ROOTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (PRE-HISTORY TO 1500)

Essential Question: How and when did people get here? A Navajo answer: Long ago, before being rejected by three former worlds owing to quarreling, the first people came up into this world but found the Pueblo people already here!

When did people first reach the land we now call the United States?

How did they get there?

What career fields might be involved in developing a hypothesis?

How do you know if a reference source is correct when researching questions?

In Archeology, Absence of Evidence is NOT Evidence of Absence People may have come by boat rather than on foot. (Coastal Route Theory) People from many places may have washed up in the Americas. Clovis points haven’t been found in Siberia. A comet may have hit North America around 13,000 BCE, causing a firestorm and transforming human life. Humans may have spread throughout the hemisphere before 13,000 BCE, including throughout Amazonia

What is cultural diffusion?

Forms of Bias: Presentism and Chronological Ethnocentrism What is primitive? What is civilized?

In what ways could Native societies be superior to modern societies?

What do you already know about the geography of the Americas?

When should we begin the history of the United States? 1492? The Land Bridge in the Bering Strait? Europe? Africa? The Middle East? Asia? The Ocean?

THE OCEAN WORLD

THE “ISLAND” WORLD

GOING GLOBAL

PEOPLE FROM THE SEA

ATLANTIC CREOLES

THE PLANTATION COMPLEX