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Northern Peoples500 B.C.E. to 1200 C.E.
Northern Peoples• Northern American early societies may have resulted from
contact with Mesoamerican people. • Earliest northern societies grew maize & their early cities
resemble the Maya. • Mississippian culture developed in the central United
States. • The Anasazi culture developed in the southwestern United
States. • Prior to 500 B.C.E., people in the north continued to hunt
and gather in small bands.
Northern Peoples• Adena peoples (500 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.) created earthworks along the
Ohio River Valley & built burial mounds - some are perfectly round; other are in the form of animals; they hunted and gathered did not farm.
• The Hopewell peoples (200 B.C.E. - 500 C.E.) also built large earthworks; they were located around the Ohio, Illinois, & Mississippi Rivers, farming - growing maize, beans, & squash; their extensive trade routes stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.
• Mississippian peoples (800 - 1450 C.E.) built the first urban centers in northern America, were the first in the Americas to develop the bow & arrow.
• Their largest surviving mound at Cahokia is 100 feet high & 1000 feet long; some mounds were for mass burials, some for sacrifices.
Northern Peoples• The Anasazi built pit houses (carved out of the
ground) and pueblos (made from brick, mortar, & log roofs) in Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
• After 1150 the Anasazi began to build their pueblos next to cliff faces.
• They used irrigation to farm, & their craftspeople made distinctive pottery, cotton & feather clothing, and turquoise jewelry.
People of the Andes• Predated the Olmec of Mesoamerica by 2,000 years
• All Andean complex societies built city-states with large urban centers
• Main crops were potatoes, squash, chili peppers, beans, and maize
• Sometime around 4000 B.C.E., they domesticated the llama and alpaca; used as pack animals (could carry 100 lbs. 10-12 miles a day); the Andeans never rode these animals, used them for farming, or raised them to eat – their main source of animal protein was the domesticated guinea pig!
• The largest urban settlement in the Americas was Caral in the Andes; 6 pyramids; 20 smaller communities surrounding it; abandoned 1800 B.C.E.
People of the Andes• In 1200 B.C.E., a major urban center arose at Chavin (60 miles north
of Caral).
• In 350 B.C.E., during the last years of the Chavin culture, several distinct regional cultures arose on the south coast of Peru that are most famous for the Nazca Lines (some are 6 miles long); designs such as spiders, whales, monkeys, & a person or a depiction of their gods.
• Occupied between 600 & 1000, the biggest Andean political center was at Tiwanaku, at the altitude of 11,800 feet above sea level; home to 40,000 people.
• Its farmers could support the large population b/c the used a raised-field system: the irrigation channels they dug around their fields helped to keep the crops from freezing on chilly nights…especially at 11,800 feet above sea level!
People of the Andes• Sometime around 700-800 C.E., the Andean people learned to work
metal intensively; they discovered how to extract metallic ore from rocks and heat different metals to form alloys – they made bronze.
• Andean graves have produced the only ancient metal tools found so far in the Americas (Mayans worked with gold), however MOST of the metal was used for decoration – worn or in buildings – and not for weaponry.
Peoples of the Pacific• The peoples of the Pacific, who lived on the islands inside the
Polynesian Triangle, spent much of their lives on the sea, developing in isolation.
• Starting around 1000 B.C.E., when the Fiji islands of Tonga & Samoa were first settled, early voyagers crossed the Pacific Ocean using only the stars to navigate & populated most of the Pacific Islands.
• At first they took canoes to the islands they could see with the naked eye, but later they traveled thousands of miles without navigational instruments, reaching Hawaii before 300 C.E., Easter Island by 400, & New Zealand in 1350.
