A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City reveals it was part of the plunder Spanish conquerors tried to carry away as they fled the Aztec capital after Mexica warriors forced a hasty retreat. Click here for the whole story.

A map of America touted as being one of the oldest on record turned out to be a forgery. For decades, many believed the Vinland Map was an important historical artifact showing an early version of North America. Yale has been the map’s home since the 1960s, but during that time, debate regarding its authenticity has never completely ceased. A news release issued by the university ended this debate. Experts who analyzed the map for authenticity found throughout it the presence of a “titanium compound” that was not used in ink until the 1920s. They also pointed to an inscription in Latin on the back of the map as evidence that someone deliberately sought to make the map appear as genuine as possible. Read the story here.

Check screenings of Latin American movies here at UCI, at the Latin American Film Festival, https://www.humanities.uci.edu/las

An analysis of fossilized footprints at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico offers what some scientists say is the most conclusive evidence that humans lived in North America long before the end of the last Ice Age. The research dates the footprints to 20,000-23,000 years ago. Before, it was thought humans were in the Americas about 13,000 years ago. Check the article here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/footprint-study-is-best-evidence-yet-that-humans-lived-in-ice-age-north-america-180978757/

The peopling of pre-historic South America is also under debate because of genetic research.

All students will receive three extra credit points on the final exam if, we don’t see or hear any cell phones. This applies to the non-classroom-related usage of laptops and their sound, which should be used only toward the course goals.

For each instance in which students use their computers for non-classroom-related activities or use a cell phone (including having their phone on their desk), one point will be deducted from the entire class’s three extra credit points. Teaching Assistants will monitor computer usage and communicate these instances of failing this policy to the professor after the class ends.

While you think you can multitask, your screen also affects the work of people sitting behind you, who will get distracted by the images, flashes, and popping text messages from your screen. We want to create a community of learners, which means respecting the self (yourself) while respecting others.

There are few original civilizations in world history, so it is noteworthy that the peoples of the Americas would have generated two of them –Mesoamerica in the North and the Andes in the South. The Americas were a complex amalgam of cultural identities and differences even before the Spanish and Portuguese arrived. Imperium (Empire) –political, religious, and aesthetic –was possible only once the idea of cultural purity was abandoned in Colonial Latin America. This course will cover the rise and fall of the largest and most populated colonial empire of the early modern era –the Spanish monarchy– and then the nineteenth-century encounters of the new Latin American republics with the rising hemispheric power of the United States, which challenged for the now “Latin Americans” their new conceptions of sovereignty, freedom, and equality.

See this Lat Am Studies Flyer on completing the minor in Latin American Studies, and visit the website of the Latin American Studies Center for further details.