Early Civilizations of the Americas

Chapter 12

South America and the IncasSection 1

GEOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAS

• Many american cultures developed different ways of life to fit their geographic settings.

• Some made their homes in:1. dense forests2.fertile river valleys3. or rocky cliffs

INCAS• People of a powerful

empire that ruled part of South America in the 1400’s and 1500’s.

• Their huge empire was located in the Andes, a mountain chain that snakes along the western coast of the continent.

LOCATION

• This empire stretched through what are now the countries of:

• Ecuador• Peru• Bolivia• Chile• Argentina

GROWTH OF AN EMPIRE

• 1200 A.D. – The Incas settled in a small village on a high plateau in the Andes.

• The village was named CUZCO, which became the Inca’s capital city.

• The word Cuzco means “center”.

• Over time many different groups came under their rule.

CUZCO

At its height, the Incan Empire included as many as 12 million people.

INCAN GOVERNMENT

• The Incan ruler was called Sapa Inca (the emperor).

• They believed that their emperor was related to the sun-god.

• The emperor owned all the land and divided it among those under his rule.

• Officials used a census, an official count of the people to keep track of everyone’s responsabilities.

• The census helped to make sure that everyone paid taxes.

• The official spoken language of the empire was Quechua, but the Incas did not have a written language.

• Instead, they invented a complex system for keeping detailed records. Information such as births, deaths, and harvests. It was recorded on a group of knotted strings called a quipu.

ACHIEVEMENTS• Constructed thousands of miles of

paved roads.

• Massive walls

• Mountaintop buildings

• Build terraces (step-like ledges cut into the mountains)

• A complex system of aqueducts.

Much of what they built still stands today.

Decline of Incan Empire• A number of factors contributed

to the fall of the empire.1.Member of the ruling family

began to fight among themselves.2.Workers started to rebel.3.Francisco Pizarro captured and

killed the emperor Atahualpa and gained control of the vast Incan Empire

Francisco Pizarro

Lines of Nazca• Are a series of ancient geoglyphs

located in the Nazca Desert of Peru. They have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• Scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD. The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks or orcas, llamas, and lizards.

• The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the ubiquitous reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath.

• Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes.

• More than seventy are designs of animal, bird, fish or human figures. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across.

Purpose

• Archeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists have studied the ancient Nazca culture to try to determine the purpose of the lines and figures.

• One theory is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by their gods in the sky.

• A new giant picture on the Nazca Plateau in Peru, which is famous for giant patterns that can be seen from the air, has been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers.

• The image is 210 feet long, and appears to be an animal with horns, somewhat resembling (of all things) a lobster.

CULTURES OF MIDDLE AMERICA

SECTION 2

THE AZTECS

• Around 1325 the AZTECS, a group of people who lived in the Valley of Mexico, began looking for a place to build their new capital.

• According to their legend, the Aztecs asked their god of war where they could build their capital. He replied:

“Build at the place where you see an eagle perched on a cactus and holding a snake in its

beak.”

Mexican Flag

• The Aztecs where surprised when they found the sign.

• The eagle was perched on a cactus which was in a swampy island on the center of Lake Texcoco.

• And so this was the place where the Aztecs built TENOCHITLAN, their capital.

• It would become one of the largest and finest cities of its time.

TENOCHTITLAN

THE AZTEC EMPIRE• By the 1470’s they had

conquered the surrounding lands.

• Their large empires stretched trom the Gulf of Mexico in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west.

• A single powerful leader, the Aztec emperor, ruled these lands.

• The people under his rule were forced to pay taxes in the form of gold, food, or slaves.

• In spite of the fact that it was located in a swampy area, Tenochitlan became a magnificent capital city.

• To supply the city with fresh water, the Aztecs also built aqueducts.

• As the population grew, the Aztecs realized they needed more farmland.

• Their solution was to build many island gardens in the shallow lakes around the capital. These raised fields were called chinampas.

• Chinampas were made from rich soil dredged up from the lake bottom. Trees were planted along the edges to prevent the soil from washing away.

RELIGION AND LEARNING• The most important God was the sun god.• Aztec religion thought that the sun would not

have the strength to rise and cross the sky every day without human blood.

• Aztecs were known for their daily human sacrifices. Prisioners captured during war often served as human sacrifices.

To schedule their religious festivals and farming cycles, the priests created a calender based on the Mayan calendar and their knowledge of astronomy.

Thier calendar has 13 periods (like months) of 20 days each.

AZTEC SOCIETY• They had a strict class structure:1. Emperor2. Royal family, nobles, preists, and military leaders.3. Soldiers4. Artisans and merchants5. Slaves (most were prisoners captured in battle)

• War was a part of life in the Aztec Empire.• Most men over the age of 15 served as soldiers for a

period of time. • Priests and government officials did not serve in the

military.• Women were not allowed to work as soldiers or military

leaders. Women had to be skilled at weaving.

END OF THE EMPIRE

• In 1519, Spanish conquistadors invaded the Aztec Empire. Some people that had been under the rule of the Aztecs joined the Spanish in defeating the Aztec emperor Moctezuma.

• Diseases carried by the spanish spread and killed many of them.

• In 1521, the Aztecs surrendered to the Spanish.

The empires was at an end!

Culture of Middle America

Thousands of years before the Aztecs built Tenochtitlán others

cultures thrived in Middle America.

1.- One of those ancient people, called the Olmec lived along

the Gulf Coast from about 1200 B.C. until about 600 B.C.

- They were known for their pyramid-shaped temples

and huge carved stone heads.

The Culture of the Mayas• Somewhat later, an important culture developed in parts of

Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula to the north.

The Yucatan Peninsula is located at Mexico’s southeastern

tip.

• These people, called the Mayas, established a great

civilization and built many cities in this region of Middle

America.

• The Mayas may have been influenced by the Olmec culture.

• The Mayan way of life lasted for many centuries.

• Their empire stretched through Guatemala, Honduras,

northern El Salvador, and as far as central Mexico.

A Farming Culture

• Mayan life was based on farming. To

grow crops, Mayan farmers used a

technique called slash-and-burn

agriculture. They first cleared

the land by cutting down trees.

They then burned the tree

stumps, saving the ash to use a s

ferilizer. Finally they planted seeds.

• Their most common crop was maize

or corn. In fact, maize was so

important to the Mayas that one of

the gods they worshiped was a god

of corn.

Religion and Government• The Mayan region was divided into several city-states.

• Each city-state had its own ruler and a city that served as a s religious and governmental center.

• The leaders lived in large palaces within the city. Ordinary people lived on the edges of the city.

Cultures of North America

Section 3

• This enormous earthwork was created hundreds of years ago in what is now Ohio, Called the Great Serpent Mound, it is the largest image of a snake anywhere in the world (411 meters long ).

Mound Builders

• These are Native American groups who built these curious and long lasting mounds.

• They were made by thousands of workers moving baskets of earth by hand.

• They lived in eastern North America. They occupied the region between Minnesota and Lousiana, and between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Adena• It is believed that the Mound Builders lived in the Ohio

Valley since 600 B.C.

• Back then they were called the Adena and they constructed mounds that are usually less than 20 feet high.

• Certain mounds were tombs that contained weapons, tools, and decorative objects in additition to the bodies.

• The Adena seem to have declined about 100 B.C.

The Hopewell Culture• They appeared 100 years before the Adena disappeared.

• They also appeared along the Ohio and upper Mississippi rivers.

• They build larger mounds.

• They did not have an organized society with a single ruler. Instead they lived in many small communities with local leaders.

• The Hopewell Culture stopped building new mounds. Historians are not sure;– - They might have suffered a severe drought or been invaded.– - Overpopulation is also a possible reason for their decline.– They declined around 400 A.D.

The Mississippians• Around 700 A.D. a new and important culture

began to grow in eastern North America.• Like the earlier Mound Builders, they lived

along the rivers and build Mounds

People of the Southwest and the Great Plains

• Ancestral Puebloans also known as Anasazi were early Native American people of the Southwest.They began 100 A.D.

• They created a system of canals and dams due to the cold, dry winters and hot, dry summers.

• For their homes, the Ancestral Puebloans constructed pueblos. Houses made of clusters of stone and adobe dwellings.

The Plains Indians• The lived west of the Mississippi River and East of the

Rocky Mountains .• Several groups of Native Americans that lived in this region

were called the Plains Indians. Although each group had thier own languages and tradition.

• Their colorful equestrian culture and resistance to White domination have made the Plains Indians an archetype in literature and art for American Indians everywhere.

• After the arrival of Europeans, the lives of Plains Indians changed rapidly. They had to share their land with eastern Native Americans, such as the Omaha, who had been force to move west by the settlers.

• Plains Indians are usually divided into two broad classifications:

• The first group were fully nomadic, following the vast herds of buffalo. Some tribes occasionally engaged in agriculture; growing tobacco and corn primarily.

• These included the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventro, Kiowa, Lakota, Lipan, Plains Apache, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Shoshones, Stoney, and Tonkawa.

Cheyenne

Comanche

Lakota

• The second group of Plains

Indians (sometimes referred

to as Prairie Indians) were the

semi-sedentary tribes who, in

addition to hunting buffalo,

lived in villages and raised

crops.

• These included the Arikara,

Hidats, Iowa, Kaw, Mandan,

Missouria, Nez Perce, Omaha,

Osage, Otoe, Pwan, Ponca,

Santee, and the Yankton.Arikara

Nez Perce

People of the Woodlands• North American groups lived in woodlands in different parts of present

day Canada-United States.

• They hunted in the forests and fished in the rivers. They lived in wooden homes.

• They also made remarkable structures. They were called Totem Poles.

• They typically had images of real or mythical animals. Often the animals were identified with the owner’s family line.

• Some of the Native Americans that inhabited the woodlands were the Iroquois, The men were hunters and the women stayed home and were farmers.

• Five Iroquois nations signed a peace alliance: Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and

the Cayuga.