1. American civilizations before “encounter” or “conquest”
The Americas
American civilizations before “encounter” or “conquest”

2. Early Settlements 40,000 to 10,000 BCE
The Bering Land Bridge (Ice Age)
Diet: pumpkin, corn, grain, etc.
A diverse climate: hunting and farming, depending on climate.
Social structures, alliances, and warfare
Population
Common characteristics: elders, shaman, priests- warriors- alliances and inter-tribal warfare

3. Population
90 million to 120 million people in Americas before the Europeans
30 million a piece for the Aztecs and Incas

5. Norte Chico Peru, outside of Lima 3,000 BCE
America’s first urban center
Consisted of at least 25 cities
Temple in Huaricanga (built between 3200 and 2500 BCE) around size of the 2nd Pyramid at Giza
Irrigation
Civilization may have been abandoned for areas that were easier to farm.

6. Norte Chico

7. Chavin 900 BCE to 500 BCE-Peru Lack of written language
Artisans: ceramics and weavings
Agriculture and territorial expansion
Polytheistic: jaguar deity
Mastered cultivation of corn
Used rivers to expand up into Mountains

8. Chavin

9. Nazca 300BCE-600CE and Moche 0-600CE Chile/ Bolivia/ Peru
Nazca took over from Chavin
Nazcas added more color to ceramics and textiles
Examples of brain surgery! % success rate
Put board on head of nobles to elongate their forhead
Nasca Lines: only visible from air
Probably religious w/ depiction of animals
Rudimentary hot air balloon?
Chile: Atacama Desert: mummified bodies

10. Nazca Lines

11. Nazca Brain Surgery/ Skulls

12. Olmec Gulf of Mexico (1500 BCE to 200 BCE)
“Mother Culture” of Mesoamerica
Gulf coast community
Calendar system
Cities for nobles/ Priests
Writing system: hieroglyphics and stone carving
Colossal heads

13. Olmec Colossal Heads

14. Teotihuacan 200BCE- 700 CE (contemporaneous with Roman Empire)
Pyramid of the Sun ( 3rd largest pyramid in the world)
Famous for monumental architecture
City of Teotihuacan= largest city in the Americas
Nuhuatl- name: true name is unknown
Terraced farming
Temples of Sun, Moon, and Quetzalcoatl

15. Teotihuacan

16. Mayas

17. Incas

18. Incans Cuzco- southern Peru
Pachakuti – centralized the state, Mathematics- 4 quarters of city, 10,000people each
Forced labor
Highways
War like culture
Quipu- record keeping

19. Capacocha
Beautiful beyond exaggeration," is how one Spanish chronicler described Tanta Carhua. Carhua was a 10-year old Inca child whose father offered her to the Inca Emperor as a Capacocha sacrifice. She was taken by priests to Cuzco where she met the Inca Emperor, and on her return journey to the mountain where she would be sacrificed the procession passed through her home village. According to the legends, Tanta Carhua told the village: "You can finish with me now because I could not be more honoured than by the feasts which they celebrated for me in Cuzco."
Tanta Carhua was then taken to a high Andean mountain, placed in a shaft-tomb and walled in alive. Chicha, a maize alcohol, was fed to her both before and after her death. And in death, this beautiful ten-year old child became a goddess, speaking to her people as an oracle from the mountain, which was reconsecrated in her name.

20. Tanta Carhua

21. Aztecs