“After European explorers reached the New World, their efforts to colonize the Americas had dramatic impacts of life lived there. Today, European culture has almost entirely replaced indigenous lifeways. Here, I will describe some of the cultural impacts of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. One of the most significant impacts of European colonization of the Americas was the sheer reduction in cultural diversity. In North, Central, and South America, the Europeans regarded the Native peoples as being essentially all the same, despite a wide variety of linguistic dialects, religious practices, social hierarchies, customs, and subsistence practices. It is estimated that thousands of indigenous American languages have been replaced by English, Spanish, and Portuguese through the legacy of colonialism. Language and religion often went hand in hand in the process of cultural conversion, and perhaps as many distinct religious...”
