AGE OF DISCOVERY AND EARLY AMERICA

I. Characteristics of the early Americas

1. The origins
 Indians (Native Americans) settled across Western Hemisphere since the Ice
Ages**.** The first Indians arrived during the last ice age, when thick ice sheets
covered much of northern North America. There is a land named the Bering
Strait, linking northeastern Asia to Alaska. Immigrants started from 30,000 to
12,000 years ago and stopped when the ice melted, and the bridge disappeared.
 Paleo - Indians: ancient native Americans ⇒ nomadic people. They were here
longer than all other following cultures combined, whereas they left very little
records of their lives. They didn’t use the Old-World technologies such as grazing
animals, domesticated plants, and the wheel, instead, they mostly focused on
hunting and gathering
 Clovis and Folsom Culture: 2 separated parts (Clovis & Folsom) determined by
their hunting behavior and tools.
 Archaic Culture: when temperatures increased significantly 11,500 years ago,
the Paleo- Indian traditions evolved into the Archaic cultures, in response to
environmental changes. These changes did not merely apply to human society,
they had changed all the surrounding environment, even the animals and
plantation.
2. Early American civilizations
a. The Mayas
 Agriculture: sophisticated as the Egyptians; major crops are corn and
maze; no metal tools or draft animals; unique farming methods including
shifting agriculture, raised bed farming, terrace farming,...
 Infrastructures: temple, pyramids, palaces, more than 40 cities...
 Technology and arts: sculpture and relief carving.
 Society: highly stratified.
 Intellectual achievements: Mayan astronomy underlay a complex calendar
involving an accurately determined solar year (18 months of 20 days each,
plus an unlucky 5-day period), a sacred year of 260 days (13 cycles of 20
named days), and a variety of longer cycles culminating in the Long
Count, based on a zero date in 3113 BC.
 Religions: human blood and self torture to contact with the Gods.
b. The Aztecs
 Poor, nomadic tribe
 Agriculture: corns, beans. squash; chiampa system; slash and burn farming
 Settlement: villages, different class type of house
 Technology and arts: chipped and ground stone; stone sculpture
 Society: complex hierarchy
  Intellectual achievements: accurate calendar (that we use nowadays)
 Religion: worship gods, offering human as a tribute.

c. The Inca
 12 millions people, more than 100 ethnic groups
 Agriculture: stone terraces, variety of crops, Illamas and alpacas
 Settlement: coastal valleys (Cuzco)
 Technology and arts: craftmanship (metal, pottery, weaving), roads
 Society: highly stratified
 Religion: sun god,
II. The discoveries of the America
1. European context: ‘The Age of Discovery’
 During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations
sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great
wealth and vast undiscovered lands. 
 The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “Age of Discovery,” also
known as “Age of Exploration.” Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese
ships known as carvels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold,
slaves and other goods from Asia and Africa to Europe.
 Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in the
seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of the 15th century,
Spain’s “Reconquista”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the
kingdom after centuries of war—was complete, and the nation turned its
attention to exploration and conquest in other areas of the world.
2. Christopher Columbus voyage 1942 – 1952
The first voyage
 At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from
Europe by land ⇒ sail along the West African coast and around the Cape of
Good Hope.
 Columbus's different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of
around the massive African continent? ⇒ sound but faulty.
 1492: get the consent from Spanish rulers, setting sail from Spain in 3 ships
(Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria)
 1493: Left for Spain after leaving behind several men on Hispaniola (Haiti &
Dominican Republic today)
Later voyages
 9/1943: returned to the America, headed west to continue the search, sent back
slaves to the Queen
 5/1948: sailed west across the Atlantic, arrested and returned to Spain in
chains
  1502, last trip: made it to Panama⇒ empty hand returned
Legacy
 Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first
European to visit the “New World”. There were more than 100 million people awaiting
him when he arrived. Leif Eriksson is the first European believed to have sailed to North
America, having reached Canada 500 years before Columbus set sail to the west.
 However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the
American continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and
disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African
coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods
like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 
 Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy—he is remembered as a daring and path-
breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed
changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow
explorers encountered. According to what we have done research, in Hispaniola, he and
his men immediately demanded food, gold, spun cotton and access to the local women.
Indians were put to work mining gold, raising Spanish food, and even carrying the
Spaniards around wherever they went. Minor offenses by Indians were punished by
mutilation of an ear, a nose or both hands. He even launched a sadistic terror: newborns
given to dogs as food or smashed against rocks in front of their screaming mothers, which
is unbelievable.
3. Amerigo Vespucci discovery 1497 – 1504
 Amerigo Vespucci was the first to realize that North and South America were nowhere
near Asia, they are separated continents.
 Amerigo Vespucci explored the mouth of the Amazon River, developed a method for
determining longtitude, realized the New World was not Asia but a continent previously
unknown to most Europeans.
 4 voyages
1. 1497 - 1498: Spain - Venezuela - Brazil - Costa Rica - Central and Northern
America- return
2. 1499- 1500: explore the coast found by Columbus, discover Amazon River,
investigate a rich source of pearls.
3. 1501-1502: went to Portugal, hired by King Manuel to discover Brazil, found a
bay and named Rio de Janeiro.
4. 1503 - 1504: discover a harbor and named it the Bay of All Saints
III. Impacts of the discovery: Columbian exchanges
1. Health changes – Introduction of diseases
 The list of infectious diseases is long and the major or killers include smallpox, measles,
whooping cough, chicken pox, bubonic plague, typhus, and malaria. Because native
populations had no previous contact with Old World diseases, they were
 immunologically defenseless. Before the invasion of peoples of the New World, Native
Americans lived in a relatively disease-free environment. Therefore, Microbes caused
sickness and death everywhere Europeans settled: 80 – 95%% Native American
population was decimated within the first century following 1492, and some tribes even
became extinct.
  Besides, there is only a New World disease called Syphilis. The bacterium causing
syphilis is closely related to a variation of the tropical disease yaws found in a remote
region of South America. It was spread in 1493 by Christopher Columbus and his crew,
who acquired it from the natives of Hispaniola through sexual contact. The disease was
known to have caused great social disruption throughout the Old World but not a lot of
deaths.
2. Environmental changes
a. Animals
The animal component of the Columbian Exchange comprises horses, pigs, cattle, goats,
sheep, and several other species adapted readily to conditions in the Americas. Broad expanses
of grassland in both North and South America suited immigrant herbivores, cattle and horses
especially, which ran wild and reproduced prolifically. One introduced animal, the horse,
rearranged political life even further. On horseback the Native Americans could hunt bison  more
rewardingly, boosting food supplies until the 1870s, when buffalo populations decreased.
However, the popularity of beavers in Europe, coupled with Native Americans’ desire for
European weapons, led to the overhunting of beavers in the Northeast. Soon, beavers were
extinct in some areas.
b. Plantation
The Americas’ farmers’ gifts to other continents included staples such as corn
(maize), potatoes, cassava, and sweet potatoes - resulted in caloric and nutritional improvements
together with secondary food crops such as tomatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, pineapples, and chili
peppers - complemented existing foods by increasing vitamin intake and improving taste.
Especially, Tobacco, which became a valuable export as the habit of smoking took hold in
Europe, one of humankind’s most important drugs, is another gift of the Americas, one that by
now has probably killed far more people in Eurasia and Africa than Eurasian and African
diseases killed in the Americas. Besides, sugar which was brought by Columbus resulted in the
large scale of prooduction in the New World.
3. Technological innovation
European colonization of the Americas was made substantially easier through
several technological innovations like compasses, caravels, and astrolabes. It affected economic
development by making it possible for large scale trade networks between the Old World and the
New World to develop.
4. Indirect consequences
a. Quinine: The New World’s “Gift” to Europe’s Old World Colonies.
 Quinine was the first effective treatment of malaria. It is an important “tool of
empire” and substantially enhanced Europe’s ability to colonize tropical regions of the globe,
particularly its African colonies.
b. Forced and Voluntary Migrations to the Americas:
Slavery are forced in America as a result of the cultivation of new fertile soils.
From the 16th to 19th centuries, over 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas
during the transatlantic slave trade, the largest involuntary migration in human history,
19th and 20th centuries witnessed a dramatic increase in voluntary migrations from the
Old World. 45 million people migrated from the Old World to the Americas.
5. Worldwide effects
China had the arrival of easy to grow and nutritious corn which the population grew
tremendously. Chinese are the main consumer of silver mined in the Americas. Moreover, two
native crops of Americas – corn and peanuts are still among the most widely grown in Africa.
Crops such as sugar, coffee, soybeans, oranges, and bananas were all introduced to the
New World, and the Americas quickly became the main suppliers of these crops globally.
Potatoes were embraced by the Irish and the eastern European societies, chili peppers
by the cultures of South and Southeast Asia, tomatoes by Italy and other Mediterranean
societies, and tobacco by all nations of the world.