Documentation included in Chicago Humanities Style

Week 1 Discussion

Choose one of the following topics and write an essay. Some areas for you to consider including in writing your essay are provided. Post your essay as a New Thread by Thursday.

The First People of North and South America

• The Inca were able to control an empire that stretched from modern Colombia to southern Chile. Which of their various means for achieving such control do you think were most effective, and why?
• How did the Olmec, Aztec, Inca, Maya, and North American Indians differ in their ways of life and cultural achievements?
• How did their particular circumstances—geography, history, or the accomplishments of the societies that had preceded them, for example—serve to shape their particular traditions and cultures?

The Impact of Exploration in the Atlantic World

• What is meant by the Columbian Exchange?
• Who was affected the most by the exchange? Why? How?
• What were the various goals of the colonial European powers in the expansion of their empires? To what extent were they able to achieve these goals? Where did they fail?
• On the whole, what was the impact of early European explorations on the New World? What was the impact of the New World on Europeans?
• What were the consequences of the religious upheavals in Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?