A New World Beginning

1. A New World Beginning By Nate,Alexa,Christian,Anthony,Shaniah,Savannah

2. The shaping of North America • 225 Million years ago, a single supercontinent contained all the worlds dry land. • 10 million year ago, nature has sculpted the base of geological shape of North America. • When the glaciers retreated about ten thousand years ago they left the north American landscape transformed as much as we know it today. • Continued shifting and folding of the earth’s crust thrust up mountain ranges forming mountains.

3. Peopling the Americans • The immigrant ancestors of the native Americans continued to trek across the Bering isthmus for some 250 centuries slowly peopling the American continents. • By the time Europeans arrived in America in 1492 an estimate of 54 million people inhabited the two American continents. • Over the centuries the native Americans split into countless tribes, evolved more than 2 thousand separate languages and developed many diverse religions.

4. The Earliest Americans • Cultivation of corn spread across the Americas from the Mexican heatland. • Corn planting reached the present day American southwest by about 1200 B.C. • Throughout the continent to the north and east of the land of the pueblos, social life was less elaborately developed. • In 1492 an estimate 4 million native Americans paddles through the whispering primeval forest and paddled across the sparking virgin waters of north America.

5. Indirect discoveries of the new world • Europe's developing sweet tooth would have momentous implication for world history. • the transportation rough lead across the Indian ocean, the Persian gulf, and the red sea of along the tortuous caravan routes of Asia or the Arabian peninsula ending at the parts of the eastern Mediterranean.

6. Europeans enter Africa • European sailors refused to sail southward along the coast of west Africa because they could beat the way home against the prevailing northland winds and south flowing currents. • Arab and Africans themselves had traded slaves for centuries before the Europeans arrived.

7. Columbus Comes up on a new world • On October 12, 1492 Columbus crew sighted an island in the Bahamas. Thus swam within the vision of Europeans. • Columbus has one of the most successful failures in history. Was at first so certain that he had skirted the rim of the indies that he called the native peoples Indians, agross geographical misnomer that stuck • the world after 1492 would never be the same, for better or worse.

8. When worlds collide • Native new world plants such as tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, and potatoes, eventually revolutionized the international economy as well as the European diet. • Columbus returned to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1493 with 17 ships that unloaded 12,000 men and cattle, also including swine and horses • The Europeans brought back new world diseases like yellow fever, and malaria.

9. The Spanish Conquistadores • Europeans realized that the American continent held rich prizes, especially the gold and silver of the advanced Indian civilization in Mexico and Peru. • Vasco Nunez Balboa, was the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, waded into the foaming waves of Panama in 1513. • In 1513 and 1521, Juan Ponce de Leon explored Florida, which he thought was an island. • Francisco Coronado discovered two natural wonders in his route: the Grand Canyon of the Colorado river and the enormous herds of buffalo.

10. The Conquest of Mexico • In 1521,Smallpox epidemic burned through the valley of Mexico. • The population of Mexico, Winnowed mercilessly by the invaders disease shrank from 20 million to 2 million in less than a century. • To this day, Mexican Civilization remains a unique blend of the old and new world. • Mexicans celebrate Columbus day as the “Dia de al Razo”-The birthdate of a new race of people.

11. The spread of the Spanish America • Majestic Cathedrals dotted the land. printing presses turned out books and scholars studied at distinguished universities including those at Mexico city and Lima, Peru, both founded in 1551, 85 years before Harvard, the first college established in the English colonies. • It took nearly half a century for the Spanish fully to reclaim New Mexico from the insurrectionary Indians. • The Spanish invaders did kill and enslave countless natives, but they also erected a colossal empire.