yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Native American societies before contact | Period 1: 1491-1607 | AP US History | Khan Academy


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Often when we think about the beginning of American history, we think 1776 with the Declaration of Independence or maybe 1492 when Columbus arrived in the Americas. But the history of America really begins about 15,000 years ago when people first arrived in the Americas. In this video, I want to provide a very brief overview of native societies before contact to give you an idea of just how diverse and complex these societies were as Native groups adapted to and interacted with their environments.

Now, there's recently been a scholarly debate about how people first arrived. We know that maybe 12,000 years ago during an Ice Age, the sea level was lower, and so a spit of land in between the Americas and Asia was exposed over which people may have traveled. But recent archaeological evidence suggests that people were perhaps already in the Americas at the time of this Ice Age, so it's possible that they may have come earlier in boats.

Now, however it was that they arrived, they spread north and south and east throughout the Americas so that by the time that Europeans arrived in the late 1400s, there were perhaps 50 million people—that's kind of a mid-range number for the estimates that historians have made living in the Americas, and of those, four to six million were living in North America.

So how did these societies develop? Well, a really big moment was around 5000 BCE when people in Mexico domesticated corn, maize as it's also known, and domesticating maize meant that people who had originally been hunters and gatherers, following herds of animals, could partake in settled agriculture. So they could develop villages, complex societies. This isn't to say that they stopped hunting or gathering, but they began staying in one place.

Let's zoom in a little bit and take a look at some of the major societies in these regions. Native American societies developed around their natural environments, using the resources that were available to them. For example, the Southwest, Plains, and Great Basin were quite dry, a lot of desert, and so societies in these regions adapted to the dry climate in several ways.

For example, Native American groups that lived on the Great Plains continued their hunting-gathering way of life, hunting bison and following the herds of animals in teepees—sure, dwellings that were easy to set up and then take down. People in the southwest, like the Ancestral Pueblo people, dealt with this dry environment by creating very complex irrigation projects so that they could water their maize crops using what little moisture there was.

The Pueblo winds lived in large cave complexes as agriculture allowed them to grow their population. In the northwest, fishing in the Pacific Ocean gave Native Americans a plentiful source of food, while farming allowed the Mississippian peoples to develop large settlements like Cahokia, near modern-day Saint Louis, which at its peak may have had as many as 25,000 to 40,000 residents.

The Mississippians and other East Coast native peoples relied a lot on what's known as three sister farming, in which people would plant corn, beans, and squash together, which was mutually beneficial to all three plants, as the corn served as a trellis for the beans, and the squash protected the root system of the corn. All three together create a very nutritious diet, which allowed for a relatively high population density on the East Coast.

So by the time that Europeans began to arrive in the late 1400s and 1500s, native societies had been evolving for over 14,000 years. But the introduction of European people, pathogens, plants, and animals would introduce an unprecedented amount of change in the Americas.

More Articles

View All
Khan Academy Ed Talks with Begoña Vila, PhD - Thursday October 13
Hello and welcome to Ed Talks with Khan Academy. I’m Kristen Deserva, the Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy, and today I’m excited to welcome Dr. Begonia Villa, who is an astrophysicist and the lead systems engineer for two of the instruments on the …
The Illegal and Secretive World of Chameleon Ranching | National Geographic
Chameleons have a lot of crazy things going on and are pretty unique in the lizard world. They have these independently rotating googly eyes, this prehensile tail which is basically a monkey tail they can use like a fifth limb, and spring-loaded tongs tha…
No More Gas | The Worst Energy Crisis In 40 Years
The U.S. is facing a diesel shortage. The price of diesel has been soaring for months. In 25 days from now, there will be no more diesel, up 27 and 28 percent. It’s a very, very high bill. “What’s up guys, it’s Graham here.” So, in 1973, the United State…
Dog Duty Inspiration | Big Fish, Texas
Yeah, it’s uh, Nick. Ores is Tommy or Arthur around? Pops brought Jenny and dropped her. Brought the fish house with me, ‘cause ultimately knows that I’m going to take care of her. I’m the only responsible one down there. She just sits there on a desk an…
Languages Are Dying: Here’s Why We Should Be Worried
First words, they’re special regardless of the language you speak or the sounds that you’re able to make. First words can be many different things. For parents, they can be the realization of a dream or the start of a new chapter for the next great pionee…
Lawless Longliners | Lawless Oceans
KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: At this stage, I’d love to board a working Taiwanese longliner to see what they make of the murder videos. But they rarely come into Port Victoria, and they’re not exactly keen to talk. Instead, I’ve been invited onto a local longlin…