End of the Ice Age

- End of the ice age people cross a land bridge from Asia to North America

- When the ice age ended the big-game hunters split into smaller sub groups and cultural groups, developing hundreds of different languages and economies to suit their environments

- By 1500 B.C. maize was developed and spread north and south. This was in addition to sunflowers, sunflower seeds, gourds, and pumpkins which had already been developed

- Domestication of these plants allows humans to settle down in large population centers. Became more hierarchical in their social, political, and economic organization. Beans and squash also became more important

- Societies in North America were undergoing an economic revolution and a religious revolution.

- Economic revolution: intensification of agriculture in eastern woodlands and American southwest

- In the Ohio River valley, formation of a shared political and religious system – called the Hopewell culture today. Exchange of prestige goods very important in Hopewell culture for not only the livelihood of people producing and transporting them, but for the political and religious leaders purchasing and redistributing them.

- In the case of Mississippian societies, a chief would tend to grow in power, but then his chiefdom would collapse from a rebellion, a drought, or an economic downturn. However, the society would not disappear, and instead would diffuse.

- Cahokia was basically abandoned by 1350, so when the French