The Americas were populated by Asian peoples from about 30,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait in waves during the last Ice Age, reaching the tip of South America with the Yahgan and Ona tribes of Tierra del Fuego.
Called Amerindians or Native Americans today, they evolved a number of lifestyles dependent on geography. The wheel was never discovered by these people and the horse was only introduced by the Europeans in the late 15th century.
CULTURE
Agriculture was realised about 7000 years ago and metallurgy was perfected in Mexico and the Andes. In North America, animal skins were used for dress and tent making with feathers for decoration. Axes and bows were also developed. Tribes had a chief as leader, with a warrior and worker class below him. The tribes often went to war with each other.
Eskimo-speaking peoples populated the Arctic north, such as the Inuit. Nomadic hunters and fishermen, they lived in ice-built houses. Their religion involved a splitting of the world into the physical and spirit.
Spirit animated humans, animals and the elements. Hunters often returned their prey’s bladder to nature, suggesting rebirth of the soul. Shamen would gain guidance from spirits through trance.
TRIBES, NATION AND RELIGION
Hundreds of tribes populated North America proper – in the east, woodland farmers such as the Iroquois and Cherokee; the central plains had hunter/gatherers following the buffalo such as the Blackfoot, Comanche and Dakota.
Between the plains and Mexico were desert gatherers such as the Navaho, Hopi and Apache; and along the west coast were hunter/gatherers, farmers and coastal fishermen, the Shoshone, Nez Perce and Chinook.
Religion was again shamanic with the Medicine Men, using ecstatic ritual dance, and trance called the ‘vision quest’ to interact with spirits. The world was created by a Sun deity and a snake, with ritual placating the gods who took animal form.
Man was believed to come from animals. More sophisticated beliefs thought a ‘Great Spirit’ created the world as a series of loops which must be maintained to allow order. Order was reflected in society by animal totems prohibiting immoral behaviour.
We can also see in their traditions the emergence of the Culture Hero, a mythological figure appearing where hunter/gatherer moves towards agriculture. Initially he is an animal. As agriculture rises he is a chimera, or animal-man. As city-based culture evolves he becomes the mythical founder-king and lawgiver, such as Quetzalcoatl, or ‘feathered serpent’, the creator-deity of Mezoamerica, around modern day Mexico.
Sometimes depicted as white skinned, he arrived by boat. A sun- god, he was a wise person who organised society, bringing agriculture, metallurgy and law. Becoming leader, he was defeated but would return when the need was great. In him we see many elements of Gilgamesh and Osiris, as well as Christ and King Arthur. His universality is worldwide.
MEZOAMERICA
Mezoamerican culture arose about 1500BC with the Olmecs, building large ceremonial centres. Declining about 400BC, elements of their culture spread from the Gulf coastal area throughout Mexico with various migrations from the north forming the Mixtecs, Tolmecs and eventually Aztecs.
Built close to modern Mexico City was the enigmatic city of Teotihuacan, the city where men became gods. On a high plateau, it was a great religious and trade centre. Built around the Avenue of the Dead, it links the 216 foot high Pyramid of the Sun with the smaller Pyramid of the Moon, the former built over a natural cave, suggesting a continual re-interpretation of religious form from prehistoric times right up to the Aztecs.
The Aztecs themselves moved into the region in the 13th century AD, building a huge empire based on Tenochtitlan, present day Mexico City. Noted for its hieroglyph/pictograph writing, gold-working, architecture and textiles, its ceremonies were clearly borrowed, with merchants gathering wealth to support a theocratic priestly hierarchy who worshipped the Sun/Quetzalcoatl.
Priests worked out a calendar that combined a sacred 260 day period with a 365 day year. When they overlapped, the Aztecs descended into an orgy of human sacrifice. The sun was the centre of a cyclical world with ritual being the means by which the sun rose each morning.
Aztec myth spoke of five suns, each a cosmic era ended in cataclysm. With echoes in Hinduism and apocalyptic Christianity, Aztecs feared these cycles. In other religions, city-based civilisation led to a decline in human sacrifice, and bearing in mind the borrowed nature of Aztec religion, it has been suggested that the Aztecs mis-understood the religion they inherited.
Trance involved the cutting-away of the physical world to reach spirit. Could the Aztecs have taken it literally, cutting away the heart of the body?
APOCALYPSE APPROACHES
Further south, echoes of the same culture arose, ending with the Maya of the Yucatan and Incas of western South America.
And as with the Aztecs, another mis-interpretation of religion occurred in the 16th century. With the arrival of the Spaniard Conquistadores, they mistook them for Quetzalcoatl returned, paying homage to them rather than initially defending themselves. Within a matter of years their civilisations were destroyed, the populations blighted through massacre and disease.
© Anthony North, October 2007
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