native americans, andeans, pacific people

1. Northern Peoples
500 B.C.E. to 1200 C.E.

2. 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.

3. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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!

9. 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.

10. 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.