8.6 – Reading #4: Putting It All Together

READING TEXT
Module 8: Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

All around the world, large groups of people come together to form civilizations. This means that these groups share economic, political, and cultural systems. Similar to people, civilizations develop (or grow) and change. In the history of the Americas, there have been many civilizations. There are three major regions of the Americas: South, Central, and North America.

South America: One early civilization, the Inca, lived in the highlands of Peru in the Andes Mountains. In the Inca civilization, groups of families farmed together and shared resources. They built many cities and about 25,000 miles of roads that connected to the capital city of Cusco. The Inca sent messages across hard-to-travel lands by using a chain of runners and walkers. These people carried messages orally (by speaking) or by using knotted ropes. One of these roads led to the city of Machu Picchu, built high in the Andes mountains. Today, you can walk on the Inca Trail to visit this grand, ancient city.

Central America: The Olmec, Maya, and Aztec Civilizations lived for thousands of years in the land that people today call Central America. The Olmec are the earliest civilization that we know about in Central America. They lived in the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico in modern day Tabasco and Veracruz. The Maya lived and continue to live today in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The Aztecs, also called the Mexica, settled in the central valley of Mexico. Their largest ancient city was Tenochtitlan, which today is Mexico City. The descendants of the Aztec call themselves the Nahua.

These three civilizations built some of the earliest pyramids in this area. Pyramids were places where people came together to honor gods and kings. Some Mayan pyramids also housed kings’ tombs. The Olmec and Maya also created other stone monuments, called stele, with historical writing and pictures about their kings.

The Olmec, Maya, and Aztec economy was based on agriculture, or farming. They grew crops such as corn, beans, squash, and the cocoa plant (beans used to make chocolate). The Aztecs also made pulque, a milky-white, alcoholic drink made from the maguey (or agave) plant. They had great scientific understanding of the sun, the seasons, and land management, which helped them be sustainable farmers. For example, the Maya used controlled land burning to help their farms and forests continue to grow over time.

North America did not have large empires like the Aztec or Inca, but it was home to many different Indigenous cultures. For example, the Ancestral Puebloan people (also called the Anasazi) built their homes into mountain sides or large rocks in the Southwest. Cultures living near the Mississippi River built mound (or hill) cities, such as Cahokia which stretched over six square miles. On the East Coast, cultures such as the Iroquois (The Haudenosaunee) built towns and settlements north of the Appalachian mountains.

The early Indigenous civilizations in North and South America had little contact with people from other parts of the world, but they traded with each other. In this trade system, they exchanged plants, animals, medicine, wampum (small shells), and crops like cocoa between groups of people. This changed in the 1400s, when Europeans began to search for new places to trade. They would later make their first contact with the Native peoples of North America.

NEXT: Think about and apply what you learned from the module text!