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Chapter 11
Introduction
The Americas
The Americas: Peoples of
North America
 So
far in this class we have only
focused on people living in Europe,
Asia and Africa.
 Why do you think that we have not
studied people living in the Americas
yet?
The Americas: Peoples of
North America
 One
of the big questions that we
need to answer is how humans
moved from the early population
centers of Africa and Asia into the
Americas.
 Do we have any ideas on how this
happened?
The Bering Strait
 Most Historians
believe that
humans used a
land bridge to
cross the
Bering Strait
from Asia into
North America.
The Bering Strait Today
 Historians believed that
The Bering Strait over time
 Historians believed that
CHAPTER 11 Section 2
THE BIG IDEA
Early Mesoamerican
Civilizations flourished with
fully developed political,
religious and social
structures.
Mesoamerica
•
Mesoamerica is the name of areas
of Mexico and Central America
where ancient empires flourished.
The Olmec
The Olmec are the earliest known
civilization in Mesoamerica first
appeared around 1200 B.C., but
archeologists did not discover their
remains until about 1940 A.D.
• The Olmec people farmed in
riverbanks along the coast of the
Gulf of Mexico
•
The Olmec: Craftsmen
•
The Olmec traded with other
peoples of Mesoamerica for jade
and obsidian (natural glass) to
make tools.
Jade
Obsidian
The Olmec: Craftsmen
•
Despite not
having any metal
tools, the Olmec
created great
monuments such
as pyramids and
stone sculptures
such as these.
The End of the Olmec
Despite being advanced enough to
build large cities and great
monuments, the Olmec culture
declined and eventually collapsed
around 400 B.C.
• Historians and Archaeologists still
are not sure of what caused this
collapse.
•
The City of Teotihuacán
 The
first major city in
Mesoamerica was Teotihuacán
or the “Place of the Gods,” which
arose around 250 B.C. and lasted
until 800 A.D.
 Teotihuacán had as many as
200,000 citizens at its height.
 Like
the Olmec, the people of
Teotihuacán were known for working
with Obsidian and for using it to
make tools and, mirrors and knives.
 The
people of Teotihuacán
traded these goods for things
like shells and feathers which
they used in their crafts.
The Maya
 Far
to the east of Teotihuacán, on
the Yucatán Peninsula lived the
Maya who flourished from 300 to
900 A.D.
 The Maya were one of the most
sophisticated civilizations in the
Americas, building great temples
and using a very advanced
calendar.
 Maya
civilization was made up of
many city-states, such as Tikal,
who were governed by hereditary
rulers and were often at war with
one another.
 When soldiers were captured they
were used as slaves.
 When nobles were captured they
were used for human sacrifice.
 The
Maya held the belief that
sinkholes were portals to the
underworld and sacrificed human
beings to please the water god.
 The
remains
of 42 young
men were
found in this
sinkhole.
Human Sacrifice
 Human
sacrifice was so important
in Maya culture that in 790 one
Maya ruler took his troops in to
battle so that he could gain
prisoners for human sacrifice and
beheading as part of a celebration
for his son.
The Maya Calendar
 The
Maya used a sophisticated
writing system based on
hieroglyphs or pictures.
Unfortunately very little of this
writing survived when this area of
the world was eventually
conquered by the Spanish who
did not see it as valuable.
The Maya Calendar
 One
of the calendars
the Maya used was
the Long Count which
states that the world
was created in 3114
B.C. and will end on
December 23rd 2012.
The Maya Calendar
 The
Maya also used two other
calendars.
 One was a 365 day calendar that
used 18 months of 20 days, with
an extra five days at the end.
 Another calendar was 260 days
split into 13 weeks of 20 days and
was used for religious purposes.
The Maya Calendar
 The
Maya knew much about the
solar and lunar cycles and some of
the pyramids were built to create
shapes and figures with the
shadows on the spring and fall
equinoxes (days when day and
night are equal length.)
The Pyramid of Kukulcan
The Toltec
 Near
the same time that the Maya
were declining, a new group
called the Toltec were rising to
power in western Mesoamerica.
 The Toltec were a warring people
who conquered much land and
brought metal-working to
Mesoamerica.
The Toltec
The Toltec believed that their
rulers were connected to their
gods. For instance their leader
Topiltzin was thought to be
related to Quetzalcoatl.
• Quetzalcoatl was the sky god and
the creator god.
•
•
Quetzalcoatl was a god in many
Mesoamerican cultures.
Because of their warring culture
and constant fighting, the Toltec
civilization eventually began to
decline around 1125.
• Around 1170 the Toltec city of Tula,
which was the center of the empire
was sacked and burned down,
ending the Toltec Empire.
•
The Aztec
 The
Final group to gain power in
Mesoamerica were the Aztec.
 In 1325, under attack from other
cultures, the Aztec established
their capital city Tenochtitlán
(now Mexico City) on an island in
Lake Texcoco.
 The
Aztec quickly rose to power
and by 1500 there were four
million Aztecs.
 To govern this many people the
Aztec ruler allowed local lords to
govern semi-independent states.
These local rulers were required
to pay a tribute of goods or
money to the Aztec ruler
 Like
many people of
Mesoamerica, the Aztec had many
gods.
 Ometeotl was their supreme god.
 Huitzilopochtli was the god of sun
and the god of war, which made
him very important as Aztec
warriors fought regularly to gain
more land for the Aztec Empire
 The
Aztec also believed in
Quetzalcoatl, but their tradition
stated that he had left the Valley
of Mexico in the tenth century and
would someday return.
 When Spanish explorers eventually
arrived in Mesoamerica, the Aztec
first thought that they were
Quetzalcoatl’s representatives.