Culturally diverse Ancestral Puebloans were connected by a complex road system, a standard style of religious worship, and a unique art style evidence d by pottery and petroglyph s. Ancestral Puebloans seem to have abandon ed their urban areas around 1300 CE.
To rule an area that large, the Romans, based in what is now central Italy, needed an effective system of government administration and infrastructure. Romans used a variety of methods to administer their republic and, later, empire. Engineering, for instance, was a key part of Roman administration.
Populations may grow, due to migration or a period of unusual health. Populations may shrink, due to disease, extreme weather, or other environmental factors. Finally, populations may redefine themselves. As civilizations grow, cities may grow larger and become more culturally distinct from rural, agricultural areas.
Scholars and political leaders (known as shi) were the most powerful social class. Farmers and agricultural workers (nong) were the next most-powerful group. Artists (gong), who made everything from horseshoes to silk robes, were the next order of social class.
There are many reasons for this, but many historians point to three patterns in the fall of civilizations: internal change, external pressure, and environmental collapse. The fall of civilizations is never the result of a single event or pattern.
Long before the arrival of Europeans, native people traded items between themselves and with more distant cultures. Trade, however, was more than simply an economic enterprise. Before any items changed hands, traders often ate together, smoked tobacco, or practiced other rituals designed to indicate friendship.
Exploring the ecological transformation of the colonial South offers an opportunity to examine the ways in which three distinct cultures—Native American, European, and African—influenced and shaped the environment in a fascinating part of North America. The Native American World.
Because native people were already well versed in the rudiments of commerce, European traders initially encountered Indians eager to swap deerskins for metal knives, pots, utensils, jewelry, guns, and ammunition. Trade between Europeans and Indians, however, was not of equal benefit to both cultures.
Trade between Europeans and Indians, however, was not of equal benefit to both cultures. European traders encouraged native warriors to trade captives taken in battle with other Indians as slaves. As a result, thousands of southern natives were sold to masters in New England and the Caribbean.
Shipping records from the South’s port towns tell the story: a million deerskins shipped out of Virginia and South Carolina between 1698 and 1715; another two million from South Carolina alone by 1740; a million from Savannah between 1764 and 1773, and more than 300,000 from French Louisiana in the late 1750s.
Within the context of their culture and belief system, southern Indians simply did what was necessary to subsist and survive.
Without the tangle of food plants typical of Indian gardens, English fields were also more subject to erosion and attracted insect pests such as grasshoppers, tobacco flea beetles, and rice worms.
Instead of making their own tools, clothes, and utensils, colonists increasingly purchased luxury items made by specialized artisans and manufacturers. As the incomes of Americans rose and the prices of these commodities fell, these items shifted from luxuries to common goods.
This two-way relationship reinforced the colonial feeling of commonality with British culture. It was not until trade relations, disturbed by political changes and the demands of warfare, became strained in the 1760s that colonists began to question these ties.
Eighteenth-century American culture moved in competing directions. Commercial, military, and cultural ties between Great Britain and the North American colonies tightened while a new distinctly American culture began to form and bind together colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia. Immigrants from other European nations meanwhile combined ...
The average person’s ability to spend money on consumer goods became a sign of their respectability. Historians have called this process the “consumer revolution.” 1. Joseph Highmore, The Harlowe Family, from Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa,” 1745–1747. Wikimedia.
Paper money tended to lose value quicker than coins and was often counterfeited. These problems, as well as British merchants’ reluctance to accept depreciated paper notes , caused the Board of Trade to restrict the uses of paper money in the Currency Acts of 1751 and 1763.
Commodities could be cumbersome and difficult to transport, so a system of notes developed. These notes allowed individuals to deposit a certain amount of tobacco in a warehouse and receive a note bearing the value of the deposit that could be traded as money.
Colonial Americans sued often, which in turn led to more power for local judges and more prestige in jury service . Thus, lawyers became extremely important in American society and in turn played a greater role in American politics. American society was less tightly controlled than European society.