World History I

Chapter 6: Chiefdoms and Early States in Africa and the Americas
600 BCE-600 CE

28: Mon, Dec 8, 2025

This assignment is under revision for 2023-2024.

Please read the chapter and take the quiz by midnight on Sun, Nov 30, 2025.
Please also post in the forum for the day a short essay in response to this question:

We've looked at how the environment supplied the needs for the rise of human cultures and eventually cities and civilizations. By the period we now consider (roughly 600 BCE - 600 CE), humans have lived in concentrated populations in some areas for thousands of years.

For each of the areas we looked at (Africa – especially east Africa along the Great Rift, the Andes, and Mesoamerica), consider the following questions:

• How does human occupation affect the environment and natural resources over time? How do nomadic tribes, villages, and cities differ in their use of environmental resources?
• How does climate affect the kind of food available to support human populations? How successful are people in each region in identifying local plants for food, adapting them to support larger populations, or adopting food crops from other regions?
• What key non-agricultural resources support cities in each region? What happens when these resources are exhausted?

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