By Kevin Mahr

History, Science & Trade

What Is History?• History is a story, -

written, carved, painted, or sung- a collection of events often explained and interpreted as important.

• History facts cannot be repeated and tested like many facts in science.

• Tools can be proven to have come from certain times.

• Foods can be traced to points of origin.

• First appearances of ideas can be confirmed.

Historical Facts can be based on two kinds of

sources:• Primary

– A comment made by someone who was a witness or a participant in an event

• Secondary– A record from someone

who was not at an event, but used primary or secondary sources as evidence.

• The Journey of Man is a documentary by Dr. Spencer Wells about analyzing DNA to track the migratory patterns of human beings throughout the last 50,000 years.

• There has been much debate on where the first human beings called home and where they began there outward migration patterns.

• Dr. Wells uses the Y- chromosomes in DNA to track human beings from Africa

Dr. Wells is able to prove through fossils records and DNA analysis that the first humans were from Africa and then migrated to Australia via a coastal route through Southern Asia. They were able to accomplish this due to the formation of a land mass due to the worlds climate going through a ice age.These first inhabitants of Aussie country were the ancestors of the native aborigines.

The Journey of Man

The Journey of Man

• Dr. Well’s journey then took him to central Asia where he was able to prove that a different group of people migrated there next from Africa via the middle east and settled in the area of the Central Asia steppe.

• Next Man migrated into the China Valley and up into Northern Europe.

• Dr. Wells next was able to follow the Y-chromosome markers into Eastern Siberia where he was able to show that the people there migrated across the Bering sea and into the America’s via a polar ice cap that allowed these brave people to travel across the ice and into Alaska.

• These people then found paradise with North America and South America and were able to live life a little easier than life in Eastern Siberia.

• Native Americans and South Americans people such as the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas all came from the Gene lineage.

Catastrophe• David Keys documentary analyzes how climate, disease, and

natural disasters influenced the human inhabitants of that time.

• David Keyes states that a volcanic eruption caused the world environment to change which then caused whole societies to change.

• The eruption possibly took place in Java and could have caused a mushroom cloud of debris that could have cooled the earth which then caused disease and famine.

Catastrophe

• The Black plague that killed off 1/3 of the population could have been spread by the cooling of the earth which caused the rat population to explode.

• The Black plague changed the history of the world dramatic ways such as the power of the Roman empire based in Constantinople being drastically reduced due to the death of the population.

• David Keyes theory uses several different types of science such as the study of trees, ice and volcanic eruptions to help prove his theory.

1491 America Before Columbus

• Erickson and Balee– Opinion of Indian life is wrong in almost every way.

• Mayflower Pilgrims– Found a blond corps and that was evidence of the French

shipwreck from several years prior to Columbus• Dobyns

– Said they faced plagues from the day the conquistadors showed up when in fact, before that was small pox (7 years prior).

1491 America Before Columbus

• “Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought - and altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.”

• Charles C. Mann

World and Trade• Imagined World

– when Columbus set sail in 1492, people in the Eastern Hemisphere knew only the tripartite division of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ancient writers had speculated that a natural harmony called for the existence of other populated continents-one in the Eastern Hemisphere and two in the Western Hemisphere-to balance the ecumene's known continents.

• Norse Voyage– Reached the America’s first, but they went there to farm, and when

that seemed too difficult they left.– Scholars speculate that Columbus may have visited Iceland and

learned of sagas narrating Norse voyages to the west.– The fact that Norse rather than Columbus could claim the title of

"first" European in the Western Hemisphere meant little; Columbus's voyage alone proved to be the lasting contact, the one that forever changed human consciousness.

World and Trade• Grand Tour Evokes Trade

– Three vast land areas depended upon a different staple: wheat in western Eurasia, rice in eastern Eurasia, and com in the Americas.

• Europeans developed into aggressive individuals. Their life was always insecure because the yield per seed was very low, and their crops constantly were at the mercy of the weather or the caprices of long-distance transportation.

• Since rice provides more food per acre than any other staple, huge numbers of people could live crowded together and still have enough food. Imperial China was by far the most prosperous area of the world in 1492.

• Compared to the growing of other staples, In the America’s, com demands relatively little work. Com grows quickly and is even edible before it ripens.

World and Trade• How World View Changed

– Columbus's ventures showed that the globe was not just a single ecumene surrounded by a vast sea.

– There were many countries for explorers to visit.– Cultivation of the three staple foods, by the end of the fifteenth

century, China, the Mediterranean, and the Americas accounted for three-quarters of the globe's population.

– European crops and livestock were carried across the ocean, providing new sources of food. wheat, bluegrass, daisies, and dandelions, also horses, dogs, pigs, and steers to the America’s.

– As crops and many other ingredients spread throughout the world, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere contact brought disaster. American Indians suffered the greatest population collapse known to history, as they contracted newly-introduced diseases brought in by trade ships.

– In the Americas, in 1492, many varied civilizations of the world merged.