The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

16 Prologue Beginnings

who practiced a hunting-gathering lifestyle were vul-
nerable to starvation as well as to encroachments by
the more numerous peoples of the corn-farming
tribes. Farming Indians, on the other hand, found it
difficult to sustain even small urban communities over
a long period. The absence of writing systems made it
more difficult to undertake complex administrative
tasks over large distances. None of the Indians pos-
sessed military technologies comparable to the
Europeans. And, more fatal still, the peoples of the
Americas lacked the immunity from infectious dis-
eases that so many Europeans had acquired.

Separating these worlds was the impenetrable

void of the Atlantic Ocean. Five hundred years earlier

a Norseman, Leif Eriksson, had sailed along the coast

of Greenland to the shores of Labrador, but little

came of his expeditions. But toward the close of the

fifteenth century, European sailors of a different type,

adept at navigating through the open sea and willing

to sail far from land, were about to venture across the

expanses of the Atlantic. In so doing they would

transform it into a bridge that would join these

worlds, and the West African coast as well, bringing

all three into fateful collision.

c. 14,000 BP Humans from Asia cross Beringia
(perhaps earlier) to Alaska
c. 14,000– Humans diffuse throughout Americas
10,000 BP Many species of large mammals become
extinct in Western Hemisphere
Clovis era ends
Eurasians domesticate wheat
c. 6300 BP Mesoamerican peoples cultivate corn
and initiate Neolithic revolution
c. 4500 BP Peoples of midwestern North America
domesticate sunflowers and sumpweed

c. 3700 BP First sedentary North American

community is founded at today’s

Poverty Point, Louisiana

c. 300 BP Corn cultivation begins in the Southwest

c. AD 200 Corn cultivation begins in the lower

Mississippi Valley

c. AD 900 Corn cultivation begins in Wisconsin

c. AD 1150 Cahokia is at its peak

c. 1200s– Protracted droughts in North America

1300s disrupt food supply; urban areas are

abandoned

Milestones

Chapter Review

Key Terms

Neolithic revolution The transition from a hunter-
gather economy to one mostly based on the culti-
vation of crops, 5

Paleolithic revolution Period 750,000 years ago

when humans devised simple stone tools, inaugu-

rating life based on hunting and gathering, 4

Review Questions

1.How and when did the first peoples come to the
Americas from Asia?
2.Why had most of the large mammals of the
Americas become extinct by 8000 BP? Why
didn’thorses, cattle, camel, and other large
mammals become extinct in Europe, Asia,
and Africa?
3.Why does the onset of the Neolithic
revolution—especially corn cultivation—result

in the rapid increase of population in

the Americas?

4.What explanations have been proposed to explain

the pre-1500 collapse of the urban centers of the

major Indian civilizations in what is now the

United States?

5.In what ways did the major civilizations of the

“Old World”—Europe, Asia, and Africa—differ

from those of North America in AD 1500?