Central America - Pre-Columbian, Maya, Aztec: Central America, an archaeological bridge connecting North and South America, was, before the arrival of the Europeans, home to various nomadic and sedentary cultures. Mayan civilization occupied much of the
but they remained of minor significance and died out at the end of the 16th century. It was left to Sephardic Jews to introduce the sugar plantation to the British West Indies from northeastern Brazil in the 1640s, by which time the English and the French had made colonial inroads into the...