Populating the New World Essays -- American America History

Populating the bare-assed WorldUpon the arrival of the first European explorers to the saucily World, they encountered what they believed to be primitive savages. These creatures that ran about in the shape of manhood 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 maxim the buildings of the Maya, Inca, Aztec and new(prenominal) 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 perchance might encounter been the ancient Greek, Egyptian, or a lost family of Israelites. It did not occur to them that the Indians, erroneously named by Christopher Columbus, might have been able of the construction of the buildings they found.As the Europeans became settled in the the Statess , they began to wonder as to the foundation of the indigenous population. The church, in accordance with the teachings of the 15th and 16th centuries, maintained that they were very 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 obsolescent World, as all humanity was descended from Adam, and that the Ind... ...n to leave. 6) As more people go into the New World, they pushed people that had been here before further south. With these understandings, the identity of those tha t rightfully discovered America can be better discerned.Works CitedDixon, E. James. ask 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, Childrens Press, 1991.Maxwell, James A. Americas Fascinating Indian Heritage. New York, Readers patronise 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