The Americas: A Hemispheric History

The Americas: A Hemispheric History, Chapter 1: “Americas? America? And Chapter 2:  “Between Colonizations: The Americas’ First ‘Normalcy’”

Many people living in South America refer the North Americans as norteamericanos, which I though was quite interesting and unusual. We use many names to refer to one another such as Latinos, Caucasians to give each type of ethnicity a sense of belonging since you cant put everyone under one classification.

Amerigo Vespucci reported America as Venezuela, Guiana, Brazil. The idea of the “new world” was absurd, inconceivable and definitely unimaginable for the people. I cannot imagine what they must have thought and how frightening that idea of a “new world” was to them!  People could not even imagine how enormous the hemisphere really was. I also found it definitely true to say that there is an innumerable amount of immigrant communities around the United States. Only because one is Italian-American or Polish American does not necessarily make them less of an American than those whose ancestors are American. Certain states are becoming more distinctive as only certain ethnicities live within and there becomes a state dress that people expect dress by. I’ve actually never paid attention to the fact that history books usually refer to two Americas- one being United States and the other being everything else, which one the contrary is a little difficult to jam up and put under one classification. I certainly agree with what the author considers to be the “good things” about the U.S, which includes wealth creation, democracy, opportunity; and the bad things such as capitalism, excessive privileges of wealth for some! This is certainly accurate, but like any other country, there are many advantages and disadvantages of living within that country and being able to have certain rights and privileges while not being able to have those in a different country. This specific idea speaks to the reason why many people emigrate from their countries to the United States for a better life, and only considering the advantages while forgetting about the disadvantages while making their decision!

-Olmecs are considered “Mother Civilization”, images of them have huge sculpted heads (which sounds pretty cool to be honest!)

-City building and monumental art of the Mayans- 3-10^th century A.D.

-heirarchic

-gods had various powers.

-Mayan writing was written to epigraphy in order for it to remain for generations and decades.

-astronomial observations were quite important as well as dynastic records  (conquests, kings, etc.)

-Cherokee was first written language in Mesoamerica.

-maps and pictograms was all that remained within civilization. 

Olmec's Sculpted Head!