Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
The book The Jamestown Project looks at the different experiences and events that made up the Jamestown’s background. It focuses on the survival and evolution that Jamestown endured for ten years, also focusing on the world and situations that surrounded it. Jamestown is depicted as a greedy colony, focusing on quick wealth rather than having long term goals. It is compared to the Plymouth colony, which is seen as a more humble and religious founding. They were kind to their native neighbors and had family farms. In the case of Jamestown, they landed on land, belonging to the Paspahegh tribe. The colonists were not welcomed, but they “came to understand that many polities around Chesapeake Bay were under the influence of one great overlord” known as Powhatan (Kupperman, 7). One of the biggest reasons for Jamestown’s poor reputation was because of the goals it had to accomplish. The people had “to find a good source of wealth, preferably precious metals, or a passage to the Pacific and the riches of Asia” (Kupperman, 9). It took the colony ten years, but they managed to set up their foundation, which changed their survival rate greatly and allowed for the other colonies to succeed.
In “Ecological Perspectives on Mande Population Movements, Commercial Networks, and Settlement Patterns,” the paper discusses the migrations and settlements by the proto-Mande and Mande-speaking groups. Mande groups migrated due to changing climate conditions. They “[adapted] to changing rainfall patterns in a given area, [migrated] to different locations, [took] advantage of circumstances regarding commercial exchanges or raiding neighboring groups” (Brooks, 24). During 5500-ca to 2500 B.C., proto-Mande-speaking hunter-gatherers moved north “to take advantage of living conditions in the ‘green’ Sahara” (Brooks, 26). The “green” Sahara had grasslands with various water areas, making it an area that attracted human settlement. When conditions worsened, people in the Sahara either changed their way of living or migrated to different areas. Some went to herding cattle and other domestic animals. Some groups towards the south took advantage of receding shorelines to grow wild grain. Later on, rainfall pushed people north towards herds. These migrations led to “exchanges in commodities” from ancient times, leading to “the origins of caravan and riverine routes transporting goods over long distances across ecological zones” (Brooks, 31). This idea leads to the idea discussed in Benton’s reading of river trade routes brought up by Matt Everett.