The documentary “Secrets of the Dead: Carthage’s Lost Warriors” provides some interesting insight into how seemingly impossible migrations have an effect on our understanding of the motivations for and ultimate effects of human and cultural migrations. According to Giffhorn’s theory in the documentary, a group of warriors with extensive seafaring knowledge from Carthage fled and escaped after attacks from the Romans who destroyed Carthage.1 Somewhere along the way, the Carthaginian navel warriors came into contact with Celtic Iberians and it is believed that these two groups made their way across the Atlantic to South America, near present-day Brazil approximately two-thousand years before Columbus.2 The documentary centers around evidence …show more content…
The narrative of the documentary portrays the idea that the migration was impossible because South America has troublesome terrain and some areas with poor agricultural possibilities, but I will assume that after the ocean currents had taken them to South America, they had to stay and set out in this new land and make the most of it. It is also possible that drastic climate change has affected certain parts of South America, were the land was once agriculturally rich but was later ruined by drought and heat such as in the case of ancient Nubian civilizations and the Sahara desert3, as well as the Moche civilization in South America affected by expanding sand dunes from droughts4 (211). I can also assume that since the Carthaginians had extensive knowledge of the sea and knowledge of trading routes along rivers, when they found the Amazon River cutting through South America, they decided to follow it since cities and trade are often located along regions with healthy agriculture and bodies of water, similar to the trading routes seen in Europe and Africa during that time5. From the Amazon River and archaeological sites found from past cities and civilizations, the documentary begins to discuss elements of objects, architecture, and rock art that are linked to European cultural
During the period between 1700 to 1900 there were many changes in long distance migration patterns across the globe as well as aspects of migration that remained the same. Throughout this time period, long distance migrations from eastern regions such as Europe and Africa to the America’s remained a consistent trend, as well as the motivation for migrating. While these things remained constant, changes during the time period occurred in diversity of the peoples migrating due to slave trade across the Atlantic being banned and indentured servitude becoming an opportunity for people from places other than Africa to immigrate to the Americas.
A Voyage Long And Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America
The story that surrounds the transatlantic slave trade is notoriously known, by both young and old, across the nation. This story has not only survived, but thrived as “truth” through generations for several centuries; Although, it is much closer to a mystical tale than reality. In Reversing Sail, Michael Gomez lays the myths affiliated with African Diaspora to rest. Gomez shows the path of the amalgamation of the African people along with their resources into Europe. A path that leads to the New World, that would potentially become the Americas, would ultimately result in more than just the exploitation of Africans as slaves. Compacted into an eight-chapter undergrad textbook, Gomez uses Reversing Sail to unground the history, complexity, and instrumentality of the African Diaspora. He does such in a
1) The book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann gives readers a deeper insight into the Americas before the age of Columbus, explaining the development and significance of the peoples who came before us. Moreover, Mann’s thesis is such; the civilizations and tribes that developed the Americas prior to the discovery by Europeans arrived much earlier than first presumed, were far greater in number, and were vastly more sophisticated than we had earlier believed. For instance, Mann writes, regarding the loss of Native American culture:
Hannibal was born in 247BCE, he was the son of a Carthaginian general named Hamilcar Barcareerred, who rallied his North African nation-state from defeat in the First Punic War (264–241 BC) to conquer much of Iberia. Hannibal grew up in military service, and following the 221 BC assassination of his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, who had replaced Hamilcar, Hannibal took charge of the Carthaginian army. He soon proved a brilliant field commander who applied his intellect and martial skills to the singular end of winning battles. Hannibal, a sworn enemy of all things Roman, declared war against them and this was the start of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). Victory in Italy was Hannibal’s sole objective. To achieve it, he marched the bulk of his army in Iberia across southern Gaul and over the Alps into the Roman heartland. Hannibal’s strategy was to attack Rome. Although his tactics for battle were superior he had strategic failures which would eventually lead to his campaign in failure.
In 1492, when the first of many Europeans arrived to the Americas, a new era had begun. The great leaders and trades between the old and new worlds have changed humanity for the better and worse. To understand how we should view the Columbian Exchange, it must be understood by its impact on the history of trade, change in civilization, and diseases.
-1A COMPARISON OF THE NATIVE AMERICANS ENCOUNTERED BY COULUMBUS ON THE ISLANDS OF THE CARIBBEAN WITH THE ENCOUNTERED BY CORTES IN THE MESO-AMERICA.
In the book They Came Before Columbus written by Ivan Van Sertima, chapter twelve, “Mystery of Mu-lan-pi”, there is a reoccurring theme of disproving the notion that Columbus brought over many different things and products from his expeditions to American to the Eastern parts of the world when in reality there is factual evidence that Africans made contact with America far before Columbus did. The author of this book, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, has his undergraduates degree in African languages and literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Van Sertima also worked as a journalist in Great Britain and did broadcasted to the Caribbean and Africa. With and extensive knowledge and work experience in African American Studies it is clear why he chose to wrote this book. The idea that Columbus was the first to bring things like maize from America is widely believed to be true but Van Setima saw that this was false and published They Came Before Columbus to show the facts and evidence that Columbus was not the first person to accomplish this. After writing this book Van Sertima went on to complete a master’s degree in African Studies at Rutgers University and even became a professor of African Studies at the same university. In this essay I will be going deeper into the theme and its relationship to African American history and discussing three other articles that can be related back to chapter twelve of They Came Before Columbus.
Over the course of one-hundred years the Mediterranean antiquity was rocked by an ancient cold war between the North African seafaring state of Carthage, and the newly rising city of Rome located on the Italian Peninsula. In the course of two major wars and one extended three year long siege of Carthage itself Rome would conquer its last major foe and turn the Mediterranean into a Roman lake.
In modern America, we often take for granted the natural world that surrounds us and the American culture which is built upon it. For many of us, we give little thought to the food sources that sustain and natural habitats that surround us because when viewed for what they are, most people assume that they have “simply existed” since the country was founded. However, the documentary ‘America Before Columbus’ provided this writer an extremely interesting record of how the America we know came to exist. In the documentary, one of the most interesting discussions centered on the fact that it was not merely the arrival of conquistadors and colonists that irrevocably changed the landscape of the Americas, but that it was also the coined term known as the “Columbian Exchange” that afforded these travelers the ability to proliferate so successfully. The basic definition of the Columbian exchange is one that defines the importation of European flora and fauna. It could also loosely represent other imports, both intended and unintended, such as tools, implements, and even disease. Armed with this definition, it takes little imagination to envision how differently the Americas might have developed had any significant amount of the native European flora, fauna, or other unintended import not been conveyed to the Americas through the Columbian Exchange. Beyond the arrival of explorers, settlers, and colonists to the New World, the breadth of what the Columbian Exchange represented to
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the movements to explore the new world increased rapidly. Among them was the arrival of the early Europeans on Americas. Only in a few decades this arrival has changed the land and the people of the Americas both on the physical the non-physical outcomes.
The late 15th century marked the beginnings of a period of discovery and expansion for Europeans. During these years of discovery, great forces behind drive for expansion existed. The Spanish and Portuguese's main forces included: the lust for the wealth of gold and silver, the acquisition of new lands which brought nobility, and the spread of their Christian based religion. The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Latin America provides us with insight of these drives in the ultimate search for power. Unfortunately, these motives caused a European-Indigenous syncretism that virtually changed the native peoples way of life. Ultimately, syncretism meant survival for Native Americans in a world where their way of life did not suit the life
The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has
These nomads continued moving all the way to South America. By the time Europeans arrived in America, there were already at least forty to fifty million indigenous people inhabiting the land (Faber 4-5). Other explorers, from Norway, Greenland, and Iceland reached America centuries before Columbus (Faber ix). Although these people attempted to live in this new land, they didn’t stay long, and failed to create a lasting historical impact (Faber 20-26).
The way that the world is today and the history has been shaped by many events with different consequences. These events has been placed in different times and different places. Some of the most important topics that has shaped the world are human migrations, labor and agriculture, urban revolution, order and early societies, religions, economy, connection across water and land, empires, slave, industrialization and wars. Some of this events were results of natural forces and human forces. This article specifies the events that occurred during the conquest of the Americas.