welcome to the first lecture of ap us history we are going to start with the very first topic in the course and exam description which is contextualizing period one period one runs from 1491 to 1607 and we're going to talk about everything that happened up until european contact all the way through the very first english settlements to jamestown in 1607. now what the college board wants us to know by the end of this topic is to be able to explain the context for european encounters in the americas from 1491 to 1607. so let's get to it the very first key concept 1.1 says as native populations migrated and settled across the vast x-mans of north america over time they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments the very first part of this is the migration and the peopling of the americas the way they got to the american continent was through the bering land bridge which opened up about 35 000 years ago this ice age lowered the sea level which revealed some land connecting the asian and north american continent people were able to continue that migration for the next 25 000 years and as you can see on this map there was also a possible sea route that aided that migration all of this would have continued to the very southern tip of south america at tierra del fuego as the population continued to come from asia into north america they splintered off and they created different cultures and so by the end of the migration you had thousands of different cultural and linguistic groups across north and south america anthropologists estimate that about 54 million people inhabited north and south america before columbus stumbled upon the bahamas in 1492. though they all came from the very same ancestry these migrants across the bering land bridge created a diverse amount of groups as they splintered off now the next key concept is 1.1 roman numeral 1 and it says different native societies adapted to and transformed their environments through innovations and agriculture resource use and social structure the way in which they adapted to their environments and the geographies in which they settled really helped form the differences in all of the different groups so here you see just north america all the different large language and cultural groups across what is now the united states and even within these groups you would have many differences so within a tribe there are bands in those bands there are different kinship groups and even linguistic differences amongst some of the larger tribes one of the innovations that they came up with was agriculture now most of the native societies in north america had some form of agriculture sometimes they would supplement the agriculture with hunting some might be migratory so they would plant food in some areas and then migrate let the soil regain its nutrients and then come back in a different season or in a different year three sisters farming was the three crops that were the most important they were corn squash and beans as you can see from the picture here they all kind of grew together in the same area the squash would grow closer to the ground the corn would grow and stalk and then you would also have vines of beans dangling from the corn stalks three sisters farming is not just important because it's how people fed themselves but the food that the three sisters farming grew the corn the squash and the beans were also very nutritious foods another american crop that was new to europeans was the potato found in south america potatoes are very nutritious and they are high in calories so you don't need to eat that many of them in order to get full and have energy that you need to go about your day's support to work and whenever these crops get shared with the europeans it's going to have a huge effect on european populations but this is how native societies were able to sustain themselves those that practice agriculture would plant some combination of corn squash beans and even potatoes now we're going to see that some native populations went even further in their use of agriculture to the point that they were changing their environment in order to be able to continue to feed more and more people here are three different civilizations that were in mesoamerica south america and central america at the very top is a city or model of the city of denoteziplan this was the capital city of the aztecs which was located in central mexico in modern day mexico city they changed the environment by leveling out a marshy land in the middle of a lake and that's where they built their capital because they were in the middle of a lake they were able to build irrigation channels that would continue to provide water for their crops on the bottom left you see the city of machu picchu it was up in the mountains so living in the mountain is going to require a lot of environmental modification in order to adapt for example they had to implement terrorist farming as a way to adopt to the mountainous terrain on the bottom right is the mayan capital city of tikal anytime in which civilizations are building these very heavy temples and stone structures that means that they're going to be sedentary and be there for a long time no one builds a huge temple and then walks away and migrates to another area that's very uncommon because you're putting a lot of effort into it in order to feed these sedentary populations there has to be a lot of food so the building was always coupled with some form of infrastructure project that allowed these civilizations to feed their people the next key concept says contact among european natives and africans resulted in the colombian exchange and significant social cultural and political changes on both sides of the atlantic ocean so the colombian exchange connected europe africa and north and south america the things that were being traded or exchanged through this colombian exchange included crops diseases livestocks and coerce one of the most important things that was being brought from the old world that's europe and africa to north america new world where diseases so you see the list here smallpox influenza typhus measles malaria diphtheria whooping cough these were all diseases that the people that were living in the new world had no immunities for which meant that once they came into contact with that disease and they got sick it was a high chance that not only were they going to die but the disease was going to spread further which would lead to a decimation of the new world population so those estimated 54 million people that were living before 1492 in that territory are going to go down to a very small fraction there were some crops that are coming from the old world going into the new world one of the most important ones that's going from the old world to the new world is sugarcane because sugarcane is a luxury item in europe at this time it costs a lot of money because it's it's hard to acquire it only grows in certain areas and then once you're able to grow it it takes a lot of money a lot of effort a lot of labor to extract the actual sugar morsels from the sugar cane because the caribbean had the very warm tropical climate that was conducive to growing a lot of sugarcane that was something that was established all through the caribbean and then later through south america the political changes that were brought about by the colombian exchange were some regime changes in the americas the first one was the aztec empire being toppled by the spanish conquistadors in this picture and on the top left you see hernan cortez the leader of the conquistadors that had been given permission by the spanish crown to go out and conquer bring back goods bring back gold and claim any new territory or land for the king and queen of spain at first irvan cortes had a difficult time in trying to conquer the aztec empire because they had their capital city at the center of a lake it was difficult to access and even if the spanish tried to siege the city the city was self-sufficient they had food that they could continue to grow within the city walls cortes had to acquire the help of rival native groups and rivals of the aztecs a translator named malinche helped cortes navigate through these alliances and initially introduced cortes de moctezuma moktasuma the leader of the aztecs mistakenly thought that cortes arrival had been the fulfillment of an aztec prophecy he believed that the spanish marked the coming of the serpent god getsaid the other large empire that fell during this time was the incan empire that attack was led by francisco pisarro the last incan leader is here on the top right his name is he's eventually killed by conquistadors but before he is killed he converts to catholicism because when he was going to be executed they were going to burn his body he obviously didn't want that so he agreed to switch over to catholicism that his body would remain intact after his death the next key concept here is european expansion into the western hemisphere generated intense social religious political and economic competition and changes within european society now up to this point we really just talked about the spanish going out into the new world and exploring and conquering and getting gold and spreading christianity the success of the spanish and the new world is going to be seen by its european rivals as something that they wants to replicate the portuguese especially had been very successful in exploring in asia and going around the tip of africa but now that the proof of concept of going out to the new world had been proven by the spanish the portuguese also wanted to go out and explore the new world the problem was that both the spanish and the portuguese were patrons of the catholic church and the catholic church did not want them fighting over land and territory because then the catholic church would probably get a lot less money and support these two countries therefore the pope brokered a deal between the two called the treaty of tortosius in 1494. he set a line of longitude that split up the world into two sides one side was for the spanish exploration and conquest and then the other side was to the portuguese to explore and conquer that relegated the portuguese mostly to the eastern hemisphere but as you can see on the map there you have a tiny little sliver of south america which is where we have modern day brazil king john ii of portugal and king ferdinand of spain signed the treaty and stated before brazil becomes the only way the only new world piece of territory that the portuguese are able to acquire in the next key concept the colombian exchange and the development of the spanish empire in the western hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic economic and social changes we've already touched upon the demographic change that's anything that has to do with people so the new world crops increase in the old world populations a lot of people were now able to eat potatoes corn and they were able to plant them in their small plots of land so people lived longer and as they lived longer they were to have more kids and as their kids had more kids now there's a surplus of population in europe that means that there are more people than land that they can live on and it's going to fuel further new world exploration because as people want to improve their situation and want upward mobility they're going to find new ways to do it some of the economic effects of the colombian exchange is that the gold that came from the new world also helped lay the foundations of the banking system in europe the spanish conquistador saw that some of the native birbs that they came into contact wore some jewelry that contained gold eventually they found gold mines in south america silver mines in mexico and they started to extract this gold using usually coerced labor of native americans and then sending it back to spain using coins and depositing it into banks is going to start the momentum to establish a capitalist system in europe it's not going to happen immediately and it's not going to be overnight but we're going to see a shift from feudalism to capitalism the end of feudalism begins with the mineral wealth that the spanish were able to find in the new world now in the next key concept in their interactions europeans and native americans asserted divergent world views regarding issues such as religion gender roles family land use and power this means that the europeans and native groups in north and south america were vastly different which is a logical claim but we want to make sure that we hit on some of the specific things that they really had indifference the first one was their use of land native groups in north america really didn't have a desire to aggressively change their landscapes some believed that nature held spiritual properties they did use the land as we said they planted foods they practiced agricultures but in some areas they would forage they would get food from the forest this was especially true in areas like the pacific coast in northern california in the northeast the iroquois along the appalachian ranges would go into the forest and hunt gather and supplement with agriculture the ways in which they would interact with their environment there is that sometimes they would encourage forest growth through managed fires that's what the picture is here on the top left in the forest in california fire encouraged growth of larger trees it also cleared the forest floor which makes it more accessible for people to walk through and to hunt on the top right you see cave dwellings by the anasazi people on the mesa verdict in mesa vertical lorado there were also cave dwellings in new mexico a good example of the groups that really did change their environment would be the aztecs this is the capital city of tenochtitlan in the middle of lake texaco even this adaptation of environment by the aztecs is not quite as extreme as what we're going to be seeing with europeans as soon as the spanish begin to expand their new world empire they're going to start building churches and cathedrals made of stone usually the same stone that had made up the temples of the natives these are the ways in which they differed in the ways in which they were using their environment in terms of gender roles we'll see that some native groups especially the iroquois in the northeast are going to organize themselves along matrilineal lines that means that they are going to follow the lineage of the females of the mothers in the family this will seem quite different to europeans coming from a patriarchal system early spanish explorers were really motivated by gold they wanted to extract as much as they could from the land and take it back to spain one of their other motivations was to spread christianity specifically catholicism and of course glory meant that they wanted to conquer the people who were in the new world the conquistadors that would go out there to be the main fighting force they were looking to gain mobility titles or even just new land in the new world so that they could have upward mobility in terms of religion europeans and natives differed in that the native americans were not christian there was a diverse amount of religion in the new world almost as diverse as the language groups that developed but in the eyes of the spanish it didn't matter because they weren't christian and that's all that mattered to europeans as a quick recap the natives migrated across the land bridge to create a diverse continent of people each was unique in their use of the environment and its social structures the colombian exchange brought about massive change for all involved and european expansion brought about social economic and political changes in europe these are all the things that we're going to keep in mind as we go into the next set of lectures for all of period one thank you for watching this lecture i hope you enjoyed it if you want to watch the next lecture click on the video link on the screen and if you want to find more lectures and practice for the ap exam you can visit apushslides.com i wish you the best of luck in all of your studies