Before Anyone Crossed
Two claims open the course
- As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments.
- Contact among Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans resulted in the Columbian Exchange and significant social, cultural, and political changes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
- The first is about a continent before contact; the second is about what contact did to both sides.
Select both claims that open the course.
One about the continent before contact, one about what contact did.
'Distinct and increasingly complex' is doing work
- Distinct rules out treating the continent's peoples as one society, and 1.2 will give four different regional patterns.
- Increasingly complex rules out treating them as static before 1492.
- So the first claim is an argument against two common simplifications, made before the course starts.
'Distinct' rules out...
And 'increasingly complex' rules out treating them as static.
Adapting and transforming
- The CED gives two verbs, and they point in opposite directions: environments shaped societies, and societies shaped environments.
- So an answer that describes only what the land allowed has taken half the sentence.
- 1.2's irrigation is the clearest case of the second verb — a society changing the water, not only using it.
Which condition of the encounter?
Sort each element of the context.
Select both verbs the CED uses for the relationship with environments.
They point in opposite directions.
"Adapting to and transforming" gives two verbs pointing opposite ways. Environments shaped societies, and societies shaped environments — so an answer describing only what the land allowed has taken half of the CED's opening sentence.
Select all three groups the CED names in its second claim.
A three-sided frame from the first sentence of the course.
'On both sides of the Atlantic'
- The second claim refuses a one-directional story: Europe changed too, and 1.4 will say how.
- It also names three groups — Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans — from the first sentence of the course.
- So the CED's frame is three-sided and two-directional before any event is described.
The Columbian Exchange produced significant changes on ____ sides of the Atlantic.
It refuses a one-directional story.
Writing the context
- The objective is the context for European encounters in the Americas from 1491 to 1607.
- Conditions: diverse and complex societies already in place, European motives and maritime capacity, and West African commercial networks.
- Name each and what it made possible — a context paragraph is three sentences, not a narrative.
A society that digs a canal has not simply fitted itself to a dry place; it has made the place different. Reading only the first half of that leaves you with a continent where nothing was decided by the people living on it.
As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments, and contact among Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans resulted in the Columbian Exchange and significant social, cultural, and political changes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Three groups, two directions, and two verbs for the human relationship with the land.