1. Ancient Americas (Pre-columbian)
Mesoamerica
Agriculture:
Cultivation of cacao
Chocolate used by elite as money and to consume (with water not milk, no cattle)
Corn-meal (mixtamal)
Only place that used corn meal
Use of the planting stick (coa) Z
Raised field lake argo (chinampas)
Cultural practices
Ball game
Didn’t have the same language or religion (this was their similarity)
Construction of multiplatform pyramids
Calendar
18 20-day months +5 days, combined with
260 day ritual calendar
Forms a 52 year cycle
Olmecs
Early Village life, around 2000 BC
Olmec culture flourished 1200 BC to around 500BC
Are they the origin of Mesoamerican culture?
Tiwanaku
Settled around 1000BC
Flourished 400-1000AD
First Major kingdoms
Developed the ideas that the kings associated with the sun and they wanted their own land
First major Andean Empire
Raised-Field Agriculture
Imperial colonization and Evangelization
Built things out of rock therefore it lasts and tells us about how they lived and what they did
2. Aztec Empire (Pre-Columbian)

classic maya and teotihuacan were there a 1000years before texcoco Aztecs and tlalcopán
Founding of Tenochtitlán
1200: Mexica arrive in Valley of Mexico ca. 1200
1345: Teno. was founded
Tenochtitlan was in the very center of where Mexico City is now
1428: Founding of triple alliance; defeat of Atzcapotzalco
1428-1440: Reconquest of Valley of México
A Religion of Empire?
Cyclic understanding of times: months, years, “suns”
Use of human sacrifice associated with Huitzilopochtli cult
Aztec imperialism and religion therefore closely related
Aztec Social Structure
Tecuhtli: political and military leaders, judges
Warrior: initially, a social group open to new members; perhaps not by 1500
Pilli(administrators) and priests: mainly inherited, but also attainable through education
Macehualtín (commoners), pochteca(merchants), and craftspersons
Tlatlacotín (slaves)
1519: An Empire in Decline?
End of “productive” conquest
Lack of social mobility
Resentment of conquered peoples
3. Atlantic Slave Trade (Colonial)
Labor and Colonialism
1600s-1740s: Colonial American economies already based on export: silver, sugar, cacao, dyes
1700s onward: Industrial revolution creates demand for raw materials and portable, urban calories
1740s to 1850s: Sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, cotton…
SO WHO WILL DO THE WORK??
Relationship to sugar and coffee estates, especially in Brazil
Triangle of Trade around 1800
Manufactured goods from Euro to W. Africa
Slaves from W. Africa to Brazil, US, Caribbean
Sugar, tobacco, cotton, molasses, coffee from Brazil, Caribbean, US to Europe (and slaves from Caribbean to US)
Historical Effects of Slavery & Plantation Society(FROM BRAZIL PPOINT)
“Use it up mentality”: Destruction of Atlantic Forest to make way for coffee plantations
Econ based on export ag (Sugar, coffee, rubber) until 1950s: Boom & Bust
Economic and education inequality largely based on race
Social impacts
Mixed mode of production, monoculture, and colonialism/neo-colonialism
4. Brazilian Empire (Independence-Era)
5th largest country and 5th most populous (170 million)
President Dilma Rousseff
Pre Conquest Brazil
Human habitation since ancient times: 500k at conquest, thousands of tribes
Large parts of Amazon had been settled by 1500
Black soils: anthropogenic enhancement of the land
Discovery and Colonization
Discovered 1500 by Pedro Álvares Cabral en route to India
Initially used for Brazilwood and other extraction
Sugar became main product by 1550
Independence & Empire
1807: Napoleon invades Portugal (court escapes to Braz.)
1822: Regent dom Pedro I remains in Braz when most of court returns to Europe
Braz ruled as an empire until 1889
End of Empire
1889: Emperor dom Pedro II abdicates; establishment of oligarchic republic
5. Caste System (Colonial)
Unequal social structure based on race
Castas- indigenious, black,