Before Columbus
Thia book changed how we think about the Americas before 1492
What is "1491" by Charles C. Mann?
The major event that began the Columbian Exchange
What is Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492?
A farming system that combined corn, beans, and squash
What is the milpa system?
The indigenous government that may have inspired the U.S. Constitution
What is the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee)?
Without Columbus, this event wouldn't have happened
What is the Columbian Exchange?
This advanced Indigenous city was larger than many European cities
What is Tenochtitlan?
Name one animal brought from Europe to the Americas
What is a horse, pig, cow, sheep, or goat?
A type of Amazonian soil was created by Indigenous people and still grows food today
What is terra preta (black earth)?
the name of the Iroquois Confederacy government system
What is the Great Law of Peace?
Without smallpox, this might have happened to Indigenous societies
What is they would have stayed stronger and grown?
One way Indigenous people changed the land before Europeans arrived?
What is building canals, clearing forests, or managing crops and animals?
An American crop that became a staple in Ireland and helped increase Europe's population
What is the potato?
An ancient society that may have built civilization on fishing instead of farming
What is the coastal civilization of Peru (MFAC Hypothesis)?
Ones who choose and could remove male leaders in the Haudenosaunee system
Who are clan mothers (female elders)?
Name one food that wouldn’t exist in Europe without the Exchange
What is tomato, potato, chocolate, corn, or chili pepper?
A nutrient-rich soil made by Indigenous Amazonians
What is terra preta?
Name one disease that killed millions of Native Americans after contact
What is smallpox (or measles, influenza, etc.)?
Native people managed forests this way in North America
What is controlled burns and intentional planting?
This made the Iroquois Confederacy a democracy
What is decision-making by consensus and representation?
This region might have stayed a global power if Europe didn’t get New World wealth
What is China, the Ottoman Empire, or West Africa?
A myth about forests that new evidence disproved
What is the idea that they were untouched wilderness?
Name one negative environmental effect of the Columbian Exchange?
What is invasive species disrupting native ecosystems?
The idea that the phrase “Native people didn’t adapt to nature—they created it”
What is the myth of the “untouched wilderness”?
This made the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) government system different from European monarchies
What is it was democratic, based on consensus, and gave power to women?
This would likely never have existed without European conquest of the Americas
What is the U.S., Canada, Brazil (or the transatlantic slave trade)?