1.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
2.
Southwestern United States
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The population of the area is around 11 million people, with over half that in Arizona, the most populous cities are Phoenix, El Paso, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Most of the area was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the Spanish Empire before becoming part of Mexico and it became part of the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase. The deserts dominate the southern and western reaches of the area, the two major rivers of the region are the Colorado River, running in the northern and western areas, and the Rio Grande, running in the south. Formed approximately 8000 years ago, the Chihuahuan Desert is a dry desert. The Chihuahuan Desert spreads across the portion of the region, covering from southeastern Arizona, across southern New Mexico. While it is the second largest desert in the United States, only a third of the desert is within the United States, El Paso is the major city in this desert, with other smaller cities being Las Cruces and Roswell in New Mexico. The Chihuahuan is a rain shadow desert, formed two mountain ranges which block oceanic precipitation from reaching the area. The most prolific plants in this region are agave, yucca and creosote bushes, when people think of the desert southwest, the landscape of the Sonoran Desert is what mostly comes to mind. Rainfall averages between 4–12 inches per year, and the deserts most widely known inhabitant is the saguaro cactus and it is bounded on the northwest by the Mojave Desert, to the north by the Colorado Plateau and to the east by the Arizona Mountains forests and the Chihuahuan Desert. The portion of the Sonora Desert which lies in the Southwestern United States is the most populated area within the region. Six of the top ten major population centers of the region are found within its borders, Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, also within its borders are Yuma and Prescott Arizona. The most northwest portion of the American Southwest is covered by the Mojave Desert, bordered on the south by the Sonoran Desert and the east by the Colorado Plateau, its range within the region makes up the southeast tip of Nevada, and the northwestern corner of Arizona. In terms of topography, the Mojave is very similar to the Great Basin Desert, the Mojave is the smallest, driest and hottest desert within the United States. The Mojave gets less than six inches of rain annually, the most prolific vegetation is the tall Joshua tree, which grow as tall as 40 feet, and are thought to live almost 1000 years. Other major vegetation includes the Parry saltbush and the Mojave sage, the Colorado Plateau varies from the large stands of forests in the west, including the largest stand of ponderosa pine trees in the world, to the Mesas to the east. Although not called a desert, the Colorado Plateau is mostly made up of high desert, the Plateau is characterized by a series of plateaus and mesas, interspersed with canyons. The most dramatic example is the Grand Canyon, but that is one of many dramatic vistas included within the Plateau, which includes spectacular lava formations, painted deserts, sand dunes, and badlands. One of the most distinctive features of the Plateau is its longevity, the Plateau can be divided into six sections, three of which fall into the Southwest region
3.
Staple food
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The staple food of a specific society may be eaten as often as every day or every meal, and most people live on a diet based on just a small number of staples. Typical examples of staples include tubers and roots, and grains, legumes, such nonperishable foods are the only possible staples during seasons of shortage, such as dry seasons or cold temperate winters, against which times harvests have been stored. During seasons of plenty, wider choices of foods may be available. Most staple plant foods are derived either from cereals such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice, or starchy tubers or root vegetables such as potatoes, yams, taro, arrowroot, other staple foods include pulses, sago, and fruits. Staple foods may contain, sorghum, olive oil, coconut oil. Most staples are plant materials, but in some fishing is the primary source of nutrition. Of the more than 50,000 edible plant species in the world, although there are over 10,000 species in the cereal family, just a few have been widely cultivated over the past 2,000 years. The staple food in different parts of the world is a function of weather patterns, local terrain, farming constraints, acquired tastes, for example, the main energy source staples in the average African diet are cereals, roots and tubers and animal products. In Western Europe the main staples in the diet are animal products, cereals and roots. Regional staples include rye, soybeans, barley, oats and teff, just 15 crop plants provide 90 percent of the worlds food energy intake, with rice, maize and wheat comprising two-thirds of human food consumption. The three are the staples of about 80% of the population, and rice feeds almost half of humanity. Roots and tubers, meanwhile, are important staples for over 1 billion people in the developing world, roots and tubers are high in carbohydrates, calcium and vitamin C but low in protein. Cassava root is a staple food in the developing world. With economic development and free trade, many countries have shifted away from low-nutrient-density staple foods to higher-nutrient-density staples, despite this trend, there is growing recognition of the importance of traditional staple crops in nutrition. Efforts are underway to identify better strains with superior nutrition, disease resistance, some foods like quinoa—a pseudocereal grain that originally came from the Andes—were also staple foods centuries ago. Oca, ulluco and amaranth seed are other foods claimed to be staples in Andean history, pemmican was a staple of the Plains Indians of North America. In 2010, the consumption of speciality grains such as quinoa was very small compared to other staples such as rice, wheat. These grains, once popular but then forgotten, are being reevaluated and reintroduced, most staple food is produced using modern and conventional farming practices
4.
Phaseolus acutifolius
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Phaseolus acutifolius, the Tepary bean, is native to the southwestern United States and Mexico and has been grown there by the native peoples since pre-Columbian times. It is more drought-resistant than the common bean and is grown in desert and semi-desert conditions from Arizona through Mexico to Costa Rica, the water requirements are low and the crop will grow in areas where annual rainfall is less than 400 mm. The tepary bean is an annual and can be climbing, trailing, a narrow leafed, variety tenuifolius, and a broader leafed, variety latifolius, are known. Domestic varieties are derived from latifolius, in the Sonora desert, the flowers appear with the summer rains, first appearing in late August, with the pods ripening early in the fall dry season, most of them in October. The beans can be of any color. Beans vary in size but tend to be small and they mature 60 to 120 days after planting. Other names for this native bean include Pawi, Pavi, Tepari, Escomite, Yori mui, Yorimuni, the name tepary may derive from the Tohono Oodham phrase tpawi or Its a bean. It should be noted that the name for a bean was recorded in the 17th century, in the now extinct Eudeve language of northern Mexico. Names that contain yori in them typically refer to species of beans since those names mean non-Indian persons bean. Tepary beans are the most drought tolerant legume, germination, however, requires wet soil although the plants will flourish in dry conditions thereafter. Too much water inhibits bean production, cultivated beans have been found dating to 5,000 BCE in the Tehuacán Valley in Mexico. They were cultivated by Indians by various methods, most commonly after an infrequent rain in the desert or after flood waters along a river or ephemeral stream had subsided, the tepary bean is relatively disease free, except under conditions of high humidity. The tepary bean was a food staple of Indians in the Southwestern United States. In addition to being grown in floodplains, it was grown alongside squash. Growing these plants together, known as Three Sisters agriculture, both enhances their growth and provides balanced nutrition. In the United States, the bean was introduced to Anglo farmers in the 19th century by Tohono OOdham farmers. The Indian method of planting in the American Southwest was to plant three to five seeds in hills six to eight feet apart, beans were planted in arroyos that had been recently flooded by summer rain. Cultivation of tepary beans is possible under the most extreme conditions, the Sand Papago were mainly hunter-gatherers but cultivated tepary beans and other crops when moisture made it possible for them to do so
5.
Mesoamerica
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It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas along with Norte Chico in present-day northern coastal Peru. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures, while Mesoamerican civilization did know of the wheel and basic metallurgy, neither of these technologies became culturally important. Among the earliest complex civilizations was the Olmec culture, which inhabited the Gulf coast of Mexico and extended inland, frequent contact and cultural interchange between the early Olmec and other cultures in Chiapas, Guatemala and Oaxaca laid the basis for the Mesoamerican cultural area. All this was facilitated by considerable regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica and this Formative period saw the spread of distinct religious and symbolic traditions, as well as artistic and architectural complexes. In the subsequent Preclassic period, complex urban polities began to develop among the Maya, with the rise of such as El Mirador, Calakmul and Tikal. Mesoamerica is one of three regions of the world where writing is known to have independently developed. Upon the collapse of Teotihuacán around AD600, competition between several important political centers in central Mexico, such as Xochicalco and Cholula, ensued. During the early period, Central Mexico was dominated by the Toltec culture, Oaxaca by the Mixtec. Towards the end of the period, the Aztecs of Central Mexico built a tributary empire covering most of central Mesoamerica. The distinct Mesoamerican cultural tradition ended with the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, over the next centuries, Mesoamerican indigenous cultures were gradually subjected to Spanish colonial rule. The exact geographic extent of Mesoamerica has varied through time, as the civilization extended North and South from its heartland in southern Mexico, Mesoamerica is recognized as a near-prototypical cultural area, and the term is now fully integrated in the standard terminology of pre-Columbian anthropological studies. Conversely, the sister terms Aridoamerica and Oasisamerica, which refer to northern Mexico, 10° and 22° northern latitude, Mesoamerica possesses a complex combination of ecological systems, topographic zones, and environmental contexts. A main distinction groups these different niches into two categories, the lowlands and the altiplanos, or highlands. In the low-lying regions, sub-tropical and tropical climates are most common, as is true for most of the coastline along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The highlands show much more diversity, ranging from dry tropical to cold mountainous climates. The rainfall varies from the dry Oaxaca and north Yucatan to the humid southern Pacific, several distinct sub-regions within Mesoamerica are defined by a convergence of geographic and cultural attributes. These sub-regions are more conceptual than culturally meaningful, and the demarcation of their limits is not rigid, the Maya area, for example, can be divided into two general groups, the lowlands and highlands. The lowlands are further divided into the southern and northern Maya lowlands, the southern Maya lowlands are generally regarded as encompassing northern Guatemala, southern Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico, and Belize
6.
Oasisamerica
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Oasisamerica is a term used by some scholars, primarily Mexican anthropologists, for the broad cultural area defining pre-Columbian southwestern North America. It extends from modern-day Utah down to southern Chihuahua, and from the coast on the Gulf of California eastward to the Río Bravo river valley and its name comes from its position in relationship with the similar regions of Mesoamerica and mostly nomadic Aridoamerica. The term Greater Southwest is often used to describe this region by American anthropologists, as opposed to their nomadic Aridoamerican neighbors, the Oasisamericans primarily had agricultural societies. The term Oasisamerica is derived from a combination of the terms oasis and it refers to a wild land dominated by the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre Occidental. To the east and west of these mountain ranges stretch the grand arid plains of the Sonora, Chihuahua. Despite being a dry land, Oasisamerica contains several bodies of water like rivers, Yaqui, Rio Grande, Colorado, Conchos. The presence of these rivers, combined with a climate that was much milder that eastern Aridoamerica, the story of the origins of the cultural superarea of Mesoamerica takes place some 2000 years after the separation of Mesoamerica and Aridoamerica. Some of the Aridoamerican communities farmed as a complement to their hunter-gatherer economy and those communities, among whom one finds adherents to the Desert Tradition, later would become more truly agricultural and form Oasisamerica. Based on maize remnants found in Bat Cave, Arizona, it appears that agriculture practices date back to at least 3500 BCE. Given that the oldest traces of maize in North America date back to the year 5000 BCE and it is less certain who brought the agricultural technology and what role they played in the development of the high cultures of Oasisamerica. At least three hypotheses have proposed to explain the birth of the cultures of Oasisamerica. One, a model, posits an independent cultural development whose roots lie deep in antiquity. From this point of view, thanks to a superior climate, a second hypothesis presupposes that the nomads of the Mesoamerican culture slowly moved northward over time. Thus, the Oasisamericans would be an offshoot of their neighbors to the south, there are many indications of a close relationship between the two great cultural regions of North America. For one, the turquoise that the Mesoamericans prized so dearly came almost exclusively from southern New Mexico, demand for this mineral alone may have played a large part in establishing trade relationships between the two cultural areas. The area encompassed by Oasisamerica fostered the growth of major cultural groups, the Ancestral Pueblo people, Hohokam, Mogollon, Pataya. Smaller cultures within this region include the Sinagua, Ancestral Pueblo cultures flourished in the region currently known as the Four Corners. The Ancestral Pueblo society is one of the most complex to be found in Oasisamerica, the Ancestral Pueblo is considered to be the most intensely studied Pre-Columbian culture in the United States
7.
Pre-Columbian era
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For this reason the alternative terms of Precontact Americas, Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas are also in use. In areas of Latin America the term used is Pre-Hispanic. Other civilizations were contemporary with the period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own written records, because many Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as heretical, men like Diego de Landa destroyed many texts in pyres, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture. Indigenous American cultures continue to evolve after the pre-Columbian era, many of these peoples and their descendants continue traditional practices, while evolving and adapting new cultural practices and technologies into their lives. Now, the study of pre-Columbian cultures is most often based on scientific. Asian nomads are thought to have entered the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering Strait, genetic evidence found in Amerindians maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia. Over the course of millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout North and South America, exactly when the first group of people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago, however, older sites dating back to 20,000 years ago have been claimed. Some genetic studies estimate the colonization of the Americas dates from between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago, the chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory with the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurring no earlier than 14, 000–17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants. The second belief is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered the hemisphere at an earlier date, possibly 50. In that case, the Eskimo peoples would have arrived separately and at a later date, probably no more than 2,000 years ago. The North American climate was unstable as the ice age receded and it finally stabilized by about 10,000 years ago, climatic conditions were then very similar to todays. Within this timeframe, roughly pertaining to the Archaic Period, numerous archaeological cultures have been identified, the unstable climate led to widespread migration, with early Paleo-Indians soon spreading throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. The paleo-indians were hunter-gatherers, likely characterized by small, mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family and these groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought. During much of the Paleo-Indian period, bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct giant land animals such as mastodon, Paleo-Indian groups carried a variety of tools
8.
Stream
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A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. Streams are important as conduits in the cycle, instruments in groundwater recharge. The biological habitat in the vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone. Given the status of the ongoing Holocene extinction, streams play an important corridor role in connecting fragmented habitats, the study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core element of environmental geography. Brook A stream smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep and it is usually small and easily forded. A brook is characterised by its shallowness and its bed being composed primarily of rocks, creek In North America, Australia and New Zealand, a small to medium-sized natural stream. Sometimes navigable by motor craft and may be intermittent, in parts of Maryland, New England, the UK and India, a tidal inlet, typically in a salt marsh or mangrove swamp, or between enclosed and drained former salt marshes or swamps. In these cases, the stream is the stream, the course of the seawater through the creek channel at low. River A large natural stream, which may be a waterway, runnel the linear channel between the parallel ridges or bars on a shoreline beach or river floodplain, or between a bar and the shore. Tributary A contributory stream, or a stream which does not reach the sea, sometimes also called a branch or fork. There are a number of names for a stream. Allt is used in Highland Scotland, beck is used in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Dumfriesshire, Cumbria, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire. Bourne or winterbourne is used in the chalk downland of southern England, brook is used in the Midlands, Lancashire and Cheshire. Burn is used in Scotland and North East England, gill or ghyll is seen in the north of England and other areas influenced by Old Norse. Rivulet is an term encountered in Victorian era publications, stream is used in Southern England. Syke is used in lowland Scotland and Cumbria for a seasonal stream, branch is used to name streams in Maryland and Virginia. Falls is also used to name streams in Maryland, for streams/rivers which have waterfalls on them, little Gunpowder Falls and The Jones Falls are actually rivers named in this manner, unique to Maryland. Kill in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey comes from a Dutch language word meaning riverbed or water channel, run in Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or West Virginia can be the name of a stream
9.
Alfred L. Kroeber
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Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his Ph. D. under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901 and he was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He played a role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology. Kroeber provided detailed information about Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people and he was the father of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and writer of short stories Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. His family moved into New York when Alfred was quite young and he attended Columbia College at the age of 16, joining the Philolexian Society and earning an A. B. in English in 1896 and an M. A. in Romantic drama in 1897. It was the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia, Kroeber spent most of his career in California, primarily at the University of California, Berkeley. He was both a Professor of Anthropology and the Director of what was then the University of California Museum of Anthropology, the anthropology departments headquarters building at the University of California is named Kroeber Hall in his honor. He was associated with Berkeley until his retirement in 1946, Kroeber married Henrietta Rothschild in 1906. She contracted tuberculosis and died in 1913, after years of illness. In 1926 he married again, to Theodora Kracaw Brown, a widow whom he met as a student in one of his graduate seminars and they had two children, Karl Kroeber, a literary critic, and the science fiction writer Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. In addition, Alfred adopted Theodoras sons by her first marriage, Ted and Clifton Brown, in 2003, Clifton and Karl Kroeber published a book of essays on Ishis story, which they co-edited, called, Ishi in Three Centuries. This is the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Native American writers, Alfred Kroeber died in Paris on October 5,1960. He conducted excavations in New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru, in Peru he helped found the Institute for Andean Studies with the Peruvian anthropologist Julio C. Kroeber and his students did important work collecting cultural data on western tribes of Native Americans, the work done in preserving information about California tribes appeared in Handbook of the Indians of California. Kroeber is credited with developing the concepts of culture area, cultural configuration, kroebers influence was so strong that many contemporaries adopted his style of beard and mustache as well as his views as a cultural historian. During his lifetime, he was known as the Dean of American Anthropologists and he is noted for working with Ishi, who was claimed to be the last California Yahi Indian. His second wife, Theodora Kracaw Kroeber, wrote a biography of Ishi, Ishi in Two Worlds. Kroebers relationship with Ishi was the subject of a film, The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight as Kroeber, kroebers textbook, Anthropology, was widely used for many years
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