- Jan 2016
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www.americanyawp.com www.americanyawp.com
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Iberian sailors to sail west into the open sea before cutting back east to Africa.
Was this to pick up more slaves?
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Vasco de Gama leapfrogged his way around the coasts of Africa to reach India and lucrative Asian markets.
Would he be considered the first to discover these new lands?
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Portugal invested heavily in exploration
This must have been a good investment since they had the potential to discover a lot of new things.
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Portuguese sailors innovated the astrolabe, a tool to calculate latitude
This is useful even today since we use longitude and latitude.
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With new power, these new nations–and their newly empowered monarchs–yearned to access the wealth of Asia.
Why wasn't what they had more than enough?
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adopted Greek, Roman, and Muslim knowledge
Seems really diverse
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the Crusades linked Europe with the wealth, power, and knowledge of Asia.
It's always curiosity that killed the cat. The hunger to keep gaining more didn't seem to end once they received wealth, power and knowledge of Asia.
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I think they had bad luck in settling in a wrong place.
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Native Americans spoke hundreds of languages and had adapted their lives to the hemisphere’s many climates
that is really impressive!
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Women often chose their husbands, and divorce often was a relatively simple and straightforward process.
Women seem powerful in the Native American society, what made the Europeans not do the same for their women?
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family and clan identity proceeded along the female line, through mothers and daughters, rather than fathers and sons.
This was one of the biggest social differences between the Native Americans and the Europeans, and even from us today.
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I would have to say I highly agree of this idea because the land was never there to own but provided humans the sanctuary for shelter and it started to be used by the Europeans who took advantage of it
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felt a personal ownership of tools, weapons, or other items that were actively used.
I like how they kept objects as real objects and didn't turn people as objects.
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Spiritual practices, beliefs on property, and kinship networks differed markedly from Europeans. Most Native Americans did not neatly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Spiritual power permeated their world and was both tangible and accessible. It could be appealed to and harnessed.
I find this very interesting because one- they mixed the natural and supernatural with one another and two- they would be easily able to access the supernatural or spirit world.
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How long would it take to prepare for these parties?
Were the art pieces made for other reasons besides these parties?
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This is interesting to see how they showed their wealth off in this form.
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overpopulation
Does this overpopulation go back to when there was the big bang?
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Pueblo Bonito
Was this named after anyone?
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mounting warfare, or internal political tensions led to the collapse of the once mighty city.
Where there is power involved, there's always the idea of having it all by someone. Were there too many people with that mindset that led to the collapse?
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Cahokia became a key trading center with networks stretching from the Great Lakes to the American Southeast
What was traded here?
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population grew almost 500 percent
What caused the population to grow so much in such time frame?
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“big bang” around the year 1050 that included “a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political, social, and ideological.”
What caused this "big bang" to occur?
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Slaves were defined in Native American culture not as property, but rather as people lacking kinship
This mentality really sets them apart from the European mentality because the European mentality saw slaves as property and did not for most of the time consider their slaves as equal humans.
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set priests and elites above the general population of craftsmen, agricultural workers, and slaves.
This answered my question above on how the castes had a hierarchical.
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Elites maintained power through kinship, gift-giving, and by controlled access to the spiritual world.
The idea of a higher being has always been there. I wonder what has caused them, even in the earliest times to have this idea?
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Eastern woodland peoples wove plant fibers, while others on the plains wove buffalo hair, and in the Pacific Northwest goat hair, into soft textiles. Metalworkers produced practical tools like fishhooks or weapons, and artists made decorative jewelry
It seems as though each region had their own style, which was unique to them. That's kind of how things are now as well.
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while gold and silver could be found further south.
Were these more available at the time since gold and silver didn't have a value on it?
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It's interesting to know that even without written languages there was still other forms of written communication.
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Religious leaders, skilled soldiers, and artists
Did these castes play a role in society as well as to who was considered "greater"?
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Farmers could produce more food than hunters
This makes sense because farmers just take care of the land as their crops grow and would have food to last for longer periods of time, whereas hunters would have to search for food and would only be fed for a few times if they were lucky.
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but for some, it also may have accompanied a decline in health.
Could the use of the hand tools and manual labor have anything to with this?
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hand-tools enabled effective and sustainable farming.
This answers my previous question. Interesting point
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using hand tools rather than European-style plows
If plows were available, what made them want to do it with hand tools?
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farmers would simply move to another field and allow the land to recover and the forest to regrow
This seems like a good idea to be reusing the land and not destroying it by using it only once or twice.
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three crops in particular–corn, beans, and squash, the so-called “three sisters”
Were there any other plants or crops?
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The Olmecs grew maize (corn), built monumental stone structures, and established long-distance trade routes that extended across the region and eventually the hemisphere.
Where did the Olmecs learn to grow maize and build the stone structures; was it something that came natural to them?
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Agriculture arose sometime between nine- and five-thousand years ago,
What about the agriculture that was mentioned earlier?
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Men typically hunted and women typically gathered and prepared wild foods.
Going back to these earliest times, socially gender roles were made clear by the tasks
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Paleo-Indian groups spoke hundreds of languages and adopted distinct cultural practices.
Where did they learn these languages if they were the first of their kind there?
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Woodland groups populated the Atlantic coast and later practiced agriculture to supplement rich hunting and fishing
How was their agriculture different from the agriculture we had later on?
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Whether because of overhunting, climate change, or a combination of the two, the megafauna population collapsed and mastodons, horses, and other large mammals disappeared
Oh wow so they did hunt those mammals.
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Hunters across the hemisphere preyed on plentiful game and natural foods and the population boomed.
Would this be where the natural selection theory comes into play? Also, did they eat the megafaunas and the other enormous mammals?
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the land bridge closed and severed the two hemispheres
If we had a land bridge today, how would things be different? Can we ever get a land bridge back again?
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freed them to enter the heart of North America
Answering my question from earlier, it seems as thought they traveled from Asia to North America
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mastodons
if mastodons were similar to wooly mammoths, would that make megafaunas more similar to an animal thats described as a dinosaur/mammoth?
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megafauna
Were megafauna's similar to wooly mammoths?
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they traveled in small bands
Would they travel from Asia to North America or the other way around?
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exposed a land bridge between Asia and North America across the Bering Strait.
I remember hearing about this earlier. Is it true people could walk across this land bride to migrate?
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tell of a bald eagle that formed the first man out of clay and the first woman out of a feather
The idea of shaping man from clay connects to how the first Americans shaped America today. The first Americans can be considered the clay for what America is today.
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American history begins with them, the first Americans.
I find this interesting that the first Americans are the ones who brought upon the rights and changes to shape America for what it is today.
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