12 Prologue Beginnings
kiva construction. The wooden buildings at Chaco
Canyon alone required nearly a quarter of a million
trees. The irrigation system of the Hohokam harmed
the environment in a different way. The canal net-
works distributed water from the Gila and (aptly
named) Salt rivers, and in so doing deposited thou-
sands of tons of mineral salts on cornfields. With little
rainfall to leach the soils, the salt residues eventually
reached toxic levels.
Crop yields declined as the demand for food in
towns and villages was increasing. Studies of human
skeletons in Mississippian burial mounds show higher
incidences of disease and malnutrition after AD 1250.
What happened next is unclear. Some archaeologists
believe that many Mississippian Indians abandoned
the cities and villages and quietly reverted to the
hunting and foraging life of their Archaic forebears.
Others argue that the end was calamitous. Late
Mississippian skeletons were smaller and more likely
to show signs of disease; they also had more broken
bones; often arms, feet, and hands were dismem-
bered. Recurrent famines and disease may have
undermined the credibility of elites and the cultural
system they supervised, weakening their control of
poor urban people as well as chieftains in the hinter-
lands. The towering log palisades of the Mississippians
and the impenetrable cliff dwellings of the Anasazi
were manifestations of this collective insecurity.
Warfare became endemic among the corn-
growing tribes of the Northeast. By AD 1300, the
Iroquoian peoples of New York and Pennsylvania were
building forts with defensive earthworks and palisades.
Some tribes joined together to form military alliances.
Soil exhaustion, perhaps aggravated by the droughts
that had parched the cornfields of the Southwest, may
have forced tribes to compete for land and resources.
Some scholars propose that gender tensions may have
exacerbated these conflicts. Men performed most of
the hunting and foraging tasks, while women did most
of the work in the cornfields. As corn supplanted
game and fish as staples of the diet, women acquired
more status and power. To reassert male dominance,
men embarked on raids and warfare.
By AD 1500, nearly all of the large towns had
been abandoned. New generations of Indians puzzled
over who had inhabited the ruins, or who had erected
the massive earthen mounds. The Navajo Indian
word for their predecessors—“Anasazi”—means the
“Ancient Ones.”
The collapse of the cities disrupted trade net-
works. Some goods continued to move many, many
miles, being passed from one tribe to another; but the
flow of trade goods slowed to a trickle. Moreover, if
the rise of powerful urban communities had forced
earlier groups to band together, the demise of the
urban communities precipitated the breakup of large
groups and tribes. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of
small bands lived in relative isolation.
To them, the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlán,
beyond the Mexican desert, was only a rumor. Of
Europe, Africa, and Asia, they knew nothing. That
was about to change.
Location of Major Indian Groups and Cultural Areas
in the 1600satmyhistorylab.comEurasia and Africa
If the Neolithic revolution had made but fitful
progress north of Mexico by 1500, its advance
through Eurasia and Africa was nearly complete.
Wheat, first domesticated in Southwest Asia well over
10,000 years ago, spread through the Nile Valley and
the Mediterranean and eastward to India and China.
Rice, domesticated in China much later, diffused
throughout Eurasia. These lead crops were followed
by others—oats, peas, olives, grapes, almonds, barley,
oranges, lentils, and millet. Several thousand years
later, farmers in Africa domesticated sorghum, palm
oil, and yams.
The animals of Eurasia were as diverse as its
crops. While few large mammals in the Americas sur-
vived the Clovis era, the ancient peoples of Eurasia
learned how to domesticate horses, pigs, cows, goats,
sheep, and oxen. In addition to protein-rich meat,
cows and goats provided milk and dairy products
such as cheese that could be stored for winter; horses
and oxen dragged trees and boulders from fields,
pulled ploughs through tough sod, and contributed
manure for fertilizer. Eurasians greatly increased the
power of oxen and horses by harnessing them to
wheeled vehicles. Because of the diversity and nutri-
tional value of its food sources, the Eurasian popula-
tion increased rapidly.
To accommodate the growing demand for food,
Eurasian farmers cut down forests, filled in marshlands,
and terraced hillsides. Monarchs joined with merchants
and bankers to build port facilities, canals, and fleets of
ships to ensure the food supply to urban centers.
Cereal crops and animals dispersed throughout
the vast Eurasian landmass, but so did new diseases.
New strains of viruses and bacteria appeared in cows,
pigs, goats, and sheep and readily spread to the
humans who kept them. Diseases also proliferated in
cities, whose sanitation facilities were poor. Recurrent
plagues swept across Eurasia. But those who survived
acquired biological resistance.
West Africa evolved differently. The grassy
savannah just south of the Sahara became the homeSeetheMap