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Pre-Columbian Cultures
This list of pre-Columbian cultures includes those civilizations and cultures of the Americas which flourished prior to the European colonization of the Americas. Cultural characteristics Many pre-Columbian civilizations established permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, and complex societal hierarchies. In North America, indigenous cultures in the Lower Mississippi Valley during the Middle Archaic period built complexes of multiple mounds, with several in Louisiana dated to 5600–5000 BP (3700 BC–3100 BC). Watson Brake is considered the oldest, multiple mound complex in the Americas, as it has been dated to 3500 BC. It and other Middle Archaic sites were built by pre-ceramic, hunter-gatherer societies. They preceded the better known Poverty Point culture and its elaborate complex by nearly 2,000 years. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexico SunMoonPyramid
Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers ,Mexico ''''. . making it the world's 13th-largest country by ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors. The Archaic period, before 2000 BC, saw the first developments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistoric Southwestern Cultural Divisions
Southwestern archaeology is a branch of archaeology concerned with the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. This region was first occupied by hunter-gatherers, and thousands of years later by advanced civilizations, such as the Ancestral Puebloans, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon. This area, identified with the current states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada in the western United States, and the states of Sonora and Chihuahua in northern Mexico, has seen successive prehistoric cultural traditions for at least of 12,000 years. An often-quoted statement from Erik Reed (1964) defined the Greater Southwest culture area as extending north to south from Durango, Mexico, to Durango, Colorado, and east to west from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Las Vegas, New Mexico.Cordell, Linda S. and Maxine E. McBrinn 2012 ''Archaeology of the Southwest'', 3rd edition. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek Differently areas of this region are also known as the American Southwest, North ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mound
A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher elevation on any surface. Artificial mounds have been created for a variety of reasons throughout history, including habitation (see Tell and Terp), ceremonial (platform mound), burial (tumulus), and commemorative purposes (e.g. Kościuszko Mound). Archaeology North American archaeology In the archaeology of the United States and Canada, a mound is a deliberately constructed elevated earthen structure or earthwork, intended for a range of potential uses. In European and Asian archaeology, the word "tumulus" may be used as a synonym for an artificial hill, particularly if the hill is related to particular burial customs. While the term "mound" may be applied to historic constructions, most mounds in the United States are pre-Colum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleo-Arctic Tradition
The Paleo-Arctic Tradition is the name given by archaeologists to the cultural tradition of the earliest well-documented human occupants of the North American Arctic, which date from the period 8000–5000 BC. The tradition covers Alaska and expands far into the east, west, and the Southwest Yukon Territory. The Upward Sun River site, a Late Pleistocene archaeological site associated with the Paleo-Arctic Tradition, located in the Tanana Valley, Alaska has now been dated to around 11,500 BP. Upward Sun River is the site of the oldest human remains discovered on the American side of Beringia. Around 8000 BC, Alaska was still connected to Siberia with the landbridge, located in the current Bering Strait. People who inhabited this region in Alaska were of the Dyuktai tradition, originally located in Siberia. Eventually, the Dyuktai changed into the Sumnagin culture, a hunting/fishing group, whose culture was defined by possessing a new technology. Other cultures flourished as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Period In The Americas
Archaic is a period of time preceding a designated classical period, or something from an older period of time that is also not found or used currently: *List of archaeological periods **Archaic Sumerian language, spoken between 31st - 26th centuries BC in Mesopotamia (Classical Sumerian is from 26th - 23rd centuries BC). **Archaic Greece ** Archaic period in the Americas ** Early Dynastic Period of Egypt * Archaic Homo sapiens, people who lived about 300,000 to 30,000 B.P. (this is far earlier than the archaeological definition) *Archaism, speech or writing in a form that is no longer current * Archaic language, one that preserves features that are no longer present in other languages of the same language family * List of archaic musical instruments *Archaic Latin Old Latin, also known as Early Latin or Archaic Latin (Classical la, prīsca Latīnitās, lit=ancient Latinity), was the Latin language in the period before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. It des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cody Complex
The Cody complex is a Paleo-Indian culture group first identified at a bison antiquus kill site near Cody, Wyoming in 1951. Points possessing characteristics of Cody Complex flaking have been found all across North America from Canada to as far south as Oklahoma and Texas. The tradition is generally attributed to the North American, primarily in the High Plains portion of the American Great Plains. The discovery of the Cody complex broadened the understanding of late Paleo-Indian cultural traditions beyond the Folsom tradition. Most Cody complex sites were bison antiquus kill and butcher sites, and sometime campsites.Gibbon, Guy E.; Ames, Kenneth M''Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia''. 1998. , pp. 168-169. The sites are distinguished by their campsites, tools and butchering process. The tools, dated between about 6,000 and 8,000 BC, include Cody knives and Scottsbluff and diamond-shaped Eden projectile points.Shortt, Mack W''Record of Early Peopl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plano Cultures
The Plano cultures is a name given by archaeologists to a group of disparate hunter-gatherer communities that occupied the Great Plains area of North America during the Paleo-Indian or Archaic period. Distinguishing characteristics The Plano cultures are characterised by a range of unfluted projectile point tools collectively called Plano points and like the Folsom people generally hunted ''Bison antiquus'', but made even greater use of techniques to force stampedes off of a cliff or into a constructed corral. Their diets also included pronghorn, elk, deer, raccoon, and coyote. To better manage their food supply, they preserved meat in berries and animal fat and stored it in containers made of hides. History The Plano cultures existed in the North American Arctic during the Paleo-Indian or Archaic period between 9000 BCE and 6000 BCE. The Plano cultures originated in the plains, but extended far beyond, from the Atlantic coast to modern-day British Columbia and as far ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folsom Tradition
The Folsom Complex is a Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America from c. 8500 BCE to c. 4000 BCE. The term was first used in 1927 by Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. Numerous Paleoindian cultures occupied North America, with some restricted to the Great Plains and Great Lakes of the modern United States of America and Canada as well as adjacent areas to the west and south west. The Folsom Tradition was characterised by use of Folsom points as projectile tips and activities known from kill sites where slaughter and butchering of bison took place and Folsom tools were left behind. Some kill sites exhibit evidence of up to 50 bison being killed, although the Folsom diet apparently included mountain sheep, marmots, deer and cottontail rabbit as well. The Folsom Hanson Site in Wyoming also revealed areas of hardstanding, which indicate possible dwellings. The type site is Folsom site, near Folsom, N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clovis Culture
The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone and bone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna, particularly two mammoths, at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936 and 1937 (though Paleoindian artifacts had been found at the site since the 1920s). It appears around 11,500–11,000 uncalibrated years before present (YBP)"Clovis Culture" entry in the ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology'': "9,500–9,000 BC". at the end of the last glacial period and is characterized by the manufacture of " Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago. The only human burial that has been directly associated with tools from the Clovis culture included the remains of an infant boy researchers named Anzick-1. Paleogenetic analyses of Anzick-1's ancient nuclear, mitoch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting. Human sacrifice was practiced in many human societies beginning in prehistoric times. By the Iron Age with the associated developments in religion (the Axial Age), human sacrifice was becoming less common throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia, and came to be looked down upon as barbaric during classical antiquity. In the Americas, however, human sacrifice continued to be practiced, by some, to varying degrees until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice has become extremely rare. Modern secular laws treat human sacrifices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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