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Trade Routes in the Americas

Driving Question: How were different regions of the Americas connected by trade in this period?

Long-distance networks of exchange stretched across Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, the Amazon Basin, and different regions of North America. These networks weren’t as extensive or dense as those in Afro-Eurasia. Still, people living in the Americas formed long-distance networks that carried goods, ideas, and people across continents.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Understand how Indigenous communities in the Americas interacted through networks of exchange in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
  2. Compare how trade networks connected societies in the Americas, and how communities were changed by these connections.
STEP 1

Opener: Trade Routes in the Americas

STEP 2

Indigenous American Trade Routes

Long-distance trade routes moved goods, people, and ideas across every region of the Americas. Use the materials below to understand how these networks shaped Indigenous American societies, and then map out what you learn.

World of Chaco External link

A thousand years ago, the Ancestral Pueblo made Chaco Canyon the center of their cultural world. Their networks stretched across the vast Colorado Plateau.

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
STEP 3

Closer: Trade Routes in the Americas

Extension Materials
Checkmark Alert Banner
We often focus on trade routes in Mesoamerica and the Andes, but other regions of the Americas also established long-distance links.
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The Caribbean

The Caribbean was an important part of a growing center of trade for Indigenous Americans in the precolonial era.

Pre-Colonial Caribbean External link

Indigenous Americans created communities in the Caribbean and established networks of exchange between islands and with the mainland. Trade goods such as jade, ceramics, shells, and teeth moved across aquatic highways.

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.