Chapter 1

225 million years ago: Pangaea initiated its fragmentation, marking a significant geological event.
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10 million years ago: The formation of the Canadian Shield shaped the landscape of North America through natural processes.
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2 million years ago: The epoch of the Great Ice Age began, bringing substantial glaciations and climatic changes to the planet.
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Around 35,000 years ago: During the peak of the Ice Age, glaciers formed, leading to a substantial drop in sea levels. This created an isthmus connecting Asia and North America, known as the Bering Isthmus, which facilitated human migration into North America.
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Around 10,000 years ago: As the ice gradually receded and melted, sea levels rose once more, submerging the Bering Isthmus and reshaping the geography of the region.

The Great Ice Age had a significant impact on North America's geological history and played a role in the continent's human history.

Evidence suggests that early human migration to the Americas was primarily through a land bridge between Eurasia and North America, exposed during the Ice Age.

Nomadic Asian hunters crossed the Bering isthmus over the land bridge and gradually populated the American continents over a period of 250 centuries.

The melting of glaciers and rising sea levels closed off further immigration to the Americas about 10,000 years ago, leaving the early inhabitants isolated for millennia.

Over time, these early Americans migrated and evolved into numerous tribes with diverse cultures, languages, and religions, totaling around 54 million people by 1492.

Advanced civilizations such as the Incas in Peru, Mayans in Central America, and the Aztecs in Mexico developed in the Americas, displaying sophisticated agricultural practices, trade networks, and astronomical observations.

The development of agriculture, particularly the innovative three-sister farming technique—utilizing maize, beans, and squash—became the cornerstone of Native American civilizations in Mexico and South America, fostering the growth of complex nation-states like the Aztecs and Incas.

The ancient city of Cahokia, situated near modern-day East St. Louis, once thrived as a Mississippian settlement, housing as many as twenty-five thousand inhabitants, supported by the cultivation of maize and other high-yielding crops.

Three-sister farming, practiced by the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples in the southeastern Atlantic seaboard region of North America around A.D. 1000, yielded rich diets and enabled high population densities.

Inspired by the legendary leader Hiawatha, the Iroquois Confederacy emerged as a formidable political and military alliance in the northeastern woodlands during the sixteenth century, demonstrating organizational skills comparable to those of great nation-states like Mexico and Peru.

Native American societies often exhibited matrilineal cultures, where power and possessions were passed down through the female line, granting women substantial authority in settled agricultural communities.

While the Native Americans respected the natural world and endowed nature with spiritual significance, they occasionally used controlled forest fires to enhance hunting habitats, contributing to the park-like appearance of the eastern woodlands that intrigued early European explorers.

Prior to European arrival in 1492, the Native American population was relatively small, with no more than four million people spread thinly across the vast expanse of North America, experiencing minimal impact on the land compared to the transformative changes soon to come with the Europeans' arrival.

The Europeans, like the Native Americans, were initially unaware of the existence of the Americas. Norse seafarers discovered Vinland in present-day Newfoundland around A.D. 1000, but the lack of strong nation-states supporting exploration led to the abandonment of their settlements.

In the following centuries, ambitious Europeans, driven by a desire for conquest or trade, sought contact with distant lands, leading to the accidental discovery of the New World while in pursuit of a route to Asia for valuable goods and luxuries.

The Christian crusaders, despite not achieving their military goals in the Holy Land, developed a taste for the exotic delights of Asia, such as silk, spices, and perfumes, which sparked a demand for these goods in Europe.

The luxuries of the East were expensive to transport over vast distances, making them highly costly for European merchants and consumers, prompting a search for more affordable trade routes and alternate sources of supply.

The desire to access the riches of Asia and the search for new trade routes would have significant implications for world history, eventually leading to the European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

Marco Polo's tales of his journey to China in the late 13th century ignited European desires for a cheaper route to the riches of the East, stimulating exploration.

Portuguese mariners developed the caravel, a ship that could sail more closely into the wind, and discovered a new route to return to Europe, which opened up possibilities for further exploration down the West African coast.

Portuguese traders established trading posts along the African shore to purchase gold and slaves, contributing to the early development of the transatlantic slave trade.

The Portuguese voyages down the African coast led to the origins of the modern plantation system, based on large-scale commercial agriculture and the exploitation of slave labor.

The quest for a water route to Asia continued, with Bartholomeu Días rounding the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, and Vasco da Gama reaching India in 1498.

Spain, united through the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, sought to outstrip Portuguese rivals in tapping the wealth of the Indies, leading to further westward exploration.

The thirst for goods from distant lands beyond the Mediterranean, coupled with the demand for cheap slave labor in plantation agriculture, set the stage for a monumental shift in history.

With Portugal's successful ocean voyages and Spain's emergence as a powerful national state, the ambition for exploration, conquest, and colonization grew.

Christopher Columbus, aided by advances in knowledge and technology, embarked on a daring westward journey and stumbled upon the New World in 1492, transforming the global economic system.

Native New World plants like tobacco, maize, and potatoes revolutionized the global economy and diets, while introduced Old World crops and animals shaped the Americas' landscape and cultures.

Unintentionally, Europeans brought deadly diseases like smallpox, yellow fever, and malaria, devastating the Native American populations with a demographic catastrophe.

The exchange of germs between the two worlds caused a tragic loss of life for Native Americans, leading to the extinction of entire cultures and ancient ways of life.

Spain emerged as a dominant force in exploration and colonization in the 1500s.

The Spanish conquerors came to the Americas seeking gold, glory, and the opportunity to serve God.

The Spanish government allowed colonists to enslave Native Americans as long as they promised to convert them to Christianity.

The Caribbean islands served as staging grounds for the Spanish invasion of the mainland Americas.

The Spanish arrived in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, with the intention of plundering its wealth.

The Spanish rule led to a sharp decline in the Native American population in Mexico, from 20 million to 2 million in less than a century.

The influx of precious metals from South America helped to boost the European economy.

Some of the conquistadors married Native American women and had children. These offspring, known as mestizos, formed a cultural and biological bridge between Europe and the Americas.

The Spanish built a fortress at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 to protect the sea-lanes to the Caribbean.

In 1680, the natives of New Mexico launched a rebellion against the Spanish, known as Pope's Rebellion. They burned down churches and killed priests, and rebuilt a kiva on the ruins of the Spanish plaza at Santa Fe.

The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World led to the birth of the "Black Legend," a false concept that stated that the conquerors just tortured and killed the Indians, stole their gold, infected them with smallpox, and left little but misery behind.