Civilisation which inhabited pre columbian america

If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. Ancient Civilizations in Credo: Americas. Peoples Olmec: Topic The culture of ancient Mexican natives inhabiting the tropical coastal plain of the contemporary states of Veracruz and Tabasco, between and B.

Maya Civilization: Topic One of the great cultures of mesoamerica, Maya civilization extended throughout southern mexico and northern Central America. Aztec: Topic Member of an American Indian people who migrated south into the valley of Mexico in about Culture Mayan Literature From Concise Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature The Maya were the only people of America's high cultures who developed a glyph-writ language a partly ideographic, partly phonetic mode of writing capable of recording events.

All religions of Mesoamerica were polytheistic. The gods had to be constantly propitiated with offerings and sacrifices. The religions also shared a belief in a multilevel universe that had gone through five creations and four destructions by the time of the Spanish conquest.

Mesoamerican religions heavily emphasized the astral bodies, particularly the sun, the moon, and Venus, and the observations of their movements by astronomer-priests were extraordinarily detailed and accurate. They are traditionally called Chuspas, but widely known as Coca bags because of their use. Coca bags existed in ancient Andean societies to carry leaves from the coca plant, which were used for medicinal and ritualistic purposes.

Textiles in the ancient Andes are saturated with meaning and symbolism. The textile fragments in our collection come from the Chancay culture dating from A. Archaeologists estimate that dogs have been domesticated for over 10, years, with evidence in the archaeological record indicating domesticated dogs have existed in the southwestern region of Mexico for at least 3, years. Ceramic effigies, or representations, of Xoloitzcuintle, more commonly referred to as Xolo, or Mexican Hairless, have been found across the region.

Pre-Columbian Civilizations The migration of ancient peoples did not stop at the current modern-day boundaries of North America. View fullsize. Inca Located south of the Aztec and Maya in the Andean Mountain range of Peru , the Inca were a great civilization who formed an empire that would eventually become the largest in pre-Columbian America. Inca Jug, ca. Colima Dogs One very unique meso-american artifact that occurs with great frequency are canine vessels known as Colima Dogs.

Artifact Blog , Pre-Columbian. Jul 28, Jaguar Whistling Pot. Jun 10, Jama-Coaque Ceramic Effigy. May 13, Nasca Vase. Feb 11, Moche Ceramic Vessels. Jan 1, Maya Eccentrics. Oct 30, Teotihuacan Masks. Oct 2, Andean Woven Coca Bags. The Inca believed these children would immediately go to a much better afterlife. Located about fifty miles northwest of Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of about 8, feet, the city had been built in and inexplicably abandoned roughly a hundred years later.

Scholars believe the city was used for religious ceremonial purposes and housed the priesthood. The architectural beauty of this city is unrivaled.

Using only the strength of human labor and no machines, the Inca constructed walls and buildings of polished stones, some weighing over fifty tons, that were fitted together perfectly without the use of mortar. With few exceptions, the North American native cultures were much more widely dispersed than the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan societies, and did not have their population size or organized social structures.

Although the cultivation of corn had made its way north, many Indians still practiced hunting and gathering. Horses, first introduced by the Spanish, allowed the Plains Indians to more easily follow and hunt the huge herds of bison.

Like present-day apartment houses, these buildings had multiple stories, each with multiple rooms. The three main groups of the Pueblo people were the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi. They developed a distinctive artistic style for painting bowls with finely drawn geometric figures and wildlife, especially birds, in black on a white background. Beginning about CE, the Hohokam built an extensive irrigation system of canals to irrigate the desert and grow fields of corn, beans, and squash.

By , their crop yields were supporting the most highly populated settlements in the southwest. The Hohokam decorated pottery with a red-on-buff design and made jewelry of turquoise.

To access their homes, the cliff-dwelling Anasazi used ropes or ladders that could be pulled in at night for safety. A century later, however, probably because of drought, the Pueblo peoples abandoned their cities. Their present-day descendants include the Hopi and Zuni tribes. The Indian groups who lived in the present-day Ohio River Valley and achieved their cultural apex from the first century CE to CE are collectively known as the Hopewell culture.

Their settlements, unlike those of the southwest, were small hamlets. Utilizing waterways, they developed trade routes stretching from Canada to Louisiana, where they exchanged goods with other tribes and negotiated in many different languages. From the coast they received shells; from Canada, copper; and from the Rocky Mountains, obsidian. With these materials they created necklaces, woven mats, and exquisite carvings.

What remains of their culture today are huge burial mounds and earthworks. Many of the mounds that were opened by archaeologists contained artworks and other goods that indicate their society was socially stratified. Perhaps the largest indigenous cultural and population center in North America was located along the Mississippi River near present-day St. At its height in about CE, this five-square-mile city, now called Cahokia, was home to more than ten thousand residents; tens of thousands more lived on farms surrounding the urban center.

The city also contained one hundred and twenty earthen mounds or pyramids, each dominating a particular neighborhood and on each of which lived a leader who exercised authority over the surrounding area. The largest mound covered fifteen acres.

Cahokia was the hub of political and trading activities along the Mississippi River. After CE, however, this civilization declined—possibly because the area became unable to support the large population. Encouraged by the wealth found by the Spanish in the settled civilizations to the south, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English, Dutch, and French explorers expected to discover the same in North America. What they found instead were small, disparate communities, many already ravaged by European diseases brought by the Spanish and transmitted among the natives.

Rather than gold and silver, there was an abundance of land, and the timber and fur that land could produce. The Indians living east of the Mississippi did not construct the large and complex societies of those to the west. Because they lived in small autonomous clans or tribal units, each group adapted to the specific environment in which it lived.

These groups were by no means unified, and warfare among tribes was common as they sought to increase their hunting and fishing areas. Still, these tribes shared some common traits. A chief or group of tribal elders made decisions, and although the chief was male, usually the women selected and counseled him. Gender roles were not as fixed as they were in the patriarchal societies of Europe, Mesoamerica, and South America.

This map indicates the locations of the three Pueblo cultures the major Eastern Woodland Indian tribes, and the tribes of the Southeast, as well as the location of the ancient city of Cahokia. Women typically cultivated corn, beans, and squash and harvested nuts and berries, while men hunted, fished, and provided protection.

But both took responsibility for raising children, and most major Indian societies in the east were matriarchal. In tribes such as the Iroquois, Lenape, Muscogee, and Cherokee, women had both power and influence. They counseled the chief and passed on the traditions of the tribe.

This matriarchy changed dramatically with the coming of the Europeans, who introduced, sometimes forcibly, their own customs and traditions to the natives. Clashing beliefs about land ownership and use of the environment would be the greatest area of conflict with Europeans. Although tribes often claimed the right to certain hunting grounds—usually identified by some geographical landmark—Indians did not practice, or in general even have the concept of, private ownership of land.

There were tribal hunting grounds, usually identified by some geographical landmark, but there was no private ownership of land. The European Christian worldview, on the other hand, viewed land as the source of wealth. According to the Christian Bible, God created humanity in his own image with the command to use and subdue the rest of creation, which included not only land, but also all animal life.

Upon their arrival in North America, Europeans found no fences, no signs designating ownership. Land, and the game that populated it, they believed, were there for the taking. Great civilizations had risen and fallen in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. In North America, the complex Pueblo societies including the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi as well as the city at Cahokia had peaked and were largely memories.

The Eastern Woodland peoples were thriving, but they were soon overwhelmed as the number of English, French, and Dutch settlers increased.