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100,000 BCE
The "Out of Africa" Theory
100,000 BCE: All modern humans stem from a single group that originated in Africa. -
10,000 BCE
The Stone Age
-The Stone Age lasted from 10,000 BCE to 3,500 BCE.
-There were three periods: the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic.
-The first societies were clans.
-The people were hunter-gatherers.
-They had the means to make fires. -
8000 BCE
The Neolithic Revolution
The hunter-gatherers settled down into villages and began farming and domesticating animals.
The beginning of agriculture. -
3500 BCE
The Bronze Age
-The Bronze and Iron Age lasted from 3,500 BCE - 479 BCE.
-Empires began to emerge.
-Some of the different powers were The Sumerian Empire, THe Babylonian Empire, The Shang Dynasty in China, The Phoenicians, and The Persian Empire, The Egyptian Kingdom, The Roman Empire. -
2000 BCE
The Mayan Empire
The Mayan Empire was a civilization with the only fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas.
Initially established around 2000 BCE.
The Mayan cities reached their highest state of development from 250 to 900 CE and continued until the arrival of the Spanish.
During "The Mayan Golden Age," population numbered in the millions. -
455
The Dark Ages
-Lasted from 455 CE - 1492 CE.
-The western Roman Empire had been in decline for 150 years.
-The Vandal invasion is the final fall of Rome.
-The Viking Age occurred because they invaded Britain in 793 CE.
-The Black Plague occurred during 1346-1353 CE.
-The Renaissance was given a huge boost by the De Medici Family in Italy.
-Columbus "discovered" The New World in 1492. -
1300
The Inca Empire
The Inca Empire began its rise around 1300 CE on the western coast of South America.
The Inca Capital was Machu Pichu.
After their empire died in 1520, the empire was weakened and eventually, the Spaniard Pizarro showed up. -
1325
The Aztec Empire
The Aztec Civilization is more recent and founded their capital at Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) in 1325 CE.
Aztec treaded and intermarried with other tribes and civilizations.
The First Empire was Itzcoatl and his successor was Moctezuma I, who expanded the empire from the gulf coast to the Pacific.
The Spanish explorer Cortez arrived in 1519. -
1492
The New World
Beringia was the Land Bridge that people used to cross from Asia to populate the Americas.
The first ancient tribe to appear on the continent was the Clovis People.
The Tainos were native people that Columbus encountered. -
1500
The Columbian Exchange
In the 1500's Spain, Portugal, France, and England sent explorers to the New World.
They brought animals, plants, and other goods.
They also brought illnesses over, which the Native People had no natural immunities. -
1565
The First Colonies
St. Augustine, Florida: Pedro Menendez de Aviles sighted land on August 28, 1565. The Lost Colony of Roanoke, Virginia: 1584. The whole 2nd attempt at a colony disappeared and still to this day no one knows what happened to them. Jamestown, Virginia: America's first permanent English COlony in Virginia was founded in 1607. -
The First African Slaves
The first documented Africans in Virginia arrived in 1619.
They were from the kingdom of Ndongo in Angola in West Central Africa.
They were captured during a war with the Portuguese.
These first Africans were treated as indentured servants with an end date for when they'd be freed.
However, the practice of owning Africans slaves for life appeared by the 1650s. -
Plymouth Colony
The colony came over on the Mayflower. Only 35 of the 101 passengers were religious paper.
The Mayflower compact, which is often glorified as the first document of Democracy in the New World. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was from 1754-1763.
This is also known as the "Seven Years War."
The English won, but at the cost of the English government getting destroyed.
The Debt caused the escalation of tensions leading to the Revolutionary War. -
The Tea Act
The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.
This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company Tea on which the Townshend duties were paid.
The Tea Act received the King's approval on May 10, 1773.
The Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships anchored in the harbor and dumped the tea overboard. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
This battle kicked off the American Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775. -
Battle of Saratoga
The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the Revolutionary War.
Washington gained an important victory. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the new world declaring they are not going to be governed by England anymore. -
The American Government
Articles of Confederation: (1781) Similar to the constitution, but gave far less power.
US Constitution: (1787) 10 amendments that protected certain civil rights.
Checks and Balances: There are 3 branches of the government (Legislative, Judicial, and Executive). Each branch "checks" the other branches and all three have a "balance" of power and influence.
Justices to the Supreme Court: The president selects the different judges. -
The 19th Century
President George Washington was the first president of the United States in 1787.
Jefferson was the first United States Secretary of State (1790-1793)
The Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 expanded our country.
Lewis and Clark explored the new west in 1804-1806.
Indian Tribal removal Act: Gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land east of the Mississippi for land in the west.
The War of 1812-War between America and Britain. -
Slavery
The first slaves were brought to America in 1619 to work in the tobacco fields in Jamestown.
Eli Whitney built a machine that could effectively and efficiently remover the seeds from cotton plans, called the cotton gin.
The cotton gin allowed more cotton to be picked each day. -
The Civil War
The Civil War was from 1861-1865.
The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution:
(1) Whether the United States was to be an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government
(2) Whether this nation would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world. -
Dakota Uprising
The Treaty of Traverse de Sioux in 1851 said that the Dakota would cede their Minnesota and Dakota lands to the U.S. Government and would be paid by the U.S. Government in yearly installments called "annuities."
The government skimmed a large portion of the money for their personal use, leaving the native people impoverished and starving.
On August 17, 1862, four Dakota men killed five people because of the tension between natives and white people, resulting in the Battle of Wood Lake. -
Reconstruction
The Union Victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the reconstruction period was challenging.
"Black Codes:" control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans.
Radical Reconstruction: (1867) Former slaves were given full rights as voters.
Ku Klux Klan: reverse the changes brought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South. -
Custer's Last Stand/Battle of Little Big Horn
The government wanted to force Indians back to their reservation.
Custer came upon a group of about forty warriors. Instead of waiting to attack, he ignored orders and attacked before he could alert the village.
Custer and all his men were killed in the worst American military disaster ever.
The people were outraged by the death of Custer, so the government withdrew the boundary lines, placing the black hills outside of the reservation and opened it to white settlement. -
Wounded Knee
The Indians were suffering in poverty and disease and were shunned by the U.S. government after the Battle of Little Big Horn.
The "Ghost Dance" was a spiritual movement, which was supposed to reject the ways of the white man, and the gods would create the world anew.
In December 1890, the reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull and murdered him, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.
Four days later, a fight broke out and the wounded knee massacre killed 150-300 Indians.
