The First Americans

Flashcards about The First Americans

The First Americans

The story of the peoples of the American islands and continents begins in pre-historic times, long before any written records.

Indigenous Americans

Links between some of the present day 'Indian' peoples and hunters who first entered America around 18,000 years ago. They followed animals across the land or ice bridge which then joined Alaska to Asia.

Hunters and Gatherers

These first Americans followed herds of caribou, buffalo and seals as they moved from one feeding ground to the next.

Farming for subsistence

Living in a settled way of life based on farming for their needs.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, a fortified city in the Andes which was used by local governors of the Inca Empire.

Surplus farming

In some societies farmers produced more crops than they needed. This happened among the Incas, Aztecs and Maya.

Aztecs

The Aztecs ruled an empire of over seven million people from their beautiful stone city, Tenochtitlan, built on islands in the centre of Lake Texcoco.

Incas

The empire of the Incas in Peru was paid for by taxes collected from people they had conquered on the western coast of South America.

The Maya

At the height of their civilisation the Maya occupied 24,000 square kilometres, which included the modern Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche and Tobasco, as well as all of Belize, Guatemala and the western edge of Honduras.

Main Sites of the Maya

The sites in the centre and south were used between AD 300 and 900. They were then replaced by those in the Yucatan

Arawak People

From the banks of the Orinoco river were people speaking one or other of the Arawak group of languages. As time went on they could be divided into three: the Tainos, the Lucayans and the Borequinos.

Spanish in America

The first Spanish arrived in 1511. Soon the new conquerors were destroying one city after another. The Maya retreated to their last stronghold at the city of Taynsal deep in the jungle. This finally fell to the Spaniards in 1597.

Other circum-Caribbean people

Many other people lived in the lands around the Caribbean but none had the same skills in farming, building and science as the Maya.

Temple-Cities

All the buildings were decorated with carvings and wall paintings.

Women in the Maya civilization

The women and their daughters spent most of their time in domestic work, especially cooking and grinding the maize.

Maya Civilization Success

The whole success of the Maya civilisation depended on the peasants' crops. They grew and sold enough to be able to support the many priests and the nobles who were the state's fighting men.

The second Maya

This way of life went on for hundreds of years from the second century AD to the seventh or eighth century. Then, in one city after another, the temples were abandoned. Buildings were left unfinished and cornfields went unplanted.