Explain the development of the Anasazi and the Hopewell cultures in North America. What aspects were similar and where did they differ?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER:
By the end of the classic period in Mesoamerica, around 900c.e., important cultural centers had appeared in the southwestern desert region and along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys of what is now the United States (see Map 8.4). The peoples of the Southwest benefited from the early introduction of maize and other Mesoamerican cultigens (before 1000 b.c.e.). The resulting improvement to agricultural productivity led before 500 c.e. to rising population, the beginnings of urbanization, and increased social stratification. Maize arrived among the Amerindian peoples of the Ohio Valley sometime after 200 c.e., but only became the region’s chief staple after 800. Once widely adopted this useful crop accelerated the development of large population centers and new political institutions. The two regions evolved different political traditions. The Anasazi and their neighbors in the Southwest maintained a relatively egalitarian social structure and retained collective forms of political organization based on kinship and age. The mound builders of the eastern river valleys – like the Hopewells - evolved more hierarchical political institutions, which subordinated groups of small towns and villages to a political center ruled by a hereditary chief who wielded both secular and religious authority.