The Americas
Published on Nov 25, 2015
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Farming began in Mesoamerica 9,000 to 10,000 years ago. Meso comes from the Greek word Hunting the Woolly Mammoth for “middle.” This region includes lands stretching from the Valley of Mexico to Costa Rica in Central America.
The Olmec used the region’s many rivers as highways for trade, but eventu- ally, the inland peoples seized control of the trade. One of these groups built the first planned city in the Americas. It became known as Teotihuacán , or “Place of the Gods.” The city reached its height around A.D. 400. It had a population of between 120,000 to 200,000 people.
The Incan homeland lay in the Andes mountain ranges of present-day Peru. They chose to live in high river valleys, often above 10,000 feet.Over time, the Inca built the biggest empire in the ancient Americas. It centered around the capital of Cuzco ,founded in A.D. 1100. North of Mesoamerica, Native Americans developed their own ways of living. Still, they had learned something important from their Mesoamerican neighbors. They learned how to farm.
The largest city, Cahokia ,may have had 30,000 people. The remains of this city can still be seen in southwestern Illinois. The Mississippians built a different kind of mound. Their mounds were pyramid shaped but with flat tops. The base of the biggest one covered 16 acres ,more than the base of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The finished mound, known today as Monks Mound, rose more than 100 feet high. From the mound’s summit, rulers gazed down at dozens of smaller mounds. The flat tops of the mounds held temples, homes for the rich, and burial places. In the early A.D. 1300s, the Mississippian civilization collapsed, and the cities were abandoned.
THE AMERICAS
Photo by Justin in SD
