Summary of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 The birthplace of agriculture and the cities that followed, America is ancient, not a new world. The same human societies began domesticating animals in the American continents, while in Africa and Asia, animal husbandry was avoided in favor of game management.

#2 Indigenous American agriculture was based on corn, which was a sacred gift from their gods. It could not have grown without centuries of cultural and commercial exchange between the peoples of North, Central, and South America.

#3 The population of the Americas was around one hundred million at the end of the fifteenth century, with about two-fifths in North America. Central Mexico alone supported some thirty million people. The population of Europe as far east as the Ural Mountains was around fifty million.

#4 The first great cultivators of corn were the Mayans, who were initially centered in present-day northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Tabasco. They built city-states as far south as Belize and Honduras.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669386605

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Insights on Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The birthplace of agriculture and the cities that followed, America is ancient, not a new world. The same human societies began domesticating animals in the American continents, while in Africa and Asia, animal husbandry was avoided in favor of game management.

#2

Indigenous American agriculture was based on corn, which was a sacred gift from their gods. It could not have grown without centuries of cultural and commercial exchange between the peoples of North, Central, and South America.

#3

The population of the Americas was around one hundred million at the end of the fifteenth century, with about two-fifths in North America. Central Mexico alone supported some thirty million people. The population of Europe as far east as the Ural Mountains was around fifty million.

#4

The first great cultivators of corn were the Mayans, who were initially centered in present-day northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Tabasco. They built city-states as far south as Belize and Honduras.

#5

The Mayan and Toltec civilizations were both centered in the Valley of Mexico, and they both built massive cities. The Aztec empire was based on hydraulic agriculture, with corn as the central crop. The Aztecs also grew tobacco and cotton, and they had a dense population that was concentrated in large urban centers.

#6

The Aztecs were a thriving culture and economy, but their dominance was declining on the eve of Spanish intrusion. The Mexican state was crushed and its cities leveled in Cortés’s three-year genocidal war.

#7

The American Southwest was once the home of the Hohokam people,