service. Some earned their freedom through service in the
military. Still others were able to buy their freedom. Many
freedmen continued to work for their former masters. Th e
political rights of freedmen were limited in the early years
of the empire, but their children were oft en able to enjoy all
the rights of Roman citizenship, and the political rights of
freedmen expanded later during the empire period. In some
cases, the transformation from slave to prominent citizen
took only one generation. Publius Helvius Pertinax, who be-
came Rome’s emperor in 193 c.e., was the son of a former
slave. Many freedmen became quite wealthy through com-
merce, oft en wealthier than many members of the patrician
class. Still others became wealthy through bribery and fraud
in civil service jobs.
Th e experiences of women in ancient Rome were mixed.
Th ey did not have direct political power. While other nations
in the region were at one time or another ruled by women,
Rome never had a woman emperor. In some cases, such as
that of Augustus and his wife, Livia, women served as ad-
visers and could exert a great deal of indirect infl uence over
public matters. Additionally, women could own property,
including estates and commercial enterprises, giving them
some measure of economic power. Otherwise, women were
expected to serve primarily as managers of the home and
family, which oft en included not only their own children but
also the children’s spouses and children. Women were highly
visible in public; in contrast to Greece, they were never se-
questered from life in public. Overall, upper-class women
were expected to live up to the ideal of the virtuous, digni-
fi ed Roman matron. In upper-class families, girls were given
some measure of education, but they did not take part in
advanced studies alongside men. Little is known about the
lives of lower-class women, though archaeological evidence
strongly suggests that many worked as midwives, food sell-
ers, and nurses and in craft s production, including jewelry,
leatherwork, and textiles.THE AMERICAS
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
Archaeologists and historians generally agree that the fi rst
human inhabitants of the Americas arrived about 30,000
years ago, possibly earlier. At that time the earth was much
colder than it is today. Large glaciers, oft en a mile thick, had
pushed southward as far as present-day Ohio and Indiana.
Because so much of the world’s water had turned to ice, sea
levels were much lower than they are now. As the seas fell, a
large bridge of dry land opened between the eastern tip of
Asia and the western tip of Alaska in North America. Th at
bridge is now submerged under the Bering Sea.
Historians speculate that the fi rst Americans were Sibe-
rian hunters who were simply following game across the land
bridge—entirely unaware that they were the fi rst humans to
set foot on a new continent. (Because the land bridge was
roughly 1,000 miles wide from north to south, they wouldnot have thought of it as a “bridge” at all, but as a vast stretch
of open country.) In time other hunters followed, and by
about 8000 b.c.e. humans had migrated as far as the southern
tip of South America. Clearly, when Christopher Columbus
“discovered” America, he was only establishing contact be-
tween Europe and the Americas, which had been inhabited
for thousands of years.
When the fi rst migrants arrived, the Americas were en-
tirely uninhabited. Groups of people were able to spread out
and live in nearly total isolation from one another, although
occasionally trade and barter took place between nearby
groups. Th e result was the existence of a large number of
distinct cultures and language groups, including the many
tribes of Native Americans in what are now Canada and the
United States and similar bands in present-day Mexico and
Central America and South America. (In contemporary us-
age Native American refers to the tribes that inhabited, and
still inhabit, the United States, such as the Apache, Sioux, and
other familiar groups. In a larger historical context, though,
the term refers to any of the many groups of people who occu-
pied North, Central, or South America before the European
contact—including, for example, the Maya and the Toltec.)
Historians estimate that northern Mexico alone was home
to between 300 and 350 distinct language groups. Because of
the immense diversity of social groups any general statement
about their social organization has to be supplemented with
more specifi c statements about the organization of any par-
ticular group.THE AMERICAS IN PREHISTORY
Unfortunately for historians, the archaeological record for the
vast majorit y of early Native American groups is either sparse
or nonexistent. Before about 12,000 b.c.e. most of the social
groups of the Americas were hunter-gatherers. Th ey moved
from place to place following sources of food and left behind
only the sparest evidence of their presence—for example,
burial sites, bones, and a few stone tools. Almost everything
they made with nondurable materials has long since decayed
and disappeared. Th ey had no writing systems.
From 12,000 to about 5000 b.c.e. the record holds a little
more detail, giving historians a somewhat better picture of
how people lived and enabling them to off er a few general-
izations about social organization among ancient Americans.
Th ey believe that Americans in these years lived in hunter-
gatherer bands of perhaps up to 100 members. Th e bands
were based on kinship, and their members assumed that
they all had a common ancestor. Occasionally, when they felt
threatened by natural conditions or by aggression from other
groups, several bands would forge alliances with one another,
forming a loose community of perhaps 1,000 people. Neigh-
boring bands sometimes traded with each other, and they
also cemented alliances through intermarriage, primarily
because each band wanted to maintain a rough equivalence
in the number of men and women. Only in this way could
they ensure the bearing of children to sustain the populationsocial organization: The Americas 10390895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1039 1039 10/10/07 2:30:51 PM