What, if any, is a common theme in the development the New World?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: This was a period of unusual ecological experiment: the exploration or conquest of new environments. In some cases, new frontiers were breached by expansion into neighboring regions and already-familiar environments, like those of the Islamic world or Southeast Asia or most of Christendom. In others, like the Caroline Islands or the Scandinavian expansion, apparently unprecedented adventures were launched from origins that present knowledge cannot adequately explain. In others again, as in China and Japan, internal colonization adapted and transformed previously underexploited wastelands. In others, such as the Andes, central Mexico, and the Maya world, the centers of activity were displaced tonew environments—the limestone hills of Tula or Yucatán, the almost incredibly high altitude of Tiahuanaco. In others, which remain necessarily underrepresented in history books because of the absence of evidence, the business of locating resources, developing foodstuffs, and improving production techniques continued without leaving much trace in the record. In the 800s and 900s, for instance, all we have is linguistic evidence for two enormously important developments in the ecology of East Africa: An explosion of new terms shows that both banana cultivation and cattle breeding spread inland from the Indian Ocean coast to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Vibrancy and innovativeness, which became characteristic of most of these regions—and of others where the evidence only begins to mount up from this point onward—grew out of preceding, painstaking efforts to find new, more productive ways to exploit the environment.