Social Sciences and History / Unit 1 SSH 0002 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Americas Before 1492
Captions available
The idea
Complex societies rose and fell in the Americas long before Columbus. Pueblo peoples and the city of Cahokia had peaked; the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán was at its height in fourteen ninety-two.
In practice
The Inca linked one of history's largest empires with roads and armies, without the wheel.
Where people slip
Europeans met very different peoples depending on where they landed. There was no single native America.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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