North America How Did Human

North America

How did human history in North America during the period described in the Prologue differ from the events of Asia, Eurasia, and Europe? Be specific. How were these differences important to the international state of affairs in 1450?

One of the most unique features of North American development during the end of the Ice Age was the early absence of large game animals like the wooly mammoth that has once provided easy sources of available protein to the tribes that populated the area. Scarcity was the primary characterization of virtually all of the food hunting and gathering patterns of the land's residents, which resulted in a slow population growth in comparison to Asia, Eurasia, and Europe. The scarcity of game was the reason for the nomadic quality of most of early tribal life, but also motivated the domestication of hardy plants. Fish made some of the northern tribes relatively more food-secure -- but still, life was a constant struggle. Most technological developments were focused on the cultivation, storing, or hunting of foods, unlike the Europeans who had the luxury of time and more leisure to devote to less immediately necessary arts and sciences such as the invention of the printing press and the cannon.

The lack of attachment to specific plots of land that characterized many Indians' lives is not a surprise given these conditions -- but to European settlers in 1450, viewing this different method of life, they automatically assumed the tribes were more primitive then themselves, and saw their land as ripe for the taking, given that Indians did not regard the land as something people owned and passed down from generation to generation. For Europeans, the security of food from enclosed livestock and the greater bounty of the soil encouraged a greater attachment to private property in Europe. It also created greater class differences between land-owning and landless people, in contrast to the more equitable tribal structure of the North American Indians. Europe was defined by the secure governance of nation-states while North America was dominated by loose tribal organizations.

The relatively dispersed nature of the Americas, as opposed to Catholic-controlled Europe, also made the native tribes more vulnerable to impingement from outside, as they could not easily unite against an attack. They also lacked the large numbers for complex military organizations and the resources to create technologically-advanced forms of military warfare. However, one uniting aspect to the native tribes was the respect they had for the land. The Europeans met people who viewed the land a different and more reverent attitude than themselves, not because the tribes were primitive, but because the Indians' land was so tight-fisted in yielding its bounty. The land could not be easily dominated by the cultivation of man, as it was, relatively speaking in Europe. Even native agricultural societies could not trust the land, thus they worshipped their food crop, corn, in the Mesoamerican regions of the world, rather than the more complex theological systems of the Europeans. A lack of time to devote to building elaborate religious structures in many areas seemed to confirm the idea that these were a people without a religion as well as without a land to the Europeans.