So I want to underscore that there was huge diversity in the pre-Columbus American experience, and that talking about someone who lived here, in 1000 BCE, and talking about someone who lived here 2000 years later, is just inherently problematic. But complex civilizations weren't the rule in North America, and now we're about to begin generalizing - a bad habit historians have, partly because there's a limited historical record, but also because Eurocentric historians have a bad habit of primitivizing and simplifying others. CrashCourse World History fans will remember that environmental degradation often causes the decline of civilizations- I'm looking at you, Indus Valley, and also you, entire future Earth. They had large, multiple-family dwellings in canyons, which they probably left because of drought. The Zuni and Hopi civilizations, roundabout here, peaked about 1200 CE. So there had been civilizations in North America, but they peaked before the Europeans arrived. This was much worse than that, it was closer, maybe, to eight in ten, which would be an 'octicimation'. As many of you have pointed out, 'decimation' means 'one in ten'. Actually, it was much worse than decimation.
And like other Native Americans, their populations were decimated by diseases such as smallpox and influenza. Some estimates are as high as 75 million, but in the present US borders, the guesses are between 2 and 10 million. So, no one knows exactly how many people lived in North America before the Europeans got here. I get that you like to imagine yourself as the result of millennia of advancement and the very pinnacle of human-ness, but from where I'm sitting, that worldview is a lot more backwards than living without the wheel. The idea that we're moving forward as a species implies a linear progression that just does not reflect the reality of life on this planet. That's not just Euro-centric, that's contemporary-centric. It's like you believe that just because you have a beeper and they didn't, they were somehow less evolved humans.īut you can't say the human story is one that goes from primitive to civilized. "Primitive" is a funny word, me from the past, because it implies a romanticization - the simple people, who never used more than they needed, and had no use for guns - and it also implies an infantilization. Green! So, they were pretty backward, huh? Well, I mean, or at least, primitive. However, they did have farming, complex social and political structures and widespread trade networks. One, when the Europeans arrived, there were no classical style civilizations, with monumental architecture and empires like the Aztec or the Incas.Īnd two, Native North Americans had no metalwork, no gunpowder, no wheels, no written languages and no domesticated animals. North America was home to a great variety of people, so it's difficult to generalize, but here's what we can say: So to begin US History, we're not going to talk about the United States or this guy, we're going to talk about the people who lived here before any Europeans showed up. Sorry, we can be a little bit self-aggrandizing sometimes here in America. By the way, this globe reflects the fact that I believe that Alaskan statehood is illegitimate! In fact, we're going to call this whole show "US History", but inevitably, it's going to involve other parts of the world and also, not to brag, a small part of the moon. I mean, we're talking about the sixteenth century today when this was neither 'united' nor 'states'. No, Stan, that's not going to work, actually. Hi, I'm John Green and this is Crash Course US History. The story of their rocky relations has been called the Black Legend. John teaches you about early Spanish explorers, settlements, and what happened when they didn't get along with the indigenous people. The Spanish were definitely not peaceful colonizers, but what colonizers are peaceful? Colonization pretty much always results in an antagonistic relationship with the locals. The Spanish have a long history with the natives of the Americas, and not all of it was positive. That means we start with the first sustained European settlement in North America, and that means the Spanish.
This is a history class, not archaeology, so we're mainly going to cover written history. In episode 1, John talks about the Native Americans who lived in what is now the US prior to European contact. But, like it or not, the United States has probably meddled in your country to some degree in the last 236 years or so, and that means US History is relevant all over the world.
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Apex Legends - How To Check Player Statisticsĭf = pd.In which John Green kicks off Crash Course US History! Why, you may ask, are we covering US History, and not more World History, or the history of some other country, or the very specific history of your home region? Well, the reasons are many.
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