Essay On Native American Civilization

Before contact, there were an estimated 60 million Native Americans on the continents of North and South America. In Mesoamerica and the Andes, empires that are comparable to the greatest civilizations in world history arose and ruled over millions of people. There were also hunters and gatherers that were organized into smaller kin-based clans. In between these two extremes there were also semi sedentary societies that planted and tended crops in the summer and spring, fished, hunted, made war, and conducted trade.Throughout many tribes, especially the eastern woodlands, women tended crops, gathered plants, and oversaw affairs within the community, while men hunted, fished, and participated in warfare. Many Native American tribes were matriarchal,

women were very influential in their local councils. Expansive trade networks tied regions together and carried goods thousands of miles sometimes.
Prior to contact, European societies lay at the far edge of the Eurasian and African civilizations.

They didn’t have the powerful centralized empires, nor hunter-gatherer bands like the Americas. It was instead a patchwork of kingdoms, duchies, and republics fighting one another and struggling to reach out effectively to the rest of the world. They had a hierarchal society where authority came from above. Kings and princes owned vast tracts of land, forcibly conscripted men for military service, and lived off the peasantry’s labor. Monarchs didn’t have all the power though. Local nobles, men who also owned large quantities of land and controlled hundred of peasant families, challenged their powers. In the same way that kings and nobles ruled society, men governed families. Europe had a patriarchal society where property and social identity descended through male family lines. Before Europe started exploring, war and disease ravaged through Europe. There was a religious reformation where the religion that connected this region, was split into different sects.
West Africa, before contact, was the birth place of civilization, empires had started rising and falling before Europe was even founded. Africa had strong trade networks along the coast. Africa had the broadest range of religion of the three. Some communities in contact with Arabs had learned about Islam, and started practicing. Each region/empire had its own religion based in animals sometimes, secret societies, and

ancestors.
Many things were gained and lost through the exploration of the world. Europe spread disease, livestock, grains, peaches, pears, coffee, and olives. Africans spread honeybees, sugarcane, bananas, grapes, and citrus. The Americas spread syphilis, turkey, maize, beans, peanut, squash, tomatoes. The consequences were great for the Native Americans, they lost their land, and many of the lost their lives.