Native American Ancient Civilizations & Lost Cities
Japanese researchers said they have discovered–with
the unintended help of looters–what appears to be a temple ruins at
least 4,800 years old that could be one of the oldest in the Americas.
The temple is believed to have been built before or around 2600 BC
when Peru’s oldest known city, Caral, was created, the researchers said.
Amid the aisles of spaghetti and canned peas, cereals and breads made with mysterious-sounding grains such as amaranth and quinoa are sprouting up at major supermarkets.
Read moreResearchers report Wednesday that they found a 4,500-year-old burial
in Mexico that had the oldest known example of dental work in the
Americas.
The upper front teeth of the remains had been ground down so they
could be mounted with animal teeth, possibly wolf or panther teeth,
for ceremonial purposes.
Native American cultures that once flourished in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia constructed geometric and animal-shaped earth works that often rivaled Stonehenge in their astronomical accuracy. This lost heritage from the Adena, Hopewell and Fort Ancient cultures is returning in the form of a traveling exhibit that will include virtual reconstructions of earthworks from 39 sites.
Read moreAmateur archeologists will get a chance to search this summer for the lost mission of Santa Isabel de Utinahica, built in the wilderness in the 1600s for a lone friar who was dispatched to evangelize among the Indians on the edge of Spain’s colonial empire.
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Jaguars and panthers aren’t from Indiana but they show up at the Mann Hopewell Site as beautifully detailed carvings. Put them together with clay figurines that have slanted eyes — not a Hopewell feature — and Linderman says we could be looking at a connection between Indiana and Central or South America.
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Watson Brake, an area of mounds south of Monroe, was discovered by local archaeologist Reca Jones more than 30 years ago. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to have the area declared a state park to preserve its treasures.
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An ancient civilization of mound builders who lived near the Ocmulgee River just northeast of what is now downtown Macon may have been home to more native people than originally thought. Though the research, much of it done with a ground-scanning instrument to roughly map underground shapes and forms, is still under way, early analysis seems to indicate more unearthed dwellings at the site than were previously known to have existed.
Read moreSeven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say. The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100
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Thirty years ago the archaeological scientists Garman Harbottle and Edward Sayre used neutron activation analysis to show that turquoise mosaics from Mexico, found as far away as the great Maya city of Chichén Itzá in Yucatan and dating back to around AD900, used raw material originating in the Cerrillos mines between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico, an overland distance of some 3,200 km (2,000 miles).
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A 45-foot canoe, buried for more than a thousand years and used by a long-dead culture of Native Americans was used to paddle over the open waters of the bay — unlike the other ancient canoes uncovered in Florida which were used to ply the calmer waters of lakes and rivers.
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Hundreds of prehistoric dogs found buried throughout the southwestern United States show that canines played a key role in the spiritual beliefs of ancient Americans, new research suggests.
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