Anglo American Global Village

The Anglo American Global Village had its beginnings when humans began to arrive by about 12,000 to 20,000 years ago.  These early hunters were not Anglo at all; and they hailed from the North, by land or possibly by sea – or perhaps both.  They spoke a variety of languages; they had tribal customs, traditions, and shamans for religious and healing purposes.  Who were these people?

Early Peoples

The early peoples of the Anglo American Global Village who crossed the Bering Strait by foot, or those that may have arrived by sea, had enough technology and enough material culture to satisfy their basic needs of hunting, gathering and fishing.  So what made these early wanderers decide to move?  Why humans do what they do, when they do it, is always a question to ponder.  There are several hypotheses being studied.  The most common one has been the Clovis point debates, because Clovis points were, in the past, the oldest tool culture examined.  Clovis points are named from the archaeological site in Clovis, New Mexico.

The debate continues In the September/October 2014 Archaeology Magazine in an article by Nikhil Swaminathan.  We are  informed that new hypotheses have been in the making for at least 15 years.

Over the past 15 years, as the consensus in the field has gradually moved beyond the idea that “Clovis came first,” archaeologists have arrived at what Collins calls “an enormous and propitious moment in the study of the peopling of the Americas.”  The door has been thrown open to discussions of multiple founding populations, alternate routes, varying toolkits, and even drastically different timeframes for when people might have shown up.

The people we talk about made nets, wove baskets, lived in dwellings constructed from environmental resources or animal hides.  They often used both timber and bones for the frameworks of their homes.  The early populations spread across the continent in all directions; and they lived thousands of years within the North American (and perhaps South American) regions, developing unique and often isolated cultures, depending upon the region they chose to make their new home.

Becoming Anglo

After the first inhabitants, described as Native Americans and/or First Nations today, arrived in North America, another group of people arrived by sea around 1,000 AD.  They are believed to be from Scandinavia; and are commonly called Norsemen. The Norsemen stopped over in Greenland before continuing on to the northeast coast of Canada.

Scholars do not know for sure if these new seafarers interacted with the First Nations of Canada.  The ruins of their settlements were discovered in the 1960’s in Newfoundland. Now, however, new evidence, from material culture, suggests that Viking traders, even further north, may have interacted on friendly terms with at least one native population known as the Dorset people.

The pre-historic Dorset culture and people are said to have thrived in the Canadian eastern Arctic and as far south as Newfoundland, from about 800 BC to 1300 AD.  They are named the Dorset people only because the ruins of their settlements were first excavated at a place known as Cape Dorset on the Baffin Island located in Canada among the Arctic Archipelago.

The little-known, and very remote, Baffin Island is the largest island in Canadian territory, and the fifth largest island in the world.  The people inhabiting this island may in reality be another faction of the Native Inuit culture (formerly called Eskimo). There is much speculation concerning the Viking era in the New World, but it ended around the 14th century for reasons still being contemplated.

Several centuries after the Viking era, in 1497, John Cabot staked claim to the New World for Anglo-Britain.  He was on a mission for King Henry VII, (King of England from 1485-1509) looking for another route to Asia.

Christopher Columbus actually arrived earlier in the New World, on his first voyage of 1492-1493, but he never actually set foot on the mainland of North America.  His early island outposts, however, became the launching pads for all those who followed his exploratory paths.

The first successful colony by the British was not established until 1607, and that first Anglo cultural hearth is located in what is now the state of Virginia. Early pilgrims followed in 1620, landing in Massachusetts; and America’s Thanksgiving holiday is patterned after the legend of their friendly interactions with the Native peoples they encountered.

Unfortunately, such friendly interactions were short-lived, and the rest is recorded history of complex struggles for several centuries between the Native Americans and the influx of immigrants from many parts of the Old World.

We could not complete our discussion of this Global Village without a short biography of the man whom both the North American and South American continents bare his name.

The story of how the Americas became named “America” is one all its own, involving a lost map and an intriguing mystery, but in the following short clip enough is said to get a clue.

The map and the naming mystery is covered in the Latin American Global Village lesson, but to conclude this brief overview here, we see both Anglos and Native Americans living among many thousands of immigrants from many different countries.  All have brought new languages, customs, and cultures to the Anglo-American Global Village, making its diversity unsurpassed.

Such a mixture of populations and cultures would not be able to live in peace without the stable governments of Canada and the United States, which strive to provide multiculturalism policies that promote freedom, and opportunity for all.