Ancient America

Wussten Sie, dass die Olmeken vielleicht das erste Volk waren, das die Schrift einführte? Das erste Volk, dem es gelang, sich zu einer Kultur zu entwickeln, waren die Olmeken. Aber warum sind sie bisher relativ unbekannt geblieben, versteckt in den langen, dunklen Korridoren der vergessenen Geschichte? In diesem neuen Band der Reihe Captivating History werden Sie die Wahrheit über die erste bekannte Zivilisation Amerikas erfahren.

A young Aztec girl tells her little brother how their parents create beautiful painted manuscripts, or codices. She explains to him how paper is made from local plants and how the long paper is folded into a book. Her parents and others paint the codices to tell the story of their people’s way of life. Inspired by the pre-Columbian codices, this story tells how the Aztec and their neighbors in the Valley of Mexico painted books and records long before Columbus arrived, and continued doing so among their Nahua-speaking descendants for generations after.

Deep in the jungle, among the rubber trees, the Olmec people lived thousands of years ago. Did you know they were the first to make chocolate? Did you know they loved to play sports? Did you know they were the first people to harvest latex into rubber? Did you know they believed in shape-shifting jaguars and carved huge stone heads? Come meet the Rubber People, and learn their ancient secrets!

Rosalba is a nine-year-old Mayan girl living in rural Mexico. Like her mother and grandmother, she weaves stories of her people onto blouses, ensuring that the age-old traditions continue. But new influences are entering her life. A ladina girl from the city, visiting with her scientist father, passes on the astonishing news that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. Rosalba knows nothing about that, but her village is faced with a bulldozer tearing through the forest, dying wildlife, and cornfields in danger.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century. The Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today. But of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people.

This is a paper that I wrote very early during my undergraduate work, and I cannot promise that it is very good, but it does give a fair overview of what the Aztecs faced in their final days, at the hands of Cortes and his men. The Aztecs stood up against immeasurable odds, fighting whom they believed, at first, were their gods, finally returned to Earth. When they realized their error, it was too late.

This group of 19th-century American poets was the first to rival their British counterparts in popularity. Gathered around their New England roots, they were also known as the Schoolroom or Household poets and comprised of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and Olivier Wendell Holmes, Sr. Occasionally Ralph Waldo Emerson was included, although his poetic philosophy differed in some key aspects.

Do you use a calendar? Have you ever played basketball? These things were important to the ancient Mayans too. About 4,000 years ago, they invented tools and treasures that still shape our lives. Find out where and how the ancient Mayans lived, and learn about their mysterious disappearance. Discover how they changed the world!

In 2012 especially there was a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ends. The focus on the doomsday scenario, however, has overshadowed the Mayans' true contributions to astronomy, language, sports, and art.

Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and author. He was one of the first three black people admitted to Harvard Medical School. Delany dreamed of establishing a settlement in West Africa and visited Liberia, a United States colony founded by the American Colonization Society. He was a prolific writer, and his book The Origin and Objects of Ancient Freemasonry, Its Introduction Into the United States, and Legitimacy Among Colored Men was published 1853.

El hombre rojo, en general, creía que el mundo habitable se formó a partir del limo que afloraba sobre las aguas primordiales, y los nahuas compartían sin duda este concepto. A diferencia de la tierra, que creen que tiene rasgos femeninos y está claramente personificada en este caso por Tonacaciuatl, el firmamento es reconocido casi universalmente por los pueblos aborígenes americanos como la esencia masculina del cosmos.