Converging Cultures

Prehistory - 1620

Chapter 1

Intro 1

Click the Speaker button to listen to the audio again.

Click the Speaker button to listen to the audio again.

Intro 6

Why It Matters

Before 1492 - Native American cultures had almost no contact with the rest of the world.

Events began taking place in 1300s that would bring European and African cultures into direct contact with the Americas.

Led to European colonies in North and South America and had profound effects on future civilizations.

Intro 7

The Impact Today

The meeting of the world’s cultures in the 1400s and 1500s launched change that still affects our lives today.

• Foods, customs, and traditions. • Changed the societies of each culture. • United States society today includes

elements of Native American, European, and African cultures.

Section 1-5

The Asian Migration to America

• Scientists are unsure when the first people came to America.

• Scientists study the skulls, bones, teeth, and DNA of ancient peoples to learn their origins.

• DNA and other evidence indicate that the earliest Americans probably came from Asia.

Section 1-6

• Scientists use radiocarbon dating to determine how old objects are.

• This method measures the radioactivity left in carbon 14.

• Scientists use the rate at which carbon 14 loses its radioactivity to calculate the age of the objects.

Section 1-7

• Thousands of years ago, the earth began to cool, gradually causing much of the earth’s water to freeze into huge ice sheets called glaciers. This period is called the Ice Age.

Section 1-8

• These people were probably nomads, people who continually moved from place to place.

• Ocean levels dropped, exposing an area of dry land in the Bering Strait in present-day Alaska.

• Scientists believe that people from Asia crossed this land bridge as they hunted large animals.

Section 1-10

Early Civilizations in America

• During the agricultural revolution, Native Americans in Mesoamerica learned how to plant and raise crops.

• The most important crop was maize, or corn.

• Agriculture allowed people to stay in permanent villages to raise crops and store the harvest.

Section 1-11

• Civilizations emerged. A civilization is a highly organized society that is characterized by trade, government, the arts, science, and often, a written language.

Section 1-15

• Anthropologists believe that the agricultural technology of Mesoamerica spread into the American Southwest and beyond, changing many North American nomads into farmers.

Native American

Contact

End of Section 1

Section 2-5

European Society

• For centuries the Roman Empire had controlled much of Europe with stable social and political order.

• By A.D. 500, the empire collapsed. Western Europe became isolated, trade declined, and law and order ended.

This period, from about A.D. 500 to 1400, is called the Middle Ages.

Section 2-6

• Feudalism developed in western Europe.

• Under this political system, the king gave estates to nobles in exchange for their loyalty and military support.

Section 2-7

• In exchange for protection, peasants provided various services for the feudal lord on his manor, or estate.

• Most peasants were serfs who could not leave the manor without permission.

• The economic ties between nobles and peasants is called manorialism.

Section 2-8

• Around A.D. 1000, western Europe’s economy began to improve.

• Many villages were able to produce a surplus of food because of new agricultural inventions, such as a better plow and the horse collar.

• This revived trade in Europe and encouraged the growth of towns.

Section 2-9

• After the fall of Rome, the Roman Catholic Church provided stability and order in Europe.

• People who disobeyed church laws faced severe penalties!

• Religious ideas of Islam swept the Middle East and Africa during the 600s and 700s.

• Followers of Islam are known as Muslims.

Section 2-10

• Muslim power grew; Europeans were afraid of losing access to the Holy Land.

• The Crusades were almost two centuries of armed struggle to regain the Holy Land.

Section 2-11

• The Crusades changed western European societies by bringing them into contact with Muslims and Byzantine civilizations of the Middle East.

• Trade increased in the eastern Mediterranean area and especially in Italian cities.

• By the 1300s, Europe was importing large amounts of luxuries from Asia.

• European merchants began to look for a sea route to Asia to avoid Muslim traders who often robbed them.

Section 2-15

New States, New Technology

• Beginning in the 1300s, Europeans began sending ships into the Atlantic Ocean to look for a water route to China.

Section 2-16

• The Crusades and trade with Asia weakened feudalism.

• Armed forces protected trade routes.

• Merchants loaned money to monarchs to finance exploration.

• Monarchs relied less on support from the nobility and began to unify their kingdoms with strong central governments.

Section 2-17

• By the mid-1400s, Portugal, Spain, England, and France emerged as strong states in western Europe.

Section 2-18

• An intellectual revolution known as the Renaissance began in western Europe around A.D. 1350 and lasted until about 1600.

• It produced great works of art and started a scientific revolution.

Section 2-19

• Early 1400s - Europeans acquired new technologies to make long-distance travel possible.

• They learned about the astrolabe, a device that uses the position of the sun to determine direction, latitude, and local time, and they acquired the compass.

• They also started building new ships capable of traveling long distances.

• Portugal invented the caravel, a ship that made travel much faster.

Section 2-21

• Prince Henry the Navigator set up a center for astronomical and geographical studies in Portugal in 1419.

• In 1488 a Portuguese ship commanded by Bartolomeu Dias reached the southern tip of Africa.

• A little over nine years later, four Portuguese ships commanded by Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal, around Africa, and across to India.

Section 2-36

Slavery and Sugar• Slavery existed in African

society.

• Most enslaved people had been captured in war.

• They were either sold back to their people or absorbed into their new African society.

• But African slavery began to change with new agriculture advancements…..

SUGAR!!!!!!……..

Section 2-38

• Sugarcane cultivation requires heavy manual labor and a large labor force, so Europeans used slave workers.

• 1400s - Spain and Portugal set up plantations off the west coast of Africa and used African slaves to work the fields.

End of Section 2

Section 3-4

Section 3-5

The Vikings Arrive in America

• Evidence shows that the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas were the Norse, or Vikings, a people who came from Scandinavia.

• Around A.D. 1000 Leif Ericsson and 35 other Vikings explored the coast of Labrador and may have stayed the winter in Newfoundland.

• Viking attempts to settle permanently in the Americas failed, mainly because Native Americans opposed them.

Section 3-7

Columbus’s Plan• In the A.D. 100s, scholar Claudius Ptolemy

drew maps of a round world.

• He used basic system of latitude and longitude still used today.

• In the mid-1400s, Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator, became interested in sailing across the Atlantic.

Section 3-8

• Ptolemy’s calculations made the earth seem much smaller than it actually was.

• Result: Columbus miscalculated the distance from Spain to India.

• Columbus tried, but failed, to get financial backing from the rulers of England, Portugal, & France.

• In 1492 Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella finally agreed to finance his expedition.

Section 3-10

Columbus’s Explorations• Columbus and his three ships left Spain

in August 1492.

• After a long, frightening trip across the Atlantic Ocean, they landed in the Bahamas, probably on what is today San Salvador Island.

• He called the people he met Indians, because he thought he had reached the Indies.

Section 3-11

• In March 1493 he returned to Spain with gold, parrots, spices, and Native Americans.

• Columbus impressed Ferdinand and Isabella and convinced them to finance another trip by promising them as much gold as they wanted.

Section 3-12

• 1493 - Catholic Church’s Pope Alexander VI established a line of demarcation.

• In 1494 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas.

• Portugal got the right to control the route around Africa to India.

• Spain claimed most of the Americas.

Section 3-14

• Columbus made three more voyages in 1493, 1498, and 1502.

• He claimed many lands for Spain but did not find a water trade route to Asia.

Section 3-16

Continuing Expeditions

• The Americas were named after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian who repeated Columbus’s voyages in 1499 and 1501 and discovered that this large landmass could not be part of Asia.

Section 3-17

• Ponce de Leon, the Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, discovered Florida in 1513.

• In 1513 Vasco de Balboa becamethe first European to see the Pacific Ocean.

Section 3-18

• In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailing for Spain, discovered the strait at the southernmost tip of South America.

• Although Magellan was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, his crew became the first people known to circumnavigate, or sail around, the globe.

Cape Horn’s waves are often more than 65’ high! There are, on average, 200 days of gale-force winds each year.

Strait of Magellan is narrow and treacherous, but water is calmer.

Section 3-20

The Columbian Exchange

• Columbian Exchange - a series of interchanges that permanently changed the world’s ecosystems and changed nearly every culture around the world.

End of Section 3

Section 4-4

Section 4-5

The Conquest of Mexico• In 1519 the Spanish

government asked Hernán Cortés to lead an expedition to the Yucatán Peninsula to find Native Americans to work on the farms and in the mines of Cuba.

• Cortés also wanted to investigate reports of a wealthy civilization there.

Section 4-6

• Equipped with swords, crossbows, guns, and cannons, the Spanish had a technological advantage over the people they encountered in the Yucatán Peninsula and quickly killed more than 200 warriors.

Section 4-7

• After learning that the Aztecs were at war with many groups in the region, Cortés recruited the help of the natives against the Aztecs.

• Montezuma, the Aztec leader, failed to stop the Spaniards, and Cortés marched into Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire.

Section 4-8

• In 1520 the Aztec organized a rebellion against the Spanish and drove them out of the capital.

• However, in 1521 Cortés launched another attack; this time he defeated the Aztec, who were greatly weakened by a smallpox epidemic.

Section 4-10

“New Spain” Expands

• Built on the ruins of Tenochtitlán, Mexico City became the capital of the Spanish colony of New Spain.

• Cortés sent other expeditions into Central America.

• People who led expeditions into Central America became known as conquistadors, or “conquerors.”

• One conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, explored Peru & conquered the Inca Empire.

Section 4-11a

• In 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition through the southwestern area of what is today the United States.

• Hernando de Soto led an expedition and explored the area north of Florida.

• They were the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River.

Section 4-12

• The Spanish named territory north of New Spain New Mexico.

• They built presidios, or forts, throughout the region as trading posts & protection for settlers.

• Spanish priests also built missions to spread the Christian faith among the Native American people there.

Section 4-14

Spanish American Society• For most conquistadors, the

main motive for coming to America was to acquire wealth and prestige; for many Spaniards, the main motive was to bring Spanish catholicism to the natives…….

“God, Gold, and Glory”

.

The Spanish conquistadors had heard stories of untold riches in the New World….. the mythical “streets of gold.”

Section 4-15

• Although the Spanish did not find vast deposits of gold in the Americas, they did discover huge deposits of silver.

• Mining camps emerged all across northern Mexico.

• To feed the miners, the Spaniards created large ranches for their herdsof cattle and sheep.

Section 4-16

• These ranches were called haciendas.

• The men who worked the ranches were called vaqueros.

• Cowboys in the United States later adopted many of the ways of the vaqueros.

Section 4-17

• Spanish colonial society operated on the system of encomienda, where encomenderos were granted control over Native American towns.

• Class system:

(based on birth, income & education)

Peninsulares(born in Spain)

Criollos(born in the colonies to

Spanish parents)

Mestizos(born in the colonies to

Spanish and Native American parents)

Native Americans, Africans, and people of mixed Spanish-African

or African-Native American ancestry

Section 4-21

The French Empire in America

• In 1524 the French king sent Giovanni da Verrazano to map the North American coastline.

• The king wanted to find a Northwest Passage – a northern water route through North America to the Pacific Ocean.

• Verrazano found no such passage, but he did

map a large area of North America’s east coast.

• Jacques Cartier discovered and mapped

the St. Lawrence River.

Section 4-22

• In 1602 the French king authorized a group of merchants to establish colonies.

• The merchants, who hoped to build a fur trade with Native Amercans, hired geographer Samuel de Champlain to help them colonize North America.

• Champlain established Quebec, which became the capital of the new colony of New France.

Section 4-23

• New France was founded for the fur trade.

• Settlers were not needed to clear land or start farms.

• Consequently, the population in New France grew slowly.

• Most of the fur traders did not live in the colony but among the Native Americans with whom they traded.

Section 4-25

• René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle then followed the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the region, which he named Louisiana, for the king of France.

The flag of New France

Section 4-27

Settling Louisiana

• Crops that were suitable for Louisiana required hard manual labor, which few settlers were willing to do.

• As a result, the French imported enslaved Africans and forced them to work the plantations.

Section 4-28

• The Spanish had established the town of St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565 to protect their claim to the region after the French tried to settle the north.

• The town was the first permanent settlement established by Europeans in present- day United States.

End of Section 4

Chapter Summary 1

Causes and Effects 1