FOCUS QUESTIONS- How did different local environments affect cultural development in Ancient
America? - What were the distinctive characteristics of the Formative, Classic, and Postclassic
periods? - How was Maya society organized, and what explains its collapse around 900?
- How was Aztec society organized, and how did Aztec rulers govern their empire?
- How was Inca society organized, and how did its empire compare to the Aztecs?
- What was “gender parallelism,” and how did the roles of women in Ancient
America compare to those of European women?
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Ancient America
GREAT NUMBER OF INDIGENOUS GROUPS,
who spoke many different languages
and had dramatically different ways
of life, occupied America at the time of Columbus’s
arrival. A careful examination of their historical ex-
periences, both before and after European conquest,
provides interesting insights into the roles played by
internal and external forces in shaping human de-
velopment, which contemporary indigenous rights
activists in Latin America have been quick to ac-
knowledge. For at least ten thousand years, the New
World existed in virtual isolation from the Old. Spo-
radic and transient contacts between America and
Asia no doubt occurred, and some transfer of cul-
tural traits, mainly stylistic embellishments, prob-
ably took place. However, the cultural development
of indigenous America primarily refl ected relation-
ships within each indigenous community, their often
confl ict-ridden relations with each other, and their
interaction with the material environment.
Environment and Culture
in Ancient America
During its thousands of years of isolation, America
was a unique social laboratory in which indige-
nous communities worked out their own destinies,
adapting in various ways to their special environ-
ments. By 1492 this process had produced results
that suggest that the patterns of early human cul-
tural evolution are basically similar the world over.
The fi rst Europeans found native groups in much
the same stages of cultural development as those
that parts of the Old World had experienced: Old
Stone Age hunters and food gatherers, New Stone
Age farmers, and empires as complex as those of
Bronze-Age Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The inhabitants of Ancient America were
blends of several Asiatic physical types. They had
dark eyes, straight or wavy black hair, and yel-
lowish or copper skin. Their remote ancestors had
probably come from Asia across the Bering Strait
in waves of migration that began perhaps as early
as forty thousand years ago and continued until
about 10,000 BCE. Much controversy, however,
surrounds the problem of the approximate date
of the fi rst human habitation in America. Some
archaeologists argue that no fi rm evidence exists
to refute the traditional view, based on the dating
of so-called Folsom stone projectile points found
throughout North and South America, that such
habitation began about twelve thousand yearsA