Populating the New World Essays -- American America History

Populating the New World Upon the arrival of the first European explorers to the "New World," they encountered what they believed to be primitive savages. These creatures that ran about in the shape of humans showed no aspect of humanity and aroused wonder and curiosity on the part of the Europeans. When the Europeans travelled further into the heart of the land and saw the buildings of the Maya, Inca, Aztec and other ancient Indian nations, they were unable to attribute these massive structures to the people that they saw before them. Instead, they theorized that it was the descendants of one of the ancient European civilizations that built the temples. It possibly might have been the ancient Greek, Egyptian, or a lost tribe of Israelites. It did not occur to them that the Indians, erroneously named by Christopher Columbus, might have been capable of the construction of the buildings they found. As the Europeans became settled in the Americas, they began to wonder as to the origin of the indigenous population. The church, in accordance with the teachings of the 15th and 16th centuries, maintained that they were actually the descendants of sinful Babylonians that had survived the flood of Noah. In 1589, a Jesuit priest by the name of Joseph de Acosta jumped ahead of his contemporaries in explaining the arrival of the Indians into the New World. While he remained within the doctrines of the church, de Acosta put forth the theory that the Indians could have arrived to the Americas via three means: an organized and prepared transoceanic voyage, an accidental landing, or a migration over land. He worked under the assumption that man hailed from the Old World, as all humanity was descended from Adam, and that the Ind... ...n to leave. 6) As more people moved into the New World, they "pushed" people that had been here before further south. With these understandings, the identity of those that truly discovered America can be better discerned. Works Cited: Dixon, E. James. Quest for the First Americans. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, 1993. "The First Americans." The World Book Encyclopedia. USA, World Book, Inc., 1994, vol.10, p. 155. Heinrichs, Ann. America the Beautiful: Alaska. New York, Children's Press, 1991. Maxwell, James A. America's Fascinating Indian Heritage. New York, Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1978. Snow, Dean. R. The Archeology of North America. New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. Willey, Gordon R. An Introduction to American Archaeology. New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966