South American Interaction

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Recommended: The life of the Aztecs

South America, between 3500BC-2500BC, was inhabited with permanently established villages around the coast and a few groups of hunter-gatherers. Most of the villages prospered near the Pacific coast because the ocean had a rich population of marine life. Improvements in farming helped the growth of population and the expansion of permanent farming villages. The invention of loom weaving, pottery, and the beginnings of a more-classed based society develop because of these improvements. Temple mounds were built, which showed the development of a priestly elite, and irrigation systems were created. Areas away from the Pacific coast were slower when shifting to the new agricultural society, but in Amazonia, proto-agricultural societies were faster to develop and pottery began to spread all over the region. In the high Andes, llama and alpaca-herding started to replace hunting and gathering. Trade routes grew and began to link the high mountain regions with the villages of the Pacific coast. 
 From 2500BC-1000BC, the villages who prospered near the Pacific coast expanded and became complex societies. Correspondingly, farming and trading with other villages became a common way of living. Improvements in the slash-and-burn technique and the use of new root crops highly increased the chances of economic prosperity. Arawak-speaking peoples begin to settle and expand in the Amazon Basin, which created multiple dialects as they moved. Near the Atlantic coast, the communities created middens: areas where wastes were dumped; habitation mounds, and ritual platforms. During 1000BC-500BC, the Chavin civilization appears in the highlands of Peru. The first urban civilization in South America had temple complexes and produced fine textiles and po...

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...anish and Portuguese, caused disease, such as smallpox, enslavement, and stole land from the inhabitants. The Spanish empire ran from Venezuela, to Argentina, and Chile. The Spanish religion was Catholic and the society was dominated by landowners who were descendants of the Conquistadores. One of the reasons the Spanish conquered and owned the land was because of the silver mines in Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia. The Portuguese neglected their Brazilian region, so other Europeans, mostly the Dutch, took this opportunity to establish their own colonies in that region. The natives of South America slowly won their independence through rebellion and the need of freedom.
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, there was a strong economic expansion that led to the development of steamships and refrigeration.

Works Cited

http://www.timemaps.com/history/south-america-3500bc

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