South America

Individual Project

February 13, 2006

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Most of it is in the Southern Hemisphere.

Commonly referred to as part of the Americas, like North America, South America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a previously undiscovered New World.

South America has an area of 17,820,000 kmІ (6,880,000 sq mi), or almost 3.5% of the Earth's surface (Wikipedia).

South America is thought to have been first inhabited by people crossing the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering Strait, though there are also suggestions of migration from the southern Pacific Ocean (Wikipedia).

In 1494, Portugal and Spain, the two great maritime powers of that time, on the expectation of new lands being discovered in the west, signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which they agreed that all the land outside Europe should be an exclusive duopoly between (Photo: from Wikipedia) the two countries. The Treaty established an imaginary line along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of Cape Verde Islands, roughly 46o 37' W. In terms of the treaty, all land to the west of the line (which is now known to comprehend most of the South American soil), would belong to Spain, and all land to the east, to Portugal (Wikipedia).

Beginning in the 1530s, the people and natural resources of South America were repeatedly exploited by foreign conquistadors, first from Spain and later from Portugal. These competing colonial nations claimed the land and resources as their own and divided it into colonies.

Central America, narrow, southernmost region (c.202,200 sq mi/523,698 sq km) of North America, linked to South America at Colombia. It separates the Caribbean from the Pacific. Historically, geographers considered it to extend from the natural boundary of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, S Mexico, to that of the Isthmus of Panama. Generally, it is considered to consist of the seven republics (1990 est. pop. 29,000,000) of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The mountains of N Central America are an extension of the mountain system of W North America and are related to the islands of the West Indies. The middle portion of Central America is an active zone of volcanoes and earthquakes; it contains the Nicaragua Depression, which includes the huge lakes Nicaragua and Managua. The ranges of S Central America are outliers of the Andes Mts. of South America. Tajumulco (13,846 ft/4,210 m high), a volcano in Guatemala, is the region's highest peak. Central America's climate varies with altitude from tropical to cool. The eastern side of the region receives heavy rainfall. Bananas, coffee, and cacao are the chief crops of Central America, and gold and silver are mined there. The economies of the countries in the region are becoming increasingly diversified. Though agriculture is still the largest employer, more technical positions are being produced as the industrial and service sectors develop. The Inter-American Highway traverses W Central America (Infoplease). (Photo from Wikiepedia)

Archeological Digs:

NOVA: "Search for the Lost Cave People", tells us that Deep in southern parts of Mexico lies a river canyon lined with treacherous cliffs and a jungle so forbidding that this isolated area was one of the last untouched archaeological sites in the world. The first unsettling clues of a lost civilization were found by a group of Italian cave experts setting out simply to chart this remote Chiapas region (WGBH).

In 1997, Thomas Lee, now a professor at the University of Sciences and Arts of the State of Chiapas, joined an expedition of archaeologists and spelunkers to the Chiapas region of Mexico. There, in a series of caves hundreds of feet above the Rio La Venta, the

expedition members found the remains of a people called the Zoque who once inhabited the region (WGBH). Who were the Zoque? The Zoque Indians are a Mexican tribe of Native Americans dwelling in the western part of Chipas, north of the Sierra Madre, and part of Tabasco and Oaxaca. When the Spaniards first met them, they were addicted to cannibalism. The Zoque are also said to be responsible for such technological advances as a calendrical system and sophisticated numerical systems (UMD). (Photo: Univ. of Minnesota Duluth; Ancient Middle America)

Most of the Zoque are now Christianized, but they retain not a few of their traditional beliefs and customs (Wikipedia). These sacrificial sites of a legendary Zoque tribe are date back from the time of the Maya (WGBH).

The Maya civilization is a historical Mesoamerican civilization, which extended throughout the northern Central American region which includes the present-day nations of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Yucatбn peninsula states of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatбn (Wikipedia). The Maya are often credited with inventing the first complex writing system on the American continent, but recent archeology shows that a little-known