Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

gina. However, intellectual activity in such subjects increas-

ingly centered on the explication of earlier works, and little

new research was done. Philosophy fl ourished for a while in

the form of the Neoplatonism and also as Christian theol-

ogy, but neither of these doctrines emphasized the investi-

gation of the natural world. Non-Christian philosophy was

increasingly linked to magic and to evil, and Christian un-

derstanding of the world located authority in sacred texts

rather than in inquiry and experiment and the pagan works

of the past. Saint Augustine, considered a brilliant theologian

of the fourth and fi ft h centuries c.e., did not believe that the

world was round, a fact well known to Greek and Roman in-

tellectuals since the fourth century b.c.e. Many pagan works

of science and philosophy were translated into Arabic and

survived in the Islamic tradition. Th e Western world became

reacquainted with them aft er the Middle Ages.

THE AMERICAS

BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL

Although the chronology and routes by which the Americas

were populated are still debated, one version envisions people

spilling over the Bering land bridge into Alaska beginning

some 30,000 years ago. Migrating steadily southward to form

communities throughout North, Central, and South America,

they had to become astute observers of nature. For thousands

of years they had to adapt to new and sometimes changing

climates, new fl ora and fauna, new food supplies, and new

landscapes and terrains. Some settled in the wet regions of

the Pacifi c Northwest, some in the dry regions of Central

America, some in the fl at plains of the American Midwest,

some in the mountainous regions of South America. Some

coped with tropical heat and others with arctic cold. In time

they adapted so successfully that they were able to build some

of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world.

COSMOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Th e way the aboriginal peoples of the Americas looked at

their universe can be diffi cult for the modern world to under-

stand. In modern life a sharp distinction is made between the

natural and supernatural worlds. Some people do not believe

in a world of the supernatural, but among those who do, the

two realms tend to be thought of as separate; the very word

supernatural suggests that the world of the gods and the spirit

exists above (“super”) or outside the physical world. Th is

separation, however, would have been unthinkable to ancient

Americans. Every aspect of their lives had religious signifi -

cance. Th ey saw the universe as composed of spiritual and

divine forces that aff ected them every moment of their lives.

At the center of this view of the world was a cosmos that

ancient Americans saw as a hierarchy of spheres or planes.

Some of them were superior to the world of the earth; others

were inferior. One example is provided by the Nahua peo-

ple of central Mexico, precursors to the Aztec, also a Nahua

people. Th e Nahua believed that above the earthly level were

numerous other spheres, variously nine, 11, 12, or 13, with 13

being the most common. Th is belief infl uenced the calendar,

which was composed of 13 periods, somewhat inaccurately

called “months,” each in honor of the divinity that ruled each

sphere. Th e highest divinity was referred to as Ometeotl,

which translates roughly as the “god of duality.” Ometeotl

was responsible for what the Nahua saw as the duality of the

universe: positive and negative, male and female, the spirit

and the physical worlds. Artworks depicting Ometeotl are

few. Modern researchers working in sophisticated labora-

tories with the most advanced equipment might regard this

duality as myth, not science. To the Nahua, however, it was

science. Th eir belief was based on observations of the world

they lived in and explained the origins and development of

their universe and humankind.

Because they were keen observers and experimenters,

like many other ancient civilizations, the ancient Americans

can be regarded as scientists in fi elds like agriculture, archi-

tecture, engineering, construction, metallurgy, and math-

ematics. Ancient American peoples, for example, made early

observations in the fi elds of astronomy, biology, chemistry,

geology, and physics. As astronomers they learned about the

movements of heavenly objects and used those observations

to create calendars and to predict changes in the seasons.

Th ey observed the “hole” in the Big Dipper long before Eu-

ropean astronomers did. In fact, so keen was the interest of

the ancient Americans in astronomy that priests and astrono-

mers were oft en one and the same. Because science through-

out much of the ancient world was associated with magic and

with understanding the power and will of the gods, the earli-

est scientists were shamans, priests, and others who claimed

knowledge of the divine and could read it in the heavens.

As geologists, early Americans knew long before the Eu-

ropeans did that the world was round. Th is knowledge was

refl ected in their myths about the origins and creation of the

world. (In this context, a myth is not something that is un-

true; rather, it is a narrative that conveys a fundamental truth

about the nature of the universe and humans’ place in it.) For

example, the ancient Lakota nation of North America saw the

world’s four original beings—Inyan (rock), Maka (the earth),

Taku Skan Skan (the sky), and Wi (the sun)—as round, be-

cause in the cosmology of the Lakota roundness was the most

sacred shape.

As chemists, early Americans oft en turned their atten-

tion to their food supply. Th ey learned, for example, how to

deal with stored corn that had become lignifi ed, or hardened.

Th ey learned that if they applied alkaline substances (that is,

substances that are bases rather than acids) to the corn, they

could break down the hardened outer layer and soft en the

kernel inside. In this way they could return dried corn to an

edible state, and the alkaline substance, usually lime water,

added valuable calcium to their diet. Sometimes they left the

corn in its hardened state to make popcorn.

Even in physics the early Americans made astute obser-

vations. During lightning storms, for example, they learned

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