Transcript Early Societies in the Americas and Oceania

Early Societies in the Americas
and Oceania
Chapter 6
Mesoamerica: The Olmecs
• Gulf coast of Mexico
• Cultivated crops (no large animals) -> villages by 3000
BCE
• Ceremonial centers with pyramids, temples, palaces
(but not cities)
• Governance? Authoritarian (labor, tribute)
• Important features: art, widespread influence
(military and trade), calendar, ball game, human
sacrifice
• Declined: destroyed their ceremonial centers and left
Mesoamerica: The Maya
• Southern Mexico and Central America
• Agriculture (terracing for silt retention) ->
permanent villages
• Large ceremonial centers (some were cities) with
plazas, temples, pyramids
• Some became city-states – lots of war for POWs
• Chichen Itza built a loose empire c. 800 CE
The Maya (cont.)
• Began decline: invasion? Failure of water
control system? Deforestation? Natural
catastrophe? Disease? Combination?
Mayan Culture
• Social organization: ruling families, priests,
hereditary nobility, merchants, professionals and
artisans, peasants, slaves
• Calendars: solar and ritual, in 52 year cycles
• Writing: ideographic and symbolic, scribes, most
books destroyed
• Religion: Popul Vuh, fertility, polytheistic, human
sacrifice and blood-letting, ball game
Mesoamerica: Teotihuacan
• Highlands of central Mexico
• Irrigation agriculture -> population increase ->
cities -> Teotihuacan
• Pyramids, temples, markets, palaces, apartments,
workshops
• Theocracy: priests rule
• Social organization: priests, farmers, artisans,
merchants
Teotihuacan (cont.)
• Extensive trade networks
• Early: no evidence of military organization; tradebased domination
• Ball game, calendar, writing, sacrifice,
• Decline c. 650 CE when city was destroyed
Early Societies of South America
• As climate changed, agriculture developed -> pop.
-> villages and cities -> civilization
• Slow diffusion with Mesoamerica
• Coastal settlements: agriculture + seafood
• Increasing complexity: weaving, fishing nets,
metallurgy, but not politically organized
South American States
• In river valleys, with irrigation, trade networks,
forcefully unified
• No writing, but painted pottery tells a lot
• Did not consolidate the region politically
Early Societies of Oceania
• 60,000 BCE: Australia and New Guinea via canoe –
separated and differentiated
• Australians: hunter/gatherers,small nomadic groups
• N.G.: h/g at first, until SE Asians brought farming
(yams, taro, pigs, chickens) -> pop. ->specialization > permanent settlements throughout Pacific
Peoples of the Pacific Islands
• Linguistic evidence of Austronesian language
family shows migrations
• Lapita: earliest migrants – agricultural villages,
over-hunted, pottery, trade networks
• Later, networks not needed as self-sufficiency
increased -> hierarchical chiefdoms
• Migration as alternative to conflict
• Tribute based, irrigation, public ritual, semi-divine
chiefs