The Growth of Civilization
The South The most elaborate early civilizations emerged in South and Central America and in Mexico. In Peru, the Incas created the largest empire in the Americas, stretching almost 2,000 miles along western South America. The Incas developed a complex administrative state, an irrigation system, and a large network of paved roads that welded together the populations of many tribes under a single government.
Organized societies emerged around 10,000 b.c. in Mesoamerica, a region comprising Mexico and much of Central America. The Olmec people, whose roots trace back to between 1600 and 1500 b.c., were the first complex society in the region. A more sophis- ticated culture grew up in parts of Central America and in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, in an area known as Maya. Mayan civilization, which stretched back to 1800 b.c. and was at its most powerful about a.d. 300, developed a written language, a numerical system similar to the Arabic numeral system, an accurate calendar, an advanced agricultural sys- tem, and important trade routes into other areas of the continents.
Gradually, the societies of the Maya region were superseded by other Mesoamerican tribes, who have become known collectively (and somewhat inaccurately) as the Aztecs. They called themselves Mexica. In about a.d. 1325, the Mexicas built the city of Tenochtitlán on a large island in a lake in central Mexico, the site of present-day Mexico City. With a population as high as 100,000 by 1500, Tenochtitlán featured large and impressive public buildings, schools that all male children attended, an organized military, a medical system, and a slave workforce drawn from conquered tribes. It was a city built over water and featuring a sophisticated water navigation system, much like Venice, Italy, but larger. The Mexicas gradually established their dominance over almost all of central Mexico.
The Mesoamerican civilizations were for many centuries the center of civilized life in North and Central America—the hub of culture and trade.
The Civilizations of the North The peoples north of Mexico developed less elaborate but still substantial civilizations. Inhabitants of the northern regions of the continent subsisted on combinations of hunting, gathering, and fishing. They included the Inuit of the Arctic Circle, who fished and hunted seals; big-game hunters of the northern forests, who led nomadic lives based on the pursuit of moose and caribou; tribes of the Pacific Northwest, whose principal occupation was salmon fishing and who created substantial permanent settlements along the coast; and a group of tribes spread through relatively arid regions of the Far West, who developed suc- cessful communities based on fishing, hunting small game, and gathering edible plants.
Other societies in North America were agricultural. Among the most developed were those in the Southwest. Between a.d. 900 and 1150, the ancient Pueblo people developed a thriving center of culture and commerce in Chaco Canyon, in modern-day northwestern New Mexico. At its apex, Chaco Canyon boasted a population of 15,000, 12 towns, and 200 villages—one of the largest of which was Pueblo Bonita. Composed of sandstone, timber, and adobe, it soared five stories high and had 600 rooms. There would not be another structure of this size in North America until the 1880s. At roughly the same period, the Hopis lived in small masonry villages, farmed corn, and developed an elaborate irrigation system, ceremonial culture, and trade network stretching across what is now Arizona. And the Zunis, based in the desert areas of present-day Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, built large stone and adobe villages centered on a plaza, created elaborate pottery, and farmed corn and other grains.
THE COLLISION OF CULTURES • 5
The eastern third of what is now the United States—much of it covered with forests and inhabited by the Woodland Indians—had the greatest food resources of any area of the continent. Most of the many tribes of the region engaged in farming, hunting, gathering, and fishing simultaneously. In the South there were permanent settlements and large trading networks based on the corn, legumes, and squash grown in the rich lands of the Mississippi River valley. Cahokia, a trading center located near present-day St. Louis, had a population of 40,000 at its peak in a.d.1200. Residents traded not only their crops but also hand tools and pottery they made. Occupying six square miles, Cahokia was the larg- est and most populous urban center north of Tenochtitlán and would remain so until Philadelphia in 1780.