The Americas, Europe, and West Africa Before 1492

This is Unit One of History of the United States One, and it covers the three worlds that met after fourteen ninety-two: the Americas, Europe, and West Africa, each of them before that meeting. Notice what the unit does not do. It opens with two accounts of how people reached the Americas and declines to rank them, and that refusal is the course's position rather than a gap in it. By the end of this lecture you will be able to state those two accounts and say why both are held open. You will be able to compare the major societies of Mesoamerica, the Andes and North America by what each built and how each was organised. You will be able to explain why the conflict over land was built into the two sides' ideas of it before anyone negotiated. You will be able to account for why fifteenth-century Europe wanted a western sea route, naming the motives this course names. And you will be able to distinguish bondage as practised in West African societies from the hereditary, race-based slavery that replaced it.

Start with arrival, because how a course handles a contested question tells you how it will handle every later one. Two accounts, presented together, neither ranked above the other.

Here are the two accounts, set side by side as the course sets them.

USH1 0001 Two Accounts of How People Came

Indigenous origin stories hold that Native nations have always lived in the Americas. Scholars propose migration across Beringia. The course gives both and resolves neither.

Now the detail behind the migration account: when, and on what evidence.

USH1 0002 The Beringia Crossing

Thirteen thousand through seven thousand BCE, argued from shared Y chromosome genetic markers. Domesticating plants and animals around ten thousand years ago is what made permanent settlement possible.

Mesoamerica ran from north of Panama to the desert of central Mexico, and its peoples shared a great deal. What they did not share is the thing to watch.

First, what the region held in common.

USH1 0003 What Mesoamerica Shared

Polytheistic religions demanding blood sacrifice, maize domesticated by five thousand BCE, and calendars predicting eclipses and solstices. A shared culture with no overarching political system, spread by long-distance trade.

The earliest of the societies built on that foundation.

USH1 0004 The Olmec

The Olmec flourished on the Gulf Coast from about twelve hundred to four hundred BCE, carved heads up to fifty tons, and built the pyramid at La Venta. The jungle later reclaimed the cities.

Next, the largest city of the region's classic period.

USH1 0005 Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan peaked around five hundred CE with over one hundred thousand people in more than twenty-two hundred apartment compounds. Its ethnicity is debated and possibly multiethnic.

The society that completed what the Olmec had begun.

USH1 0006 The Maya

The Maya perfected the calendar and the writing, producing the only known written language of the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere. The great centres were abandoned by about nine hundred CE.

What happened to the Maya record, and what the Spanish actually met.

USH1 0007 Burning the Codices

Bishop Diego de Landa burned the folding codices in fifteen sixty-two, fearing converts had reverted. Only a few survived. By the fifteen twenties there was little organised Maya resistance to meet.

From thirteen twenty-five the Aztec built on an island in Lake Texcoco. Hold the scale in mind, because the comparison the course draws is with Europe.

The city itself, and how large it had grown by the Spanish arrival.

USH1 0008 Tenochtitlán

Over two hundred thousand people by fifteen nineteen — the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, and likely larger than any in Europe. A soldier who saw it called it like enchantments.

How the city was arranged, and who built the parts that held it together.

USH1 0009 The Aztec City's Order

Neighbourhoods by occupation, trash collection, two aqueducts, daily bathing, and floating gardens still used at Xochimilco. The three causeways were built by enslaved people taken from subjugated neighbouring tribes.

The practice the course states plainly, with the purpose its practitioners gave.

USH1 0010 Aztec Sacrifice

Daily human sacrifice by warrior-nobles and priests, to sustain the sun's journey, feed the gods and stimulate agricultural production. Ten years before the Spanish came, Moctezuma received omens.

South, in the Andes, a different organising achievement: roads, and a system for dividing what the land produced.

The road system first, and one thing the Inca did not use.

USH1 0011 The Inca Road System

About twenty-five hundred miles from modern Colombia to Chile, with cities at fourteen thousand feet and runners in continuous relays. Stepped roads suited steep slopes, and the Inca did not use axle-mounted wheels.

Now what happened to the harvest, and how this contrasts with the north.

USH1 0012 The Inca Thirds

Crops divided in thirds: peasants, ruler, and a welfare system for those unable to work. Human sacrifice was rare compared with the Maya and Aztec.

North of Mesoamerica, four more societies — and the course's point about them is chronological as much as cultural.

The south-west first, and what the names themselves record.

USH1 0013 The Pueblo Peoples

Pueblo is Spanish for town. Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi were the three groups, with Hohokam canals making desert agriculture possible. Anasazi means ancient enemy or ancient ones.

The centre those settlements were connected to, and what became of it.

USH1 0014 Chaco Canyon

Roads of about one hundred eighty miles ran to Chaco Canyon, the Pueblo world's administrative, religious and cultural centre by ten fifty CE. A century later the cities were abandoned, probably to drought.

East now, to a trade network and the largest settlement north of Mexico.

USH1 0015 Hopewell and Cahokia

Hopewell traded by waterway from Canada to Louisiana, negotiated in many languages. Cahokia held over ten thousand residents across five square miles, with one hundred twenty earthen mounds.

And the peoples European explorers actually encountered on the eastern seaboard.

USH1 0016 The Eastern Woodlands

Small autonomous clans, not the settled civilisations explorers expected, and most major eastern societies matriarchal. The communities they met had already been ravaged by diseases the Spanish transmitted.

That last line points at the entry this whole unit turns on. Two sides, two ideas of what land is.

Here is the conflict stated in its simplest form.

USH1 0017 Two Ideas of Land

Tribes claimed hunting-ground rights by geographical landmarks and had no general concept of private ownership. Europeans saw land as a source of wealth. The conflict was built in before any negotiation began.

Now cross the Atlantic and go back. Four entries on the Europe that would send the ships: how it was organised, what held authority, what nearly destroyed it, and where its southern frontier lay.

The structure of medieval society, and the proportion of people inside it.

USH1 0018 Europe's Middle Ages

Rome's fall in four seventy-six to the late fourteenth century. Lords owned the land, knights served militarily, and serfs were about sixty percent of western Europe's population — technically free, effectively bound.

Where authority sat, and the mechanism that made it hold.

USH1 0019 The Church's Power

The Great Schism of ten fifty-four left the western branch under the Pope. Excommunication was feared by monarchs, and illiterate serfs depended on literate priests to read scripture.

Then the catastrophe, and what the course says followed it.

USH1 0020 The Black Death

A rat-borne disease and an airborne strain together killed about one third of Europe's population in the thirteen forties. A high birth rate and bountiful harvests followed, and by fourteen fifty Europe was rejuvenated.

And the frontier that shaped Spanish and Portuguese motive.

USH1 0021 Islam, Tours, and the Reconquista

Islam crossed into Spain in seven eleven and was halted at Tours in seven thirty-two. Muslims kept much of Spain until the Reconquista began.

With that behind it, Europe wanted something specific. This is the longest entry in the unit, and it names the motives explicitly.

The route problem, the motives, and a caution about who gets credit.

USH1 0022 Why Europe Wanted a New Route

The Silk Road was costly, slow and unprofitable, so Europe wanted a direct water route east. The motives were God, glory and gold. And Leif Ericson reached Canada five hundred years earlier without ushering in the age of exploration.

Finally the man himself, and the thing he actually got wrong.

USH1 0023 Columbus and the Size of the Earth

Columbus lobbied six years after Genoa and Venice refused him. Most educated people knew the earth was round; Eratosthenes had calculated its circumference nearly accurately. Columbus greatly underestimated it.

The third world in this unit. West Africa before the Atlantic trade — its geography, the faith that arrived, and the empires that rose on trade.

The land first, and where its people actually lived.

USH1 0024 West Africa Before the Trade

From modern Mauritania to the Congo, rainforest at the equator and savannas either side, five rivers connecting coast to interior. Most people lived inland, with minimal maritime experience.

What Islam brought, and how deeply it actually reached.

USH1 0025 Islam and the West African Empires

A unifying faith and a political and legal structure, with Muslims controlling most trade by nine hundred CE. Many elites converted while the majority kept tribal animistic practices.

The first two of the three great empires.

USH1 0026 Ghana and Mali

Ghana's Soninke farmers grew wealthy by seven fifty CE taxing passing trade, its king controlling the gold supply and so the price. By twelve hundred CE Mali replaced Ghana under Sundiata Keita.

And the ruler whose generosity moved prices in other people's cities.

USH1 0027 Mansa Musa and Songhay

Mansa Musa gave away so much gold on pilgrimage to Mecca that he caused serious price inflation along his route. Timbuktu became a leading Islamic centre for education and commerce.

One entry left, and it carries the unit's sharpest warning. It is about what bondage meant in these societies, and what came after.

The distinction the chapter turns on, and the caution attached to it.

USH1 0028 How African Bondage Differed, and What Replaced It

In African empires permanent inherited slavery was unknown, and children of the bound were usually free and intermarried with their captors. In the English colonies slavery became permanent and hereditary, joined to racial identification.

Look back at what you can now do. You can state the two accounts of how people reached the Americas, and say why this course holds both open rather than choosing. You can compare the societies that followed — Mesoamerican culture without a common government, an Aztec capital larger than any city in Europe, Inca roads and thirds, and four northern societies already changing before any European saw them. You can explain why land was the built-in conflict: rights claimed by landmark against land owned as wealth. You can account for why Europe sailed west, and name the motives as God, glory and gold. And you can distinguish bondage in West African societies, where children of the bound were usually free, from the hereditary and race-based institution that replaced it.