Basically, whoever wrote the textbook is telling me that my man Chris Columbus wasn’t the first dude to find America (He was totally the most important, though, because white people rock and control pretty much all of written history). Ancient people crossed over what is currently the Bering Strait, from Asia. They settled all the way up and down North and South America, and had many different cultures and societies, and yet not a single one of them figured out how to write a dang thing down, so we don’t actually know how many people there were. A defining trait of all the tribes, however, was a lack of technology/reliance on the the land. They used only what they had around them in nature. The farther south you get, the cooler (not literally colder) it gets, though. In Central America, the Mayans were creating all kinds of cool stuff, like cities and calendars. While the Vikings had crossed the Atlantic before, they hadn’t really shared their super top-secret info with anyone else, and didn’t really go back either. Then finally, in the late 1400’s, ya boy Columbus swoops in trying to get to India, but just so happens to wind up in America, as you do. Meanwhile in Europe, a bunch of stuff was going down, from breakthroughs in science (gunpowder boom wow danger and the sailing compass) and the Protestant Revolution which was causing lots of dissent between Protestants and Catholics. Around that time-ish, actually it was like 50 years earlier, the Ottoman Empire (AKA not Christians, and that’s bad) took over the Byzantine empire’s Capital, Constantinople, cutting off the biggest trade route to India/Asia Major. The only way to get there now was around the tip of Southern Africa. This is why Chris Columbo just needed to get to India, but there was that whole problem of a couple continents in the way. When Columbus arrived in the Bahamas, he thought he had actually landed in India (What a dingus amiright?), and treated it as such. However, after his unfortunate death in 1504, most people in Spain thought he was a failure, because he didn’t actually find a route to India, just a whole New World, nothing important. However, some other smart people recognized Columbus’s mad skills in map and compassing, not to mention his great diplomacy tactics (That was irony. He actually was a really good navigator). He also introduced many new technologies to America, like wheels and guns. I guess there were a few minor diseases, too, like smallpox, but those were no big deal (also irony). Way down south, two countries were having a hissy-fit over who got what part of South America, so they played Rock, Paper, Scissors and signed the Treaty of Tortellini (Something like that. Tordesillas, maybe?) and decided that Portugal would get a few more meters to the east and stop being little babies about it. Spain was a big entrepreneur at this time, taking all the gold and valuable resources from its conquered territory, as well as conquering more land. After all, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Soon, all the other countries picked up on the new trend of taking bits and pieces of America for themselves. Colonies were popping up like spicy boi hills. England, France, and Holland all controlled at least some of this brave, new world. Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay are some of those English colonies. I think the Dutch kind of gave up after a while, because there isn’t much information on them. Spain was militaristic and warlike, and had an extensive social class system. England was cool with the Native Americans at first, but then started to view the Native Americans as savages, and the Native Americans didn’t really like that. France was relatively neutral and maintained good relations with most of the tribes, not the Iroquois, as they fought a lot. Overall, Europeans came across the ocean and kicked butt but were also sometimes arrogant jerks.