16th Century

[Nina Zahra]

The16th century began with the Julian year 1501 (represented by the Roman numerals MDI) and ended with either the Julian or the Gregorian year 1600 (MDC), depending on the reckoning used (the Gregorian calendar introduced a lapse of 10 days in October 1582).[2]

The Renaissance in Italy and Europe saw the emergence of important artists, authors and scientists, and led to the foundation of important subjects which include accounting and political science. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric universe, which was met with strong resistance, and Tycho Brahe refuted the theory of celestial spheres through observational measurement of the 1572 appearance of a Milky Way supernova. These events directly challenged the long-held notion of an immutable universe supported by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and led to major revolutions in astronomy and science. Galileo Galilei became a champion of the new sciences, invented the first thermometer and made substantial contributions in the fields of physics and astronomy, becoming a major figure in the Scientific Revolution in Europe.

Spain and Portugal colonized large parts of Central and South America, followed by France and England in Northern America and the Lesser Antilles. The Portuguese became the masters of trade between Brazil, the coasts of Africa, and their possessions in the Indies, whereas the Spanish came to dominate the Greater Antilles, Mexico, Peru, and opened trade across the Pacific Ocean, linking the Americas with the Indies. English and French privateers began to practice persistent theft of Spanish and Portuguese treasures. This era of colonialism established mercantilism as the leading school of economic thought, where the economic system was viewed as a zero-sum game in which any gain by one party required a loss by another. The mercantilist doctrine encouraged the many intra-European wars of the period and arguably fueled European expansion and imperialism throughout the world until the 19th century or early 20th century.

The Reformation in central and northern Europe gave a major blow to the authority of the papacy and the Catholic Church. In England, the British-Italian Alberico Gentili wrote the first book on public international law and divided secularism from canon law and Catholic theology. European politics became dominated by religious conflicts, with the groundwork for the epochal Thirty Years' War being laid towards the end of the century.

In the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire continued to expand, with the sultan taking the title of caliph, while dealing with a resurgent Persia. Iran and Iraq were caught by a major popularity of the Shia sect of Islam under the rule of the Safavid dynasty of warrior-mystics, providing grounds for a Persia independent of the majority-Sunni Muslim world.[3]

In the Indian subcontinent, following the defeat of the Delhi Sultanate and Vijayanagara Empire, new powers emerged, the Sur Empire founded by Sher Shah Suri, Deccan sultanates, Rajput states, and the Mughal Empire[4] by Emperor Babur, a direct descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan.[5] His successors Humayun and Akbar, enlarged the empire to include most of South Asia.

Japan suffered a severe civil war at this time, known as the Sengoku period, and emerged from it as a unified nation under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. China was ruled by the Ming dynasty, which was becoming increasingly isolationist, coming into conflict with Japan over the control of Korea as well as Japanese pirates.

The 16th century was the century from 1501 to 1600. In this century, many Europeans visited or moved to the newly-found Americas and some also searched for new routes to Asia. There was much change in Europe at the time, such as the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance.

Hundreds of thousands of Indians already called Florida home when Europeans first arrived in the early 16th century. But it did not take long for the ensuing wars, slave trade and European diseases to nearly wipe out the aboriginal population.

When European ships first landed on Florida in the 16th century, the area was well populated. Indians of the Timucua, Apalachee, Ais, Tekesta and Calusa were farming rich lands in the north -- growing corn, beans and squash -- and fishing or hunting for most of their food in the south.

Locations near reliable food sources with fresh water, comfortable microclimate and high, dry ground made good habitat for these Indians. Fresh and brackish bodies of water supplied steady sources of fish and shellfish, while fertile soils allowed farming to prosper.

Florida's aboriginal population of about 100,000 was nearly decimated by exposure to deadly diseases that were brought to Florida by European settlers. Smallpox, measles, influenza, even the common cold were deadly to Indians.

One of the most powerful and influential native groups of Florida was the Apalachee. At the time Europeans began arriving in America, the Apalachee controlled the fertile area near the Tallahassee hills between the Ochlockonee and Aucilla rivers. The fertile clay and loam soils of the hills supported the heaviest, most concentrated aboriginal population in the state.

The first Spaniards to explore Florida extensively were drawn to this same region. Panfilo de Narvaez journeyed there from Tampa Bay in 1528. Hernando de Soto wintered there from October 1539 until early March 1540.

Searching for gold, Narvaez and his expedition moved through swampy unpopulated flatwoods until they reached the Apalachee area, near present-day Tallahassee. The Apalachee "loomed big and naked, and from a distance looked like giants. They were handsomely proportioned, lean, agile, and strong," he wrote.

When the Europeans arrived, the Apalachee lived in somewhat permanent villages, relying heavily on agriculture for their subsistence. Controlling the territory between the Aucilla and land some distance west beyond the Ochlockonee River, they were a distinct group, politically and culturally, recognized as such both by themselves and other Indian groups far to the south.

As a result of the fierce and determined hostility that the Apalachee manifested toward the first Spanish intrusions into their territory in the second quarter of the 16th century, Spain made no additional attempts to contact them until early in the next century.

Neighboring the Apalachee to the east were the Timucua, composed of at least 15 separate tribes sharing a common language. More is known about the Saturiwa than any other Timucuan group. They were encountered by the French in 1562 and immortalized in the drawings of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Each Timuicuan village had its own leader who was under the jurisdiction of a head chief who exacted tribute.

The general name Timucuan was used by the Spaniards for all the native peoples who occupied north Florida east of the territory of the Apalachee. The Timucua were composed of a number of autonomous provinces that were hostile to one another at time when the first Europeans arrived. Among the important divisions in mission times were the Saltwater Timucua (Saturiwa and Mocamo), Fresh Water, Potano, Utina and Yustaga. The Saturiwa Indians used the name Timucua, spelled thimogna, to designate specfically the Utina Indians living between the St. Johns and the Suwannee rivers. In the early 17th century, Spaniards also used the name in this restrictive sense.

Less is known about the early Indians of South Florida. The best known group is the Calusa, whose vast domain was ruled by a single chief. Although lacking agriculture, the Calusa developed elaborate political, social and trade networks. They were also expert wood carvers, and the many ceremonial items recovered from a Calusa site on Key Marco display great artistic skill. The Calusa lived around Charlotte Harbor just north of present-day Naples and around the mouth of the Caloosahatchie River in South Florida.

Arguably the most complex precontact culture in South Florida existed inland, in the Lake Okeechobee basin. These people not only had a sophisticated political and social organization, but they also grew corn. Striking similarities between their form of maize horticulture and that originating in the savannas of northern South America. This has led some scholars to suggest that ancient people of South American migrated north to South Florida through the Antilles islands of the Caribbean.

Researchers from the University of Arkansas, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the University of Arizona, Valdosta State University and the University of Western Ontario will report their findings in an upcoming issue of the journal EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union.

The researchers used drought-sensitive tree ring chronologies that extend back before A.D. 1500 from trees in Western North America, the Southeast and the Great Lakes. They found that dry conditions extended from the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico and the Southwest to the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi Valley throughout the last half of the 1500s. Severe conditions occurred at times in Mexico, the Southwest, Wyoming and Montana, and the Southeast.

Climate varies within a certain envelope, with a drier spell one year and a damp one the next, but in the 1500s "the basement collapsed and went down to another level," said David Stahle, professor of geosciences at the University of Arkansas.

The tree ring records tell of the worst drought in 1,000 years, with an extended period of dryness lasting 40 years in places. Early records from Spanish and English settlements in the Carolinas and Virginia corroborate these findings. You can actually see the correlation between the annual weather variation written Ain archival records and the annual "reports" of the tree rings, Stahle said.

Archival records from the Spanish colony of Santa Elena on Parris Island, S.C., indicate a severe drought from 1566-69. In 1587 -- the year Sir Walter Raleigh's colony on Roanoke Island disappeared -- the Parris Island settlers abandoned their colony. Tree ring records show the year was the region's worst drought in 800 years.

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