While Jesus was preaching in ancient Judea, what was going on in the land we now call the United States? This video takes you on a time-traveling journey to explore the cultures, peoples, and untold stories of North America during the 1st century A.D. From Native American tribes to untouched wilderness, discover what life looked like on the other side of the world while the Gospel was unfolding in the Middle East.
00:00When we talk about history, we often focus on the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
00:07Places like Rome, China, and Egypt.
00:10These regions left behind writings, monuments, and massive empires that shaped the world.
00:17But there's a vast chapter of human history that many people know little about.
00:22The story of the Americas before Columbus arrived in 1492.
00:26What was happening in North, Central, and South America before Europeans made contact?
00:34Were there cities? Empires? Writing systems? Religion?
00:38In this documentary, we'll explore exactly that.
00:42We'll go back more than 15,000 years to uncover the real history of the Americas.
00:47From the first people who arrived across the ice, to the rise of powerful civilizations,
00:52and the knowledge that was nearly lost forever.
00:56And we will also look at what was happening in the Americas during the time when Jesus Christ walked the earth.
01:04What cultures existed, what they believed, and how they lived in total isolation from the old world.
01:10The earliest humans arrived in the Americas during the last ice age.
01:27Most scientists agree they came from Northeast Asia and crossed a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska.
01:34This area is known as Beringia.
01:37Because sea levels were lower during the ice age, large amounts of land were exposed.
01:43People walked or traveled along coastlines, following herds of animals like mammoths and caribou.
01:50They were hunter-gatherers who moved in small bands and relied on natural resources to survive.
01:56These migrations likely happened in waves over thousands of years.
02:01Some people settled in what is now Alaska and Canada, while others moved further south.
02:08Archaeological evidence shows that by 14,000 years ago, people were living as far south as Chile in South America.
02:16These early populations developed unique cultures.
02:20They adapted to different environments, from deserts to jungles to mountains.
02:25Even though they had no written language, they passed on knowledge through oral storytelling, rituals, and craftsmanship.
02:33One of the most important changes in early American history was the development of agriculture.
02:43In what is now Mexico, ancient people began to domesticate a wild grass called teacinte,
02:49eventually turning it into what we now call maize or corn.
02:54This process took centuries.
02:56Maize became the foundation of the diet in Mesoamerica.
02:59Just like wheat in Europe or rice in Asia.
03:03Along with maize, they also farmed beans, squash, chili peppers, and avocados.
03:10In South America, people cultivated potatoes and quinoa in the Andes Mountains.
03:16These crops allowed people to settle in one place, store food, and grow larger communities.
03:23As farming became more reliable, societies began to organize.
03:27They built irrigation systems, developed trade networks, and created social hierarchies.
03:33Religious practices also became more structured, often tied to the cycles of planting and harvesting.
03:40It's important to understand that agriculture wasn't just about food.
03:44It laid the foundation for complex civilizations.
03:48It allowed people to build cities, support priests and rulers, and create temples and monuments.
03:54One of the earliest known civilizations in the Americas was the Olmec, which emerged around 1500 BC in what is now southern Mexico.
04:10The Olmecs are famous for their colossal stone heads, carved from basalt, some of which weigh over 20 tons.
04:18These heads likely represent rulers or important figures.
04:23The Olmecs also built ceremonial centers, developed calendars, and may have created one of the earliest writing systems in the Americas.
04:32They didn't leave behind large cities, like Rome or Babylon, but they had a huge cultural impact.
04:38Later civilizations, like the Maya and the Aztec, borrowed many ideas from the Olmecs, such as ritual ballgames, religious symbols, and calendar systems.
04:50Another early civilization was the Zapotec, who built Monte Alban, one of the first cities in Mesoamerica.
04:58Built high on a mountain, it had temples, tombs, and a central plaza.
05:02The Zapotec developed a form of writing and recorded their history through carved glyphs.
05:09These civilizations show that long before contact with Europe, people in the Americas had complex societies with religion, politics, technology, and trade.
05:20Around the time Jesus Christ lived in the Middle East, roughly from 4 BC to 30 AD, the Americas were thriving with their own civilizations,
05:35completely isolated from the events in Rome, Judea, or Egypt.
05:39In Mesoamerica, the Maya were entering their pre-classic period, a time when they began building large ceremonial centers.
05:48They had developed early forms of their writing system, and had started tracking time with complex calendars.
05:54Farther north, cultures in what is now the American Midwest were building massive earthworks.
06:00The Hopewell culture, 200 BC to 500 AD, constructed large ceremonial mounds, some aligned with astronomical events.
06:11These communities traded across long distances, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast.
06:17In the Andes Mountains, the ancestors of the Inca were already mastering agriculture on terraced hillsides.
06:23Though the Inca Empire wouldn't rise until over a thousand years later, earlier cultures like the Nazca and Moche were active.
06:33The Nazca created massive geoglyphs, known today as the Nazca Lines, etched into desert ground.
06:41These drawings were so large, they could only be fully seen from above.
06:45Religion in the Americas during this time was deeply spiritual and based on nature, ancestors, and cosmic forces.
06:54Although the concept of monotheism didn't exist in these cultures, their belief systems were sophisticated and tied closely to astronomy, seasonal cycles, and agricultural rituals.
07:06So while Jesus was preaching in Galilee, and the Roman Empire ruled across Europe and the Mediterranean, the peoples of the Americas were writing in glyphs, building cities, carving stone monuments, and tracking the heavens in their own way, with no knowledge that the other even existed.
07:25When we imagine ancient cities in the Americas, we often think of the Pyramids of Mexico or the jungles of the Maya.
07:38But one of the most impressive urban centers was actually in what is now the United States, the city of Cahokia.
07:46Located near modern-day St. Louis, Cahokia was home to tens of thousands of people by the year 1100 A.D.
07:53It featured massive earthen mounds, including Monk's Mound, which stood over 100 feet tall and covered more area than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
08:08Surrounding Monk's Mound were ceremonial plazas, wooden temples, homes, and a complex society with elite leaders, religious rituals, and a deep understanding of astronomy.
08:20The city was connected to vast trade networks that reached the Atlantic coast and the Rocky Mountains.
08:28Yet, Cahokia disappeared mysteriously before European contact.
08:32Historians and archaeologists continue to investigate why this city declined, possibly due to climate shifts, resource depletion, or internal conflict.
08:42One of the most fascinating aspects of pre-Columbian civilizations was their spiritual and scientific understanding of the world.
08:58Though they had no telescopes or advanced machinery, many cultures in the Americas developed sophisticated calendars, star charts, and architectural alignments with celestial bodies.
09:10The Maya, for instance, tracked the movements of Venus, solar eclipses, and equinoxes with incredible precision.
09:19Their observatories, such as El Caracol at Chichen Itza, were aligned to key astronomical events.
09:25In the Andes, the Inca built the city of Machu Picchu in perfect harmony with mountain peaks and sun cycles.
09:35They used an instrument called the Intihuatana, often referred to as a hitching post of the sun, to mark solstices and seasonal changes.
09:44In fact, for many ancient American cultures, religion and science were deeply intertwined.
09:56Understanding the stars meant understanding the will of the gods, the timing of crops, and the destiny of rulers.
10:03In 1492, Christopher Columbus made contact with the Americas.
10:15What followed was one of the most dramatic cultural collisions in history.
10:19European colonization brought new technologies, religions, and systems of government.
10:25But it also brought diseases, warfare, and devastation.
10:29Within a century, over 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas had perished.
10:37Entire cities were abandoned.
10:39Libraries and codices were burned.
10:42Languages, traditions, and stories disappeared.
10:48The Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires erased centuries of progress and culture.
10:55Priests destroyed Maya texts, labeling them pagan.
11:01Temples were torn down and replaced by churches.
11:04Yet not everything was lost.
11:07Oral histories survived.
11:09Sacred sites remained hidden in the jungle or high in the mountains.
11:14And today, descendants of these ancient civilizations continue to protect and revive their heritage.
11:25The history of the Americas before 1492 is not a story of silence.
11:39It is a story of voices we're only just beginning to hear again.
11:43From the icy lands of Alaska to the rainforests of Brazil, from the towering Andes to the plains
11:51of the Midwest, the first Americans built civilizations of incredible depth, beauty, and wisdom.
11:58Their story matters, and by uncovering it, we rediscover a piece of ourselves, a shared human
12:05past that stretches far beyond what we were ever taught.
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