World History I

Chapter 5: Origins Apart: The Americas and Oceania
16,000-600 BCE

24: Mon, Nov 24, 2025

Please post in the forum for the day a short essay in response to this question:

We have talked about the forms of power that were used to forge, maintain, protect, and extend communities of different sizes, from gender roles at the family level to the maintenance of standing armies for imperial rule.

• What evidence do we have for the exercise of power in the Americas? In the Pacific Islands?
• What kinds of power structures do we think formed in the Americas? In the Pacific Islands?
• How does the exercise of power at the family, clan, tribe, city, and state level differ from the exercise of power in Mesopotamia or China around 1000 BCE? How do we know?

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