South America
Individual Project
February 13, 2006
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Most of it is in the Southern Hemisphere.
Commonly referred to as part of the Americas, like North America, South America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a previously undiscovered New World.
South America has an area of 17,820,000 km² (6,880,000 sq mi), or almost 3.5% of the Earth's surface (Wikipedia).
South America is thought to have been first inhabited by people crossing the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering Strait, though there are also suggestions of migration from the southern Pacific Ocean (Wikipedia).
In 1494, Portugal and Spain, the two great maritime powers of that time, on the expectation of new lands being discovered in the west, signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which they agreed that all the land outside Europe should be an exclusive duopoly between (Photo: from Wikipedia) the two countries. The Treaty established an imaginary line along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of Cape Verde Islands, roughly 46° 37' W. In terms of the treaty, all land to the west of the line (which is now known to comprehend most of the South American soil), would belong to Spain, and all land to the east, to Portugal (Wikipedia).
Beginning in the 1530s, the people and natural resources of South America were repeatedly exploited by foreign conquistadors, first from Spain and later from Portugal. These competing colonial nations claimed the land and resources as their own and divided it into colonies.
Central America, narrow, southernmost region (c.202,200 sq mi/523,698 sq km) of North America, linked to South America at Colombia. It separates the Caribbean from the Pacific. Historically, geographers considered it...
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