South American History
People first came to South America probably around 20,000
years ago. They were traveling south from North
America. These earliest people, like other
people elsewhere in the world at that time, knew how to make stone spearpoints
and axes, and how to make fires. They lived by gathering plants, mainly
wild grasses like teosinte and mesquite, and by hunting mammoth and other
animals.
Around 10,000 BC some new people seem to have
arrived in South America, also coming from North America. Possibly these
new people killed off the people who were already there, or they may have
mixed peacefully. In any case these people soon had to deal with a new problem:
the big animals like horses
and mammoths which they were used to hunting all died off, probably because
the world became a little warmer and not enough of the plants these animals
ate grew anymore. (Some people think that these new people killed all the
big animals off, but most archaeologists think that it was a climate problem).
People had to learn to hunt smaller animals like rabbits and llamas and
alpaca.
Because people arrived later in South America than in Africa or Asia or Europe, it was not as crowded there, and so people could get plenty of food by hunting and gathering and did not need to begin farming as early. There were also some environmental problems for beginning farmers: for instance, the best places for planting corn also happened to be the best places for gathering wild mesquite, so people didn't want to destroy a good food supply in order to try out a new risky idea.
But by around 2000 BC people in Central and South America did begin farming anyway. They farmed corn (probably a domesticated version of their old food teosinte), and squash, and beans. They may also have farmed roots like potatoes, but we aren't sure because roots don't leave much of anything for archaeologists to find. Once they were farming, people had to settle down in permanent villages. Soon they began to form bigger states. The first of these was the Olmec civilization, which began around 1200 BC. It was mainly in Central America (the southern part of modern Mexico) although Olmec-type monuments are found as far east as modern Guatemala.
The Olmec civilization collapsed (we're not sure why) about 400 BC. The problem may again have been climate change, but there are also signs of invasions. Soon other people, or perhaps descendants of the Olmec people themselves, created new states in the same area. The best known of these are the Maya. Another one is the Zapotec. Early signs of the Maya state began as early as 1000 BC, but the main Maya period began about 600 BC, with the decline of the Olmecs. The Maya gradually established a powerful kingdom or kingdoms (we're not sure if there was one king or different kings in different cities), which extended over most of Central America (modern Guatamala).
Perhaps under the influence of the Maya state, other states like the Moche
began to rule different parts of South America.
When the Maya state began to decline, about 1300 AD,
two other important kingdoms formed near them. One was the Aztecs,
whose kingdom was to the north of the Maya, in what is now Mexico. The other
was the Inca, whose kingdom was to the south of the
Maya, in what is now Ecuador and Peru.
In the other parts of South America, there were fewer people, and so they
still had plenty of land for hunting
and gathering, and most people
preferred to remain hunters and gatherers instead of beginning to farm and
developing complicated governments.
Although the Maya state was clearly in decline by the 1400's, all three of the big states -the Maya, the Aztec, and the Inca - were still there when the first invaders came from Europe to South America.
To find out more about South American history before 1500, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Ancient Rome (Eyewitness Books), by Simon James (2004). For kids.
Handbook of Mediterranean Roman Pottery, by John W. Hayes (1997). Hayes has been the leading expert on Roman pottery for the last several decades.
Roman Pottery, by Kevin Greene (1992). Greene is another pottery expert, particularly interested in what pottery can tell us about the Roman Economy.
