Spanish conquest. It featured a huge temple
  complex, a royal palace, and numerous canals.

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Incas

• The Inca Empire, a vast kingdom in the Andes
  Mountains of South America was created by the
  Quechua, a Native American people, in the 15th
  century ad.
• The Inca Empire was conquered by the Spanish in
  the early 16th century. The Incas built a wealthy
  and complex civilization that ruled between 5
  million and 11 million people.
• The Inca system of government was among the most
  complex political organizations of any Native
  American people. Although the Incas lacked both a
  written language and the concept of the wheel,
  they accomplished feats of engineering that were
  unequaled elsewhere in the Americas.
• They built large stone structures without mortar
  and constructed suspension bridges and roads that
  crossed the steep mountain valleys of the Andes.

http//www.raingod.com/angus/Gallery/Photos/SouthA
merica/Peru/IncaTrail.html
http//www.fsmitha.com/h3/map16-az.html
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Incas

• Road building was important to establishing
  communication throughout the huge, complex
  empire. The Inca emperors built a 10,000-mi
  network of stone roads. Trained runners carried
  official messages, working in relays to cover up
  250 mi per day.
• Terracing agriculture
• Construction of Massive City

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Incas

• The Inca recorded numbers and perhaps other kinds
  of information on the knotted strings of a quipu.
  Inca administrators used quipus to keep accounts
  of items owned and in storage within their
  districts, such as agricultural products and
  livestock.
• Unlike pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica
  such as the Maya and Aztec, the Inca had no form
  of true writing.

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Tainos

• At the time of European contact the larger
  indigenous groups of the Caribbean and Northern
  Andes culture area included the Ciboney, Taíno
  (Island Arawak), and Carib, of the Antilles
  islands
• The Caribbean and Northern Andes culture area is
  a tropical region that extends over a huge area
  between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator.
• In the Caribbean islands, manioc cultivation
  probably began around 250 bc, after agricultural
  peoples in northern Venezuela had begun migrating
  to the Lesser Antilles.

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Tainos

• Archaeologists believe that the island of Puerto
  Rico was first settled in the 1st century ad.
  When the Spanish arrived in 1493, the island was
  inhabited by an agricultural people belonging to
  the Arawakan language family.
• The Spanish called them Taínos, but they were
  also known as Island Arawak. The Taínos called
  the island Boriquén (or Borinquén). They lived in
  settled villages, in small, thatch-roofed houses
  or huts known as bohios.

http//www.taino-tribe.org/jatiboni.html