Or rather, there were wheels on children’s toys in Mexico, but not on carts. While the Incas used llamas for carrying things, these animals were never ridden. And no one in the Americas invented the wheel. Furthermore no cereals like wheat or rice existed, corn and maize being the main crops in the region. Moreover, in the Americas there were no horses or cows and no domesticated sheep or goats. For example, although elaborate works of art were produced in both gold and silver, there were no iron ores and hence neither tools nor weapons made from iron could be made. For one thing, compared with the rest of the world they were all quite limited in terms of the technologies at their disposal. Yet all of the Americas were not connected into one international system, and as a result, it makes the most sense to discuss the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Incas separately.Ģ It is at the same time true that societies in the Americas resemble each other in distinct ways. Neighbors fought each other in bloody wars, made peace and forged alliances.
Despite the enormous distances involved, trade connected these various communities - people in North America, for example, sold turquoise to the Aztecs. There was no proper empire here until the nineteenth century of the Common Era. In North America, meanwhile, societies were smaller and more dispersed. Many very different political entities have been located here, and at least three major empires - the Maya and the Aztecs in Central America and the Incas in South America. As a result, their societies developed entirely according to their own logic.ġ The social and political diversity of the two continents is at least as great. From this time onward, although they had some contact with each other, the peoples of the Americas had no connection with the rest of the world.
Scholars are convinced that the first Americans wandered across the land bridge which at the time connected Asia and North America - across today’s Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska - but there is an abundance of other, far more fanciful theories.
Human beings began settling here some 20,000 years ago. Taken together the Americas, North and South, cover an enormous geographical area which runs from one polar region to the other, comprising all kinds of climates and ecological environments, including rainforests, deserts, prairies and some of the highest mountains in the world.
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