With Good Reason

What are we? Where are we from? Where do we go?

Paul Gauguin (1897)

People study history because of some hidden motivations. Perhaps the more important is to know better what role we play in the world. Of the tree classical questions above, history has the potential to answer partially at least two of them: “what are we” and “where are we from“. That is why people look for ancient books in an endless search of its own roots. Nevertheless, that attitude is also distorting because the planet is a lot bigger than just the people to whom we descend. Thinking that history is just the study of “our” people and forgetting “theirs” it is not only an expression of egoism but also of lack of vision. Is like those snobs that collect ancestors of theirs family tree like if they were stamps, believing only them have a past. That attitude put us apart from the richness of history. The tribes of humankind from pole to pole developed together, and reinforced each other, in more ways that meet the eye.

We tend to focus in our own ethnic group, believing that only we exist, and that the rest of the people are just the background noise of the human comedy and tragedy. However, as any student of foreign languages realizes, knowing the “other” opens wider perspectives not only of different cultures but also of ourselves. Knowing the “others” is seeing us at the mirror. That is why Gaugin had to paint in Tahiti and not in Paris. There he discovered himself and developed all his genius, in contact with a culture alien for him that changed his mind.

The pre-Contact Americas are a forgotten place for many people. However, if you live in the New World you have the duty to study them, so I will not convinced you but encourage you to do it: you have no excuses. On the other hand, if you come from the Old World you should also study this topic, because once you know it, you will discover who you are. I will explain you why in this article.

Background ideas on the Americas

The Americas were one of the most isolated continents with respect to Eurasia. Only Australia could compare in isolation. In addition, that is precisely what makes it such an interesting place to study. First, let us stop a little bit in the issue of Americas’ isolation, because it is very difficult to convince that the Americas were isolated to people exposed continuously to pseudo-scientific literature.

Man abandoned Africa circa 60.000 years ago in an epic search for new lands to conquer. In the process changed both in physical and cultural terms, creating all the new nations that populate Eurasia from Iberia to Japan.

Between 25.000 and 15.000 years ago, groups from Eastern Siberia started to cross into Alaska and getting inside North America. The classical theory is that they entered the continent walking through a land bridge, called Beringia, which joined Asia and the Americas at that time, and then they got inside following an opening between the ices that covered most of the region in the glacial age. A new theory, though, says the hypothetical land bridge is not necessary, and that they came following the coastal border, in boats and walking. However, no matter which one is the correct, the fact is man entered the Americas at Alaska and very quickly started to populate all the continental Americas. There are estimations that say the Americas were conquered, from Alaska to Patagonia in less than a thousand years.

It is not clear now how many waves of immigrants came to the Americas from Asia. Some believe there were two waves or more. What is clear, though, is that after some millennia, the route was close once again and the Americas become isolated from the Old World. That isolation has been almost absolute, with the exception of two extraordinary peoples. Let us see who they were.

The Thule culture arrived to Alaska from Siberia around the year 500 AD. They are the ancestors of today’s Inuit, an amazing people whose culture is adapted to the life in the coldest climates on the planet. They started to populate artic Canada and reached Greenland by Viking times. The second group that arrive to the Americas after the Bering Bridge closed were the Norse. They founded a colony in Greenland in 984 AD, just across of the Americas, and from there they established bases in Newfoundland and, perhaps, others places in North America.

With the exception of those documented cases, there are not contacts between people of the Old World and the Americas that resist any serious analysis. Many ignorant fellows insist in fantasies theories of Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, East Indians, Egyptians or Chinese coming to the Americas, but the sad true for them is that no evidence exists of pre-Columbian contacts to the Americas, with the exception of Inuits and Vikings.

In practical terms, south from the Artic the Americas lived isolated from the rest of the world for a period of more than 15.000 years. That is precisely what makes the Americas an interesting place to study, because that isolation makes the New World the perfect subject to study the parallelisms in the evolution of societies.

How the past was preserved

To study the culture of the Americas we have to have a little bit of patience, because of the complexity of the topic. The sources are many, but there is a big problem to overcome and which is the lack of writing in almost all people that lived in the Western Hemisphere before contact.

Writing developed in the Americas in the Olmec region and reached its peak with the Maya civilization. However, because of its complexity, Maya writing was a mystery during centuries. At present time, linguists can read the Mayan stairs and stelae like if they were an open book of history of that ancient civilization. The code was broke thanks to the comparison of today’s Maya tongues of living peoples with the ancient hieroglyphs, and now the mystery of that writing is gone. While Aztecs also used a form of writing that was not of the quality of Maya and it did not preserve much knowledge of the past. The rest of the peoples of the Americas, including the Inca civilization of Peru, did not develop writing, as far as we know today.

However, the lack of writing on most Amerindian peoples is not a big problem if we want to study the history of the Americas from around the 12^th century up to the 16^th century, when the Spaniards invaded and destroyed the Amerindian civilizations. The reason is that those same Spaniards were very careful in preserving the cultural heritage of those ancient civilizations, recording everything they observed in writing. Native Americans, educated by the Spaniards in western letters, also recorded theirs past and cultural heritage, many times in theirs native tongues. The result is a very large numbers of texts of Spanish American colonial times that show is the past with a large degree of detail, with both the Spanish and the Indigenous points of view. In addition, we can enjoy today the reading of several classic pieces of native literature, like the Popol Vu of the Maya and the poetry of the poet king of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl, written in Nahualt.

Nature has also being generous in preserving the material heritage of Native Americans since thousand of years ago. In the deserts of Peru and Chile and in the frozen in the snows of the Andes there are not only pottery and textiles of thousand of years ago but also bodies of people of those times in perfect conditions of preservation. Those finding has allowed scholars to reconstruct a clear picture of the pre-Columbian past.

Another thing that has helped is the presence of a large numbers of ruins in all the Americas such as the Medicine Wheels of Western Canada, the moulds of Cahokia, the apartment buildings of the Anazasi in North America, the ceremonial places of the Tainos, and the Inca ruins in Southern South America. The discoveries of new ruins and cities has shown us a clear picture of what was going on in pre-Columbian Americas, and the picture gets clear while time pass and with new discoveries coming almost daily.

Finally, the oral traditions of the surviving cultures of Amerindians is a rich heritage and source of information as well. However, like all oral traditions, one has to use a critical eye to select the information that is relevant from the symbolism that characterizes the mythical stories.

What is the order in space and time?

Something very difficult to understand for the beginner is the study of the Americas is the concept of horizon. When we study Europe, for instance, we usually focus in the large civilizations, which have a detailed chronology. The study of nomadic people, like the ancient Germans, Slaves or Celts, is more complex because little material evidence usually exists. In the Americas there are also zones inhabited by nomadic peoples were one is not certain at all of what happened in the past, like is the case of the Great Plains, The Amazons or Patagonia. However, in the more advanced regions the evidence of settlements and physical remains are plenty, but the lacks of writing makes difficult to establish the sequence of events in solid ground.

There are other facts that confabulated to makes definitions fuzzy. For instance, the geographical and time scope of civilizations are not clearly delimitated, one is never certain where one culture begin and the other ends. To make sense of all the information, and to organize the cultures and civilizations in a rational way, the archaeologist speaks of “horizons”. These are networks of cultures and civilizations organized in spatial and temporal frameworks, which help to make sense of the sequence of events and the geographical distribution. Archaeologists speak, for example, of the Chavín horizon, meaning the period and the region of influence of that culture.

Archaeologists had divided the Americas in regions, which have a common origin. Those regions are:

Artic: (Northern Canada and Alaska) this region is mainly inhabited by the Inuit people that have a very specialize lifestyle and technology, able to stand the coldest weather on earth.

North America: (Southern Canada and the U.S.) this region has the famous tribal peoples of Easter North America and the Great Plains. Most of these peoples had a nomadic lifestyle with an economy based in small scale farming, hunting and fishing in the coastal areas. Great civilizations of this region are Cahokia, at the Mississippi river, and the Anazasi in the South West.

Mesoamerica (Mexico and Northern Central America.): Was one of the most advanced regions of the pre-contact Americas. Starting by the Olmecs several civilizations developed including Mayans, Toltecs and Aztecs. In certain aspect, Mesoamerican civilizations were the most developed of the hemisphere.

Intermediate (Region between Mesoamerica and the Central Andes): Some secondary cultures developed in this region, influenced by the Mesoamerica and the Central Andes areas. This region produced some of the best gold handcrafts of the Americas.

Caribbean: (All the islands of the Caribbean) the Caribbean was colonized from the Northern Amazon by Arawak speaking peoples. They have a modest level of development however they are the focus of intense study. One of the mysteries are theirs technical skills in navigation.

Amazon: (All the cultures of the Amazon) Of particular importance in this region is the family of peoples known as the Tupi-Guarani, that become famous after the Jesuits decided to found many missions in theirs territories.

Central Andes: (The region around the Andes Southern Colombia to Central Chile and Argentina) this zone is a second hub of advanced civilizations in the Americas. The oldest is Caral, just a couple of centuries younger than Egypt. From there, a large chain of civilizations developed up to the Spanish conquest. Some of the most famous are Chavin, Moche, Tiahuanaco and the Inca Empire, which was the largest state ever built in the pre-Contact Americas.

Southern Andes: (Southern Argentina and Chile) in the north and central part of this region, lived the Mapuche speaking tribes. They were hunters and farmers with a modest lifestyle, similar in to the Amerindians of the North America. They were very organized in war. Down south, close to the Southern tip of Patagonia, live a quite small number of people with very basic cultures. Some of them were the Onas, Kawashkar and Yamanas.

Each of these zones had different degrees of development. In Mesoamerica and the Central Andes, we found the most famous civilizations, followed by the Intermediate Region, North America and the Southern Andes region. The most basic lifestyles were in the Caribbean, the Amazon and Patagonia.

Arrival and development

One of the first lesson in studying the pre-Contact Americas in that in here we see clearly how cultures and civilizations develop, given the right conditions.

Man arrived to the Americas somewhere between 25.000 and 15.000 years ago, across the Strait of Bering. They carry with them some rudimentary technology to survive in the artic regions, and they certainly had some knowledge of weapons, tents building, making fire, besides it they carried some sort of cosmology. Therefore, Amerindian peoples did not start from zero, but from humble beginnings.

These waves of settlers spread quickly across the continents of the Americas, because there are not physical barriers for walking from Alaska to the Land of Fire, so some speculate that one thousand years was enough from the time the first man entered the Americas to the time they reached the Southern tip of South America. We are not certain of how many waves of immigrants entered the Americas through the Bering Strait, and scientists do not agree if it happened in one, two or several waves. The fact is that after a long time, the Bering corridor closed once again, and the people of the Americas become isolated from the Old World.

There is evidence of human activity in all the Americas since those times. They are known as “Paleo-Indian”, and they had a hunting and nomadic lifestyle, living in small bands that hunted mega-fauna. Many of the animals they used to hunt are already extinct, including mastodons and the American horse. The earliest remnants of human activity are, so far, from Monteverde, Chile, and believed to be 12.500 years old.

Around 9.000 years ago, perhaps seven millennia after they crossed the Bering Strait, the first evidence of advances started to appear in the dry desert of Southern Peru and Northern Chile. One of the first peoples known is the Chinchorro culture. They were fishermen that survived mainly on seafoods. They are also the first people in the world that created mummies and their remains have helped scientist to reconstruct theirs history, In the time of Chinchorro people already knew how to cultivate cotton, as is evident in the textiles of the mummies themselves. From there on we start to find evidence of agriculture, pottery and a society of increasing complexity.

The first advanced civilization on the Americas that is known so far is Caral in Peru, that existed between 3.000 BC up to 1.600 B.C., and which is one of the oldest civilizations in the planet. From there on, the Peruvian region shows a string of cultures and civilizations that grow in complexity with the pass of time. Some of the most famous are Chavin (900 B.C.), Moche (100 A.D. 700 A.D.), Tiahuanaco (200 B.C.) and the Inca Empire (1300-1532). These are the most important developments of the Peruvian area but there are hundred cultures more, which developed in parallel in those regions. In fact, some of the more important developments in the Americas happened in Peru. So far, it is not know to which extent the developments in this region influenced Mesoamerica, but it is clear its influence is widespread in the cultures of South America, from Colombia to the Patagonia.

Meanwhile in Mesoamerica development followed a similar pattern. From 8.000 BC to 2.000 B.C. people started to develop agriculture. Maize is native of Mexico and from there spread to the rest of the Americas. There are samples of precursors of Maize, in Guatemala and Mexico since 3.500 BC. The development of civilizations in the Mesoamerican region is still a matter of study and there are several advanced cultures in the region that could wear the title of the “earliest” civilization, including the Tlatilco culture (1250 B.C -200 B.C.). What is clear today is that the Olmec civilization is the product of the development of previous Mesoamerican cultures during thousand of years; the details are not complete yet, though. The famous Olmecs (1200 B.C. -200 B.C.) was an advanced civilization on which we find the common cultural patterns of all the ones that followed. After the Olmecs, the Maya (250 B.C.-900 A.D.) reached the peak of development in the Americas, with achievements like the only fully developed written language in the Americas, the invention of arithmetic including the number zero, and the creation of advanced architecture and technologies. After them others civilizations followed, like the Toltecs (900 A.D.-1100 A.D). Finally, the Aztec Empire (1.248 A.D. 1521 A.D.) was the most powerful state ever developed in Mesoamerica, with large civil engineering works, poetry and advanced achievements.

Contributions of the Americas to the world

The knowledge of the pre-Colombian Americas allows us to understand the origin of many things of common use worldwide. The Americas main contribution is in the fields of foods and medicines. It is believed around 60% of the vegetables we consume today were domesticated and cultivated in the Americas. These are some of them:

• Maize(Mexican): in foods from tortillas to pop-corn, including breakfast cereals.
• Potato(Peruvian): one of the most consumed foods worldwide. Also used in vodka production
• Tomato(Mexican): consumed directly and in salsas like kepchut.
• Beans(Mexican/Peruvian): several varieties consumed worldiwe today.
• Squash(North American): of worldwide consumption.
• Quinoa(Peruvian): similar to rice. Is not very popular as yet outside the Andes.
• Chili pepper(Mexico): perhaps the most outstanding specie.
• Sunflowers(North American): used to produce oil and margarines.
• Pineapple(Paraguay): of widespread consumption and wrongly though as a tropical fruit.
• Peanuts(Peru): there are Moche necklaces with golden peanuts. Today it is a favority across the globe.
• Maple syrup(Canada): favorite in American cuisine.
• Avocado(Mexico): Another widespread plant.
• Vanilla(Mexico): Commonly used for flavoring in ice-cream and drinks.
• Strawberry(Chilean): today’s strawberry is an hybrid between the European plant and the Chilean. The size and flavoring comes from the Chilean plant.
• Chocolate(Mexican): Another unique plant of worldwide consumption.
• Chewing gum (Mexican): Known since old times, it spread to the U.S. during the Mexican American war, and spread through the world by the Americans.

Animal foods are not as common, but one must remember that turkey was domesticated in Mexico and North America.

In medicine, we find thousand of plants that have practical use whose origin is the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps the most famous are:

• Curare: a poison used by natives to kill animals and people. Curare is present in medicine, used as anesthesia and a muscle relaxant.
• Coca: clinical cocaine is of common use to alleviate pain.
• Quinine: is a medicine to treat malaria. We can find it as well as a flavoring for tonic water.

Other plants domesticated and selected by Native Americans also affected the world in many ways. One is the American cotton which is the fiber of choice used today worldwide, and which is different from the Asian plant. In the industrial field, rubber has had perhaps the biggest impact of all. It is hard to imagine a world without rubber, present in every single tire of cars, planes and subways, besides other applications.

Inventions

Native Americans were very ingenious people that developed lot of techniques. However, people do not usually know them because a simple fact: most of the Amerindian inventions also were present in the Old World, invented independently and in parallel.

There are thousands of Amerindian inventions. In here there is sample of them:

• Hanging bridges (Incas): Incas used hanging bridges of cabling, supported by an stone structure. These inventions were also known in the Old World.
• Writing (Mayas): The ancient Maya civilization developed a complete system of writing, used to record theirs history in paper and stone. They were similar in scope to Chinese ideograms and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
• Paper (Mesoamerican Amate paper): Paper was also invented in China.
• Hydraulic toys (Peru): In ancient Peru, hydraulic toys that whistle were well known. In the West, the inventor of those toys was Heron of Alexandria.
• Highways (Incas): Inca roads were an intensive system of highways that spread in a surface that was half the size of Roman Empire.
• Apartment buildings (Anazasi): Apartment buildings of the Anazasi are unique in the Americas.
• Inflatable boats (Changos): The Chango natives of Chile used inflatable boats to fish, hunt whales and transport loads.
• Calendars (Mesoamerica): Mayan and Aztec calendars are one sophisticated method to record dates.
• Mathematics and Zero (Mayas): The Mayas discovered Zero perhaps earlier than in India.
• Caravans (Incas): The Peruvians have llamas as a load animal. Llamas only stand 50 kilograms of weight. Although not as practical like a camel caravan, the llama facilitated the spreading of civilization in South America.
• Quipus (Peru): accounting strings of ancient Peruvians.
• Syringe (North America): Natives invented the syringe before anyone else.
• Lacquer (Mexico): the Mexicans discovered a form of lacquer based in maque, a bug juice. Chinese developed lacquer based in a plant called sumac.
• Patolli (Mexico): a game board dice game, similar to backgammon.
• Convex mirrors for starting fires (Inca): Greeks also invented them in ancient times.
• Ships and sails (Colombia): Native Americans developed sea-going ships able to carry up to 30 tons of loads. They were large balsa rafts that carried a single sail, as the famous Kon-Tiki raft of Thor Heyyerdhal.

Few pre-Columbian inventions were unknown in the Old World, so we do not find much influence in that field, and even some people believe Amerindians lacked creativity, which is false. Immediately after the conquest, most of the Amerindian techniques were replaced by the European variety: Latin writing replaced local writing, llama caravans were upgraded by mule caravans, quipu accounting strings become obsolete with East Indian numerals, etc. However, certain Amerindian inventions spread to the word such as Kayaks, snow rackets, sport canoes, and in the clinical use of enemas. Finally, at least one chemical discovery of importance comes from the Americas: platinum.

It is also quite revealing that natives never invented certain things, considered basic in the Old World. For example, string musical instruments. However, the worst case is the lack of wheels in transportation. In the past, scholars believed wheels were unknown in the Americas but that is not true, because wheeled toys found in Mexican tombs. However, Amerindians never applied wheels to transport or machinery. Not even the pottery wheel was ever invented in the Americas. The fact natives did not know the wheeled machinery was perhaps the main reason of the relative technological backwardness of the Americans with respect to Eurasia.
Searching the origins of ecology

The Amerindian concept of “Mother Land” is widespread in the Americas. The cosmology of many Native American peoples start with the concept we are the child of the land, which is a living being that is the womb where we are born and the tomb where we will rest after death. Nurturing the land with rituals, and sometimes with the offering of human sacrifices, was part of the religious practices of all ancient Americans. The rationale behind that was that we have to respect and nurture Mother Nature in order to preserve the cosmic balance.

In the West, the idea is the opposite. Human beings are seen as the most important creature of the planet, and all the animals and plants are servants at theirs service. In Genesis is written that God created the world for Man. Many people believe that is why Nature is considered today as only a source of raw materials to exploit for development. It was only after man started to consider the possibility of becoming extinct -because of ecological problems- that the paradigm changed.

The ecological conscience arises naturally in the context of the Native American concept of “Mother Earth”, and its influence was great in the origins of the ecological movement. One of the earliest ecologists, Grey Owl, was one of the first to introduce the Western masses to Native American love for nature. Since then this ecological conscience has spread around the world.

Perhaps in that sense, the concept of “Mother Earth” is one of the most powerful influences of Native American mind on our global society.

Discover the Americas at last

It is false that Columbus discovered the Americas. Yes, the Admiral reached the Americas and gave the news to the Europeans that there was a New World beyond the horizon. However, he did not discover it, not only because people were already living in the Americas for tens of thousands of years but also because the Americas are still unknown! After five hundred years of the first contact, the Old World still do not know what really happened in the New World. Pseudo-science and prejudice blur the reality of these lands that cover the 40% of the surface of the world.

When people study the history of ancient Americas get a new vision of world development. They have the opportunity of compare the evolutions in Eurasia and the Americas side-by-side, learning in the process how human societies progress with time, following natural patterns. We learn that humankind has many things in common and that far from being different we share the same raw material and have the same potential. Studying history considering the Americas bring us the possibility of seeing the development of man with a stereoscopic vision. We see the past in tree dimensions, instead of the flat concept of a history monopolized by Eurasia that is usually though in the schools. Studying the Americas, we have the chance of understand human development better.

We still ignore many things about the history Americas. We are not sure if Caral was the first civilization or if there were some previous developments. We do not know the degree of contact between Mesoamerica and the Peruvian regions, not about the lines of communications between both regions. Archaeologists suspect the Amazon could have interesting cultures hidden in the background waiting for discovery, and they think cultures like Chavin had its origin in Amazonian peoples. Many details are not complete in the picture. For instance, very few things are known of the ships ancient Arawaks used in the conquest of the Caribbean from the Amazon, and that is not the only question waiting for answers. However, in general lines, the history of the Americas is not a mystery anymore, at least for the people that take the time to study it.

Finally, there are many things we can learn studying the Americas, because in them we find the development of human beings that evolved from modest cultures to the highest forms of civilization. In a deeper sense, as human we are, “they” are “we” and “we” are “they”.

If you keep that in mind, you will see yourselves reflected in the mirror.