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Suggested Internet Resources • www.nps.gov/bela/ The National Park Service maintains the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve site where students may learn about the park’s historical and cultural significance at its “Virtual Visitor Center.” • www.secretsoftheice.org/icecore/ The Boston Museum of Science provides students and teachers with a number of resources and activities related to ice core research that can help us understand more about the history of the earth’s climate.
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THREE WORLDS MEET (Origins—1620) This video assignment is from the Schlessinger Video series available in the Bak MSOA Media Center. It is volume III from the box set US History Origins to WWII. This video is shown to the class with numerous interruptions! The video is paused to ask the Discussion Questions posed below in context. This is a form of imbedded assessment. A written study guide is also distributed in class. Numerous SSS benchmarks and frameworks are addressed in this lesson. Appropriate supplemental materials (maps, internet resources, primary sources, etc...) are used at the appropriate Teachable Moment juncture.
Before Viewing
Pre-viewing Discussion • Ask students to share what they know about different groups of Native Americans in North America at the time of the voyages of Columbus. How did they come to the New World? How did they live? How were they affected by the arrival of Europeans? • Explain to students how History is constantly changing. As new evidence is discovered old theories are abandoned and new ones develop. Most appropriate for this discussion is how the old Beringia theory for the populating of the Americas has been replaced with the multiple avenues theory of populating the Americas. Use the graphics and examples set forth in the eBook First Americans. • Lead the students in a discussion of how and where people settled (next to rivers and oceans) when they first arrived in the Americas and where those locations are today (under water--remember that much of the water currently in the oceans was locked up as ice!)
Program Summary After the initial voyages of Christopher Columbus, Native Americans suffered catastrophic losses due to conquest, colonization and exposure to a variety of deadly diseases from Europe. Three worlds eventually collided as Europeans brought several million Africans to the New World to serve as forced labor for the new plantation economies of the Americas. The Columbian Exchange set off a series of cultural, economic and biological changes that fundamentally transformed the world’s population, fueled the European desire for empire and fostered the development of democratic governments. As a result of this complicated process of global interaction and change, a new American society emerged.
After Viewing
Follow-up Discussion • New technologies such as the printing press helped spread knowledge of various people, places and cultures around the world. Ask students to discuss other inventions and technologies that were used to help “three worlds meet.” • Do students think that instead of Christopher Columbus, the Vikings should be given credit for discovering America? Why or why not?
Follow-up Activities • Christopher Columbus had difficulty getting European leaders to support him in his quest to find a westerly route to Asia. To demonstrate their knowledge of Columbus and the purpose of his journey, ask students to imagine that they are public relations representatives for Columbus at the time of his first voyage. Have each student write an advertisement, persuasive essay or editorial that attempts to convince Ferdinand and Isabella and others of the benefits of Columbus’ trip. • In 1325, Mansa Musa sent a caravan loaded with gold from his Mali kingdom to North Africa, causing the world price of gold at that time to plummet. Teachers may use this example from the time of Mansa Musa to teach students about the concept of supply and demand. Ask students to predict what would happen to the price of a product such as gasoline, concert tickets or cell phones if its demand fell far short of the ample supply, or if its demand far outweighed the supply. In each case would the product cost more, or less? Ask students to explain their reasoning. • Millions of Native Americans died from exposure to various diseases from Europe. Break students into small groups and assign each group a disease to research such as smallpox, diphtheria or yellow fever. Ask students to discover the diseases’ causes and effects, and whether the diseases still exist today. Each group may present their “disease profile” findings to the rest of the class. • To help your class understand the locations of the many Native American cultures in the Americas, ask students to construct a map that identifies where peoples such as the Mayan, Pueblo and Iroquois lived. As a follow-up, have one group of students research the Native American concept of shared land, and another study the European concept of personal ownership of land and private property. Invite representatives from both groups to debate the benefits and drawbacks of personal land ownership in comparison to communal ownership. • Break students into small groups and ask them to read Hernando Cortes’ second letter to Emperor Charles V, in which he describes in great detail the historic Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Ask each group to create a list of the foods, merchandise and buildings Cortes describes in his account. Based on Cortes’ description, each group may also attempt to sketch its own rendition of a building, marketplace or square in Tenochtitlan. Ask each group to explain its drawing to the class. Students may read Cortes’ letter at this site: www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1520cortes.html. • Ask students to create time lines of significant moments in the history of European exploration of the New World. Students may begin their time lines with the journeys of the Vikings culminating with European travels in the 16th century. • Have students construct charts that compare the reasons why English, Spanish, French and Dutch explorers came to the New World. Were the reasons for exploration of the Americas by these various European nations similar or different? Ask each student to choose one country and write a journal entry that reflects his or her understanding of why representatives of this nation traveled to the New World. • Ask students to discuss the history of African-Americans in the Americas. How did African people come to this region? What problems did African-Americans face?
Time Line c. 30,000 — 20,000 BCE — Asians believed to have begun settlement of the Americas. 250 — 900 AD — Mayan Classic Period (Southern Mexico and Central America) c. 500 — St. Brendan, the Irish monk, sails the north Atlantic 1000 — Leif Ericson reaches Vinland. 1325 — Mansa Musa crosses the Sahara to Cairo and Mecca. 1348 — The Black Death begins to ravage Europe. c. 1400 — The Renaissance begins in Europe. 1488 — Bartholomew Dias sails around the southern tip of Africa. 1492 — Christopher Columbus (Cristobol Colon) sails west to the Bahamas. 1497 — John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) reaches North America. 1498 — Vasco da Gama sails east to India. 1500 — Pedro Cabral reaches Brazil. 1517 — Martin Luther begins the Protestant Reformation. 1519 — Hernando Cortes invades Mexico. 1532 — First direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas. 1534 — Jacques Cartier reaches Canada.
Vocabulary archaeologist — A person who studies historical artifacts to learn more about people and how they lived. Stone Age — A prehistoric time period characterized by the development of stone tools by early humans. Sahara — The largest desert in the world, located in North Africa. Islam — One of the world’s major religions. Its origins can be traced to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th century. malaria — A serious illness that is transmitted to humans by a specific type of mosquito.Yellow fever and sleeping sickness are diseases also passed on by mosquitoes. Mansa Musa — Leader of the West African kingdom of Mali in the 14th century. savannah — A type of landform that features tropical grasslands with scattered clumps of trees. Songhai empire — A large trading empire in West Africa in the 15th and16th centuries. Sankore mosque — An important historic site that was built in the 15th century in the empire of Mali and served as an educational center. Often referred to as the “University of Sankore.” Renaissance — A time period in European history characterized by a “rebirth” of arts, science and learning. Vinland — Name for the settlement founded by Leif Ericson in the New World. Geographically, Vinland may have been located anywhere from Massachusetts to Newfoundland.The name Vinland may have referred to the presence of grapes or to the old Norse word for pasture. Hispaniola — A large island discovered by Christopher Columbus.Today, it is known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Tenochtitlan — The capital city of the Aztec civilization that flourished in what is now Mexico until the early 16th century. conquistador — From the Spanish word for “conqueror,” this term refers to the Spanish explorers who were responsible for the European conquest of the New World, especially of Mexico and Peru and particularly in the 16th century. Dahomey — An early 17th-century African kingdom that dominated the lands of what is now Benin. Ashanti — A large and powerful African empire that began in the late 17th century in what is now Ghana. Protestant Reformation — A religious revolution in which leaders such as Martin Luther sought to reform the Catholic Church. The movement spread throughout Europe over the course of the 16th century.
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