Sea O 2 Million Years example essay topic

Chapter 1: New World Beginnings Planetary Perspectives o 6000 years ago (I min ago in geological time) Western world began o 500 years ago European explores stumbled on American continents. (altered both old / new Africa / Asia) o United States was then born leaving imprints upon rest of world. Enormous economic output gave power. Achievements in arts, science and technology shaped the world and lives. o American Republic started from a vast and virgin continent. Native people scattered. Opportunity should never come again. No other huge fertile uninhabited areas left.

The Shaping of North America o Slowly forming planet earth was once dry land. Chunks of terrain drifted away. Opening Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Created landmasses Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and the Americas. o Appalachians came when earth's crust thrust mountains Rockies, Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and Coast Range o 10 million years ago North America was shaped anchored by a under girded landmass. Appalachians slanted away to the west into a huge mid continental basin downward to Mississippi Valley bottom. Rose towering peak of Rockies.

The land met the Pacific where the Coast Ranges rose from the sea. o 2 million years ago 2 miles of thick ice sheets. Covered parts of Europe, Asia, and Americas. Glaciers covered Canada and the U.S. in the Great Ice Age. o When glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago melting glaciers formed lakes. Filled Great Lakes. Only Great Salt Lake remained from the evaporation The First Discoverers of America o Icepack glaciers lowered the level of the sea and exposed a land bridge connecting Eurasia with North America.

Migrating herds of game brought small group of nomadic Asian hunters o Climatic warming drowned the bridge to Eurasia and opened ice free valleys across the Americas. o By the time Europeans arrived in 1492 about 72 million people inhabited the 2 American continents o Eventually split into tribes, evolved more than 2 thousand languages and developed diverse religion, cultures, and life o Incas (Peru), Mayans in Central America, Aztecs in Mexico shaped civilizations o Their advanced agricultural practices fed large population with maize lacking draft animals and simple technology such as the wheel the built elaborate cities. o Mathematicians created accurate astronomical observations, sought favor from Gods by human sacrifice, mostly captives (cutting their hearts while alive) The Earliest Americans o Agriculture, corn growing, was important to the Mexicans and South Americans 5000 B.C. hunter-gathers developed staple crop of corn... o Pueblo's constructed irrigation to water cornfields o Mound Builder and Mississippian culture sustained large settlements in the first millennium A.D. but mysteriously declined year 1300 o Maize, bean, and squash provided farming technique produced some of the highest population on the continent (Creek. Choctaw, and Cherokee people) o Iroquois Confederacy developed the political and organizational skills to sustain a robust military alliance that menaced it neighbors N.A. and Europeans o Women tended to crops, men hunted gathered fuel, and cleared fields for planting. o.