The Buried Secrets Of The Native American Civilisations | 1491: America Wars | Timeline

this channel is part of the history hit network [Music] we are the first peoples of the americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and build vast trade systems that cover two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the untold stories of the americas before columbus [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the americas before 1491 were home to thousands of societies each with its own distinct social cultural and political structure throughout the two continents indigenous people formed clans confederacies alliances and even empires indigenous people interacted between these communities through a complex network of trade that connected every region of the americas the haudenosaunee confederacy was formed nearly 900 years ago making it one of the oldest representative democracies in the world before the five founding iroquois nations came together in peace they were locked in an endless cycle of retribution an inter-tribal war you had five warring nations and the descriptions in the oral histories is uh very very explicit and talking about how there was a fracture side there was cannibalism basically human relations had totally broken down in that part of the world amongst our own people has all to do with this cycle of revenge every iroquois chief engaged in retaliation but it was tadada the serpent chief who was known throughout the territory for his ruthlessness this guy was terrifying he put live snakes in his hair you know hive and writhing snakes he's a very powerful spiritual person whose mind was twisted so the imagery they have in the stories is his fingers are all twisted and his body's all gnarled and so forth and he was able to control the wind and the waters and he was causing a lot of harm as internal wars continued to tear the five nations apart an outsider known as the peacemaker arrived in a stone canoe and began to share his vision of a society based on harmony and peace he traveled to every corner of iroquois territory promoting the great law of peace and the founding of confederacy really is the story of the peacemaker a person from a related nation who came into our territory and connected with uh a leader in our nation hiwata once part of his nation's warrior society ayan watha had changed his way of thinking and started to promote his own vision of peace tara daho saw this as a betrayal and had each of ayanwatha's daughters killed one by one the pain of his loss led ayan watha to leave his community and isolate himself in the forest ayahuata's story is not just hawata it's the story of him and his daughters and how the loss of his daughters affected him and what drove him to do what he did was the loss of his daughters your daughters are your posterity because when age follows a female line after they met the peacemaker convinced ayanwatha that they should become allies in seeking peace among the nations even though he was overcome with grief ayan watha chose to work with the peacemaker to promote his idea of an intertribal alliance between the five warring nations because of the revered role of women in iroquois nations ayan watha and the peacemaker traveled to the fire of jigen sase to seek her advice on how to bring the great law of peace to the iroquoian people god in the iroquois way of thinking women were on par with men in terms of the authority they wield in the political realm [Music] foreign foreign foreign the chiefs of the four iroquois nations supported the peacemaker's vision of the great law of peace it's important to consider the objective the objective wasn't to enhance the power of these nations uh or to increase the territory or the wealth it was to create peaceful honest coexistence a not know how is he going to agree with this piece because he'll lose our power your town was gone i don't know foreign then something extraordinary happened based on astronomical records a solar eclipse covered the northeast region of north america for four minutes on the afternoon of august 31st 11 42. [Music] after this historic event tata daho agreed to join the confederacy [Music] [Music] the onondaga became the keepers of the central fire a role that they hold to this day 1142 would be the founding of the great peace and so yeah then is named the main chief of the confederacy he's actually taken as the symbol of the meaning of this message which is that even the worst person even the most powerful evil force can be turned around and made into good if you think back into terms of what was the first message that was brought by the peacemaker to our people is that you should treat each other kindly and you should think of each other as one family that's the central power of this teaching is that you should be treating everyone like your brother and sister the power of it is extremely long-lasting it's shown it's been how many years now how many generations of people have been bound together by that this ancient indigenous government continues to be part of iroquois society nearly 900 years after its founding [Music] the development of large urban centers evolved from small farming villages as mass production of food supported the growth of populations and cities [Music] for centuries the meroitic kingdom thrived as it was too distant for foreign nations to conquer it this nubian kingdom was surrounded by fertile land and supported a large urban population for two centuries the assyrian empire was a formidable society rulers displayed their power by constructing impressive palaces and temples before the empire fell they had extended their influence over most of the middle east and egypt [Music] the inca empire was the largest civilization in the americas in the early 16th century in its short existence the sappa incas ruled a society of millions of people from ecuador to chile over the past 5 000 years large city-states with dynamic political and religious rulers emerged and held power in every part of the world the ancestors of the ambitious inca rulers had humble beginnings as farmers in the andean highlands about 900 years ago the descendants of those farmers founded the largest indigenous society in the americas 600 years ago and like other great civilizations the inca empire began with a vision the incas are going to claim that after the creation of the world in titicaca some of them took this passage this tunnel from the lake and they are going to emerge in pakaritambo the the the place of their origin according to oral histories the first inca family left their birthplace in pakaritambo in search of the perfect location to establish a homeland they were carrying a golden staff and they were basically testing the soils and the idea was that they were going to find a place where that bolton road was going to be able to be sunken into the ground and that happened in cusco in one specific sport and that's going to be the ushno and the ushno is the center where all the vital force of the universe radiates when the inca arrived in cusco it had been the home of the kill kit people for hundreds of years the land is already inhabited by those people who have always been there and they have to come with an idea of this possess the local inhabitants and then they becoming the masters of the place in the first of many conquests the early inca rulers either ousted or absorbed the kilke people maintaining cusco as the logistical political and spiritual heart of their new society six hundred years ago the inca empire extended over much of what is today peru bolivia chile colombia ecuador and argentina and was home to 20 million people you are going to have four primary lines which are going to be the roads of the tawantin suiyou cusco was organized into four quadrants and leaders from cities and villages throughout the empire were required to build a house and live in cusco part of the year in the quadrant that corresponded to their region and then based on that you are going to have all these close to 80 provinces in an area that basically went all the way from northern chile to ecuador all along the andes you had these systems that the inca built upon their empire extended in length some 2000 miles from north to south this grew in tandem with conquest and population growth to control such a massive territory and diverse population the empire's leaders convinced regional chiefs to join the society with promises of material riches and special status but mandatory allegiance had a cost most of the leaders of these small nations accepted the new government peacefully but for those who resisted the inca's well-trained army forced compliance was the emperor a position passed down from father to son the sapa inca's wife known as the koya was typically his sister we can think about the incas as a oligarchy of of 10 royal families those are the ones who are intermarrying among themselves let's remember that according to their own traditions they have to maintain this dynastic line pure so they are allowed to marry with their first cousins and of course the sisters and brothers in addition to the importance of blood purity the incan royals also believed their emperors were blessed with immortality the emperor never dies your body continues to have vital powers that are used for political purposes because the people who are going to be in charge of keeping the bodies of the incas the mummified bodies of the incas are called the panacas they are going to operate as a small congress that are going to they're going to put checks and balance on the inca so they are going to be able to decide and and advise and sometimes direct the ideas of the inca towards specific purposes only because the mummy of the disease emperor at least some of the relatives can talk with that mommy and then it's like your grandfather says that you are doing wrong that you should better think do this the inca hierarchy placed the royal family at the top followed by the nobility including the priests governors and tax collectors rounding out this social structure were the farmers herders servants and slaves much of the population consists of a peasantry agricultural rural and then you have the cities and the cities kind of wield all power and they extract tax in labor from each of those communities in the case of the incas they want tributing labor but they want you to go and work in the land of the incas produce the crops and then an ink officer is going to show up and say like guys it's time for us to put all these in the storehouses because we are going to live out of this food if it doesn't rain next year so often tributaries would pay into the inca state and the incas would then through their mita tax system would basically warehouse foods typically potatoes maize and other crops and they had an incredible abundance of different crops that would be stored but these allowed armies to be maintained and fed while on campaign but also for the communities that work these areas to be able to maintain themselves during periods of drought for instance so it was a system that was a give and take but virtually everything in the empire belonged to the inca himself maya society was made up of city-states that dotted the landscape in mesoamerica moving goods and services to a population in the millions was done through a highly evolved system of trade and commerce they were bringing in shell from the gulf coast they were bringing in shell from the west coast they were bringing unique and and uh prized uh green obsidians from the pachuca sources in highland mexico a basalt ceramics even turquoise coming out of the american southwest this was traveling over some of the most circuitous and mountainous regions and even gulf lowland regions all the way to the maya area these are people that they didn't have draft animals they did not have horses they did not have cattle oxen they didn't have any of these things so everything had to be ported on foot on the backs of human burden bearers in turn what the maya were giving back was access to the matagua river jade source true jade occurs only in a few places on the planet and the maya had access to it so jade was being moved throughout mesoamerica and of course elites who identified with jade as related to the earth and to the ancestors wanted to be a part of that they began using ritual objects and belief to draw on the interest of outsiders who begin to trade or to pilgrimage to these sites so you get some of the earliest pilgrimage centers in these regions maya trade went well beyond the valuable jade market various other commodities were transported in their raw or manufactured state from the maya region on foot and by boat when the spanish first arrived they had encounters with maya boats or ships if you will and these were multiple canoes lashed together into platforms and they were essentially sailing ships that were traveling up the coast with large quantities of ceramics as well as rubber kopal chocolate vanilla and virtually all of those other things that we as westerners so much enjoy which all originated in ancient mesoamerica one of the most important trade items in maya society was maize this crop was at the center of the maya diet and culture and was in high demand in the urban centers eventually maize moved into north and south america through trade with other indigenous communities considering the importance of corn for people's diet and all that went with corn meats was a valuable food to trade [Music] societies throughout the world have traded bartered and sold food for thousands of years this exchange fostered important business and social relationships and contributed to the development of cuisines that were unique to regions and nations salt was an essential mineral for african diets and an important trade item with other nations salt cakes were transported by camel caravans and traded for gold ivory and cola nuts across the continent [Music] spices have been a major trade item for thousands of years cinnamon ginger and turmeric were exchanged between africa europe the middle east and asia making spices one of the most important economic and cultural enterprises in the world [Music] societies throughout the world have been producing wine for thousands of years as both a religious and social beverage the earliest wine production was in armenia seven thousand years ago [Music] after 1492 fruits and vegetables cultivated in north and south america were exported to europe asia and africa some of the world's most widely used ingredients had their origins among indigenous societies in the americas around the same time that the maya were the dominant trading center in mesoamerica indigenous people in north america were transporting materials by boat and foot along a trade network known as the hopewell exchange we had a great deal of trade and we think a lot of it follows river valleys in my area in the southeast people were trading with one another so there was a lot of contact between different groups and uh trade was people were trading as far up as the great lakes down down the mississippi river into the you know louisiana area it wasn't a bunch of tiny little groups just living alone and not knowing what someone else is doing just down the street so to speak the people who traveled from distant territories into the ohio river valley area were bringing valuable raw materials from their region to trade with residents who were turning them into finished products we had these networks already and it was a familiar way of interacting with another group in the hopewell interaction sphere we have this huge trade network and we can see where materials are coming from we know that at least by 700 a.d there are groups that were bringing obsidian from wyoming they were bringing iron ore from oklahoma up they were bringing shells from the gulf coast they were bringing mica sheets from north carolina and it was all coming up to basically the ohio river valley katlinite which is the pipestone a red pipestone that people really prized and that was traded all over the place sometimes there's uh nodules but sometimes those finished products you know somebody might carve a nice pipe and then trade that that gets into the trade route the hopewell exchange region was populated by agriculture-based communities the artisans in these communities created intricate art pieces pottery items pipes and tools and it's surprising that many of them are coming from a thousand miles away it was there we recognized that people were interacting on a continental scale the reason for the decline of the hopewell trading system around 1500 years ago is a mystery but what is known is that this highway system of rivers and lakes connected the peoples and cultures of the northern continent for over 500 years and was one of the most extensive trade networks in the world a thousand years ago indigenous people built the largest urban center north of mexico near what is now the city of st louis over several hundred years cahokia became one of the most influential trading centers in north america there were a whole series of cultures on the mississippi and the apex of that was of course cahokia at the confluence of the missouri and mississippi rivers so this was a major hub for all people traveling north and south in north america when people got up on those mounds that would be the thing that they saw was the river in the distance and another river coming in from the west mays was introduced into north america from mexico about 2000 years ago and eventually moved into the eastern regions of the continent about a thousand years ago archaeological research has currently shown that the development of agriculture in that region occurred a lot earlier than previously believed and so this further developed over time where we see the development of large towns and even cities like places like cahokia and many others all across the region and only now we are coming to understand those complex sites in more detail indigenous people in central and eastern north america have constructed mounds for burials and ceremonial use for thousands of years the city of cahokia has one of the greatest concentrations of mounds in north america we can follow the evolution if you will of mound construction from 300 a.d on up we get small mounds we're a little bit larger we get mortuary mounds we get mounds that have houses on top a lot of these large mound structures seem to be places where a large grouping of people came together because of its central location along traditional trade routes cahokia proved the ideal place to exchange resources excavations of cahokia have revealed a range of treasures mother of pearl from the gulf of mexico silver from ontario and copper from lake superior at its peak cahokia reached a population of at least 20 000 people with many more thousands of people living in the farmland nearby the centerpiece of the city was a massive 30 meter high dirt pyramid with a base covering five and a half hectares found beneath this and many other mounds in cahokia are objects made from materials that originated hundreds and even thousands of miles away there's such a wide variety of materials that we know it's of importance we don't know what started it we don't know what the importance is but and it wasn't just an economic thing very important people the people with status were using it to identify the fact that you know i'm not having to to use just local stone for my projectile points i have material that comes all the way from a thousand miles away or 20 days travel however they used to measure it so it was both a status symbol it was an economic relationship and it did become ceremonial it became a point in time where there were materials that are of such beauty that they are not really being used for hunting they're being used to demonstrate that i don't need to use this for hunting it's it's so ceremonially important that i don't have to waste it cahokia itself is sort of seen as one of the mother locations if you will of a large number of groups during the the little ice age in 12 1300s people started realizing that they could no longer exist within one large area that they had to pull apart again and then before the end of the 12th 13th 14th century these people start pulling apart and they become separate groups the choctaw the chickasaw the the oakmoly or the creek peoples the origin of the people of cahokia remains a mystery like the hopewell exchange before it this once bustling city was an essential hub for trade connecting every corner of north america [Music] [Music] since ancient times people have traded food tools and raw materials that could not be found in their own territories this was the earliest form of commerce and led the way to the development of trade routes that still exist today as the greek civilization began to expand into new territories food raw materials and manufactured goods spread the greek culture throughout the nations bordering the aegean and mediterranean [Music] seas the vikings were a seafaring people who traded timber furs and food with societies throughout europe and the middle east they established a bullion economy trading silver in the form of coins ingots and jewelry for goods [Music] the maya established extensive trade routes with other societies in mesoamerica maize jade fabric and raw materials were some of the items that formed the basis of the maya economy over several thousand years ancient trade networks were more than a means of exchanging goods they were central to cultural interaction and the sharing of ideas and technologies between nations the aztec empire was founded 600 years ago in mesoamerica and soon became one of the largest societies in the americas the aztec had complex spiritual beliefs that played a role in every part of their culture and day-to-day life the aztecs in their own words they are not from us america in their own words they came from somewhere in the north the founders of the aztec empire arrived in a region already settled by major societies to survive they had to master the art of conquest the aztecs were people having come into the valley of mexico and establishing themselves in the 13th century very quickly found themselves under uh the auspices of a brutal warlord by the name of tesomok eventually the aztecs formed a triple alliance with the cities of tlacopan and teshkoko and tenochtitlan and that that formation in the 1440s basically allowed the aztecs to go up against this kingdom at atskapo salko and they literally annihilated it having done that they then stood up against some 40 other major kingdoms and they wiped them out as part of that juggernaut of development and expansion resolved to maintain its status as mesoamerica's dominant force the aztec rulers demanded commitments of military support and resources from each city in its domain you would be assigned the equivalent of an emissary and that emissary would be assigned to that site and there would be a companion emissary in the capital to receive the tribute and as long as you paid tribute you were allowed the autonomy necessary what the aztecs are actually promoting in their empire is what we can call an imperial box or an imperial piece which means that while that tribute is moving it's moving through safe roads whoever dares to steal the tribute is going to be punished and what it allowed was for a mobilization of resources across vast areas while allowing indigenous autonomy in every community so long as you paid tribute to the cabezara or the head in this case tenochtitlan and the aztecs you could maintain your system of deities gods your system of agriculture your polity your kings etc so now i can walk not only to the next town but i can walk hundreds of kilometers inside the aztec empire with whatever thing i want to sail and trade the tribute that is being received by the essex is also being returned to the mess american economy and is going to create growth the capital of the aztec empire tenochtitlan was a sprawling city of canals pyramids markets residential neighborhoods and artificial islands on what is now the present-day site of mexico city the aztecs have the the belief that uh nothing comes out of nothing in order to create life something needs to die and the most precious life they could give was the life of humans the energy of the individuals is in the blood in the fluids this sacred liquid let's put it this way they created a religious economy in which basically uh lives have to be given to the divinities so where the assets violent yes but it's organized violence violence with a purpose the aztec rulers built a society that in many ways was unparalleled in the world in the pacific northwest region of north america indigenous people developed a complex society that was governed by the ownership and passing down of songs dances titles and names these laws and privileges were embedded in a ceremony known as the potlatch during the potlatch people from neighboring villages were invited to witness a ceremony and gifts were distributed as a sign of wealth and power by the host chief and his family gatherings of families and communities often took place during the winter months [Music] during the winter time is when we held our most important ceremonies when we invite other villagers to come to our communities and we would host them and and feed feed them the whole time that they were there so they might be there for two weeks or or a month our people were very giving of everything that we had and that's how you're connecting with your other villages that's how alliances loyalties and trust was created through those connections and that didn't just happen amongst the quak wakuwa we were very interactive that's a misconception too that the haidas the jimsyans the trinkets the sailors the west coast people were separate no one people one family of course we spoke different languages but we shared the same customs we shared the same blood when i think of potlatching i think of marriage which is a sacred union between two people between two houses what's really important is the dowry what the female brings to their husband's family validated through potlatch in marriage leads to the birth of children naming our children honoring the children when they come of age lifting them up into adulthood with dignity with the teachings of their responsibilities those sort of things were are entrenched into the potlatch system and that's again that connectedness with the other villages and how we interacted on the coast alliances were formed for trade which was our survival depended on it you had to get along and governance systems protocols these things have to come into play in order to have harmony [Music] throughout the ancient world ceremonies were created to honor birth marriage death and other important social and human transitions [Music] the tea ceremony emerged in japan as a way to honor different types of teas and to acknowledge the beauty of the items used in their preparation [Music] incense was a common trade item in egypt and mesopotamia stone altars were used to hold these aromatic resins as they burned in household and temple rituals [Music] tobacco and pipes are sacred to the nations living in the central plains of north america sharing a pipe was often used to initiate peace talks between warring nations [Music] ceremonies are part of every society and many of these rituals still take place in traditional cultures today from societies as large as the inca empire in south america to the smallest hunting communities on the great plains of north america rituals were created to heal and protect the people to bring the reins and to resolve conflicts for thousands of years the people of the central plains in north america smoked tobacco kanikanik and other leaves in ceremonial pipes this was their link between the earth and the sky a sacred ritual for connecting the physical and spiritual worlds we generally think of life with people as bison hunters hunting and gathering cultures and that's definitely true but they did take one plant under cultivation and that was tobacco and they learned a very very intricate rituals and ceremonies around tobacco before tobacco came into a blackfoot culture they used to have local plants that they would smoke they would take the leaves of the bearberry and mix them with the inner bark of red ozir dogwood then when tobacco came along they just added tobacco to the blend people were smoking before they got tobacco the earliest pipes we find on the northern plains actually come from the era around 5000 years ago so smoking and tobacco were not synonymous tobacco moved out the missouri river probably beginning about the 8th century a.d and it probably got into blackfoot culture by about 900 a.d and we know that at that period there was a warm spell in global climates and this warm spell that lasted for about five or six hundred years and that probably created the conditions where it was easier to plant the crops and and to harvest them when they're ready to plant their tobacco crops they would leave it there after they prepared their gardens and put the seeds in they would leave there and in their mythology they said there were these little people who lived in the woods they lived in little caves so they were the ones who looked after the tobacco plants while blackfoot people were out buffalo hunting and they had to go off and do their berry picking or they're collecting of other foods so they can come back and forth the tobacco society of the blackfoot was a horticultural society and what they curated was the traditional knowledge for how to plant tobacco and how to bring in a crop they said the little people were very shy and that they could cause you harm if you saw them and then in the fall time when they were getting ready to harvest the crops and they'd go back there they always sent a couple of people ahead to make lots of noise and to let the little people know that they were coming coming back and then it gives them time to get away they would leave gifts of like food and little clothing all these things they would treat them well the tobacco smoke is also considered very sacred because it's it's a visual manifestation of your breath when people wanted to make an oath they usually capped it by taking a puff of smoke or also you wanted to solidify a trade deal you smoke the pipe if you want to end war between your peoples you smoke the pipe so there's this very close connection between the spirit of breath and tobacco [Music] blackfoot aztec inca and maya are just a few of the thousands of indigenous nations that develop sophisticated political systems and vast trade networks throughout the americas before 1491 [Music] [Music] these nations were not only formidable societies of their time in many ways their laws rituals and beliefs continue to influence our world today [Music] [Music] we are the first peoples of the americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and built vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the untold stories of the americas before columbus the americas were home to groundbreaking achievements in science and technology long before 1491. in mesoamerica indigenous people developed a complex writing system calendars and books in south america a precise accounting machine was created more than five thousand years ago throughout the western hemisphere sophisticated knowledge and the use of plants as medicine has been practiced for thousands of years some achievements like the earliest use of the number zero and brain surgery were among the most advanced in the world for their time indigenous men and women gathered studied and administered thousands of species of plants for healing purposes these skilled ethnobotanists adapted plants for use as sedatives painkillers and other types of medicines native peoples had a very ancient and traditional practice but there were multiple dimensions to it some of that was as essential as herbs and ethnopharmacology as we call it in other words a botanical repertoire of things that are medical the reality is much of the medical tradition we have here in the western tradition is born precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids and the way in which we've extracted them indigenous medicine was not simply a process of preparing plants and offering them to a sick person healers had a deep knowledge of plant chemistry and how different plants interacted as medicines in the western tradition there's a tendency to engage in a primitivist rhetoric about native american medicine the idea that oh well it's about superstition and it's about evil spirits and it's about herbs because some of the people could literally walk through a forest and identify plants and their curative properties simply from visual inspection alone such that the chemovars which are the active ingredients that allow for the healing or the relieving of symptoms could be relieved and they knew which plants those were one of the more common plants that was used is a plant known as yarrow and yarrow is a very good example of a curative plant because this is one that was put on wounds and cuts because if you take the arrow plant and then just chew it up you masticate it you release all the alkaloids that are in there and you put it onto an open wound it actually has properties that will cause the blood to clot faster but other plants such as sweet grass these are plants that are used more in ceremonial uses you know where if you're starting a ceremony and you put sweet grass on there coal and the smoke from the sweet grass has the properties that you're looking for for those who don't buy the idea that herbs can cure us the reality is much of the medical tradition we have here in the western tradition is born precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids and the way in which we've extracted them today many modern pharmaceuticals trace their origins to medicines developed by indigenous people aspirin you know acetic acid which comes from willow or aspen the bark this is a very common one that was used from ancient times and the active ingredient was isolated and was then used to become aspirin in modern times and many of those plants and many of these people were being used by the medical industry to find those very substances many of those have been introduced into our medical tradition but in the forms of capsules and pills and and injections and thereby the american indian is taken out of the equation though they are the discoverers and innovators of these medicines one of the the ancient manuscripts that came down to us had an entire listing of plants used by the aztecs and there was a an incredible period in which after having examined that book and its curative properties or the properties of the plants identified one of them spoke of a disease that basically engaged the withering of the human body and ultimately the death of the individual and it was supposed to be a means by which to relieve the symptoms and or cure the disease and those that were studying this document came to the conclusion that it was a plant that had curative properties to defeat cancer there's a range of treatments for cancer and other diseases in use today that are based on medicines originally developed by indigenous people one of the plants or common plants that was used in a pharmacopoeia of traditional healers was the u tree and that bark of yew tree has also been used in breast cancer treatment because that's where the active ingredient of taxol is taken from that plant through a holistic approach to healing indigenous medicine men and women of the americas combined herbology with spiritual care when people use them traditionally they would be used in a complex with prayers and ceremony and you know you can't underestimate the power of the ceremony [Music] brain surgery was being practiced throughout the ancient world as far back as seven thousand years ago in both north and south america thousands of skulls with evidence of surgical treatment have been found which demonstrates that this specialized medical practice was widely used to treat injuries and sickness the precision of these operations and their high success rate is evidence of advanced surgical skills by indigenous people the archaeological evidence makes clear from mummy bundles in peru to excavated burials in mesoamerica that cranial traffic or the surgical removal of bone plates from the skull for the purposes of brain surgery or the surgical removal of tumors and the relief of blunt force trauma was a reality those very commonly you find skulls in archaeological sites here on the coast and they've obviously done trepination and the person survived because there's been healing around the scars of the bone in a survey of over 10 000 crania with evidence of treponene it is clear from the surgical uh practices that were conducted that over 70 percent of the individuals who had suffered blunt force trauma and then had the blunt force trauma relieved by virtue of cranial trepany survived you might say well yes you have 70 of some 10 000 crania showing healing osteitis as we call it but what does that mean if you look at it from the perspective of forensics and osteology it was a practice engaged in when you were dealing with the potential death of a casualty of blunt force trauma or other illnesses the inca emperor would have the equivalent of six physicians carry his litter these physicians were known as yayo and the yayo were all trained in skull surgery we can no longer contend that this practice does not have a medical correlation it wasn't witchcraft it was medical innovation that came into play thousands of years ago head trauma wasn't the only serious injury treated surgically by indigenous medical specialists the aztecs engaged in something that involved compound fractures for example to the armored leg individuals on the battlefield were often subjected to this treatment individuals who had compound fractures were likely to lose the limb unless something could be done immediately and so surgeries were conducted in which for example the sutures would be made of hair urine was used to wash the wounds and they would open up the arm or the leg and the long bones that were broken would actually be reattached by virtue of an intramedullar nail this is basically uh the equivalent of a spur of bone or wood that would be inserted into the bone itself and they would be reconnected thereby allowing for the long bone to be healed and eventually individual to fully recover that's a system that was only re-introduced in the 20th century these are traditions that appear all over south america mesoamerica north america and i would contend the fact that they exist and they exist so broadly and through such remote antiquity would contend that ancient native americans had an incredible grasp on science technology and medicine well into the remote past in every part of the world traditional medicines have been the primary means of treating illnesses for thousands of years the medicines and treatments used by practitioners are based on deep knowledge of plants and healing skills that have been passed down from generation to generation [Music] herbal medicines have been part of chinese traditional healing practices for several millennia in addition to using plants the use of acupuncture massage and tai chi are used to enhance well-being and prevent health problems [Music] a traditional practice called muti has been one of the primary means of health care for people in southern africa for thousands of years the medicines made from trees and plants have therapeutic properties that are used in maternal care and to treat diseases indigenous peoples in every part of the americas used plants trees and other natural materials as part of their traditional healing practices an essential part of this practice was the interrelationship between physical mental emotional and spiritual well-being millions of people rely on traditional medicine for their healthcare needs many medicines developed by indigenous peoples are still used in alternative medicine the oral histories of indigenous peoples throughout the americas include references to the sun moon stars and planets solar and lunar eclipses often coincided with political and cultural events that continue to be commemorated hundreds of years later in mesoamerica the planet venus was central to the development of the world's most sophisticated ancient calendar systems while in central north america the blackfoot and other plains nations relied on the stars and planets to time their hunting and harvesting seasons and to interpret the forces of nature ancient people had a lot of knowledge about stars and the movement of stars and the night sky if it's clear skies you go out and you look at the stars and people were able to make sense out of all of this and one of the things that i've seen over and over again is how people used lunar calendars devised lunar calendars traditional calendars always had 13 moons that they recognized and that would be equivalent to months for us you also have to calibrate your lunar calendar with the solar year and people recognize that there is a certain number of moons within a solar year so how do we know when we've left winter the winter part of the calendar into the summer well they use the the pleiades because there's only one season where the waxing crescent moon and the pleiades will share the same part of the sky and when they see this they know that that's the start of this first moon of summer so that this would be a way of calibrating their their lunar calendars these lunar calendars were vital for predicting the shifting of the seasons the migrations of herd animals and the emergence of berries and plants that indigenous peoples harvested or if you know that a certain constellation is only visible in the winter time you can then make plans about when this constellation disappears we're moving to a new season by knowing the relative position of the stars the seven siblings in relation to the north star they can determine you know things such as traveling navigation or using them for calendrics so knowing these types of movements of the stars they're able to develop star lore about it and in this way they can make plans they can avoid traveling at certain times or maybe using certain seasons lunar calendars are so common you know everywhere you go in the world you'll find lunar calendars that's the most common form of calendar that people devise because if you have a if you have devised a lunar calendar then you can start making plans several moons in advance the blackfoot weren't the only indigenous people to depend on the night sky for guidance in the far north during the darkness of winter the stars provided clues to the passage of time any of people who have to deal with the fact that parts of the season there is no sun how do you know morning from night or afternoon from morning if you have no sun in the sky well they recognize that certain stars parallel the sun so even if the sun is not in the sky they can distinguish whether they're in the am hours or in the afternoon hours by being able to make the association between a certain star and where the position of the sun is the most advanced calendar systems developed in ancient times had their origins in mesoamerica believed to have been developed first by the olmec it was later refined by the maya and aztecs with settled village life you have a demand for produce agriculture all of these things have to be set on a calendar the maya did that to a level of accuracy that's almost unheard of they were able to calculate the solar year to 365.252 days they were able to do this by virtue of the so-called metonic calendar calendario metonico this system was used by very few world civilizations and those who did uh did were able to calibrate the solar year by using the lunar cycle in order to record time the maya went one step further they had a venusian calendar or a venus based calendar they had a lunar calendar they had the tonal powali which is essentially the agricultural or sacred almanac and then they had the solar year each of these was being calibrated and in looking at these different systems what they were able to do was they took a fixed point in time and having set that point in time uh august 13th of of 3114 bc they began counting forward in time every day from that point constituted the beginnings of what we might call the long count besides being central to their calendar system venus played a prominent role in the cosmology and spiritual world of the maya culture it was often for the maya referred to as the wasp star it was this creature and it's often identified with war and conflict and if you've ever traveled in areas like guatemala or the yucatan peninsula at night the stars come out and what you see christine the the canopy of the sky is this massive kawhi vision serpent it is literally if you look at it carefully the milky way looks like it has an open mo one end and a tail at the other and that is what they saw and every so often the planet venus as the morning and evening star as we call it will appear at one point and then goes into retrograde motion and disappeared below the horizon and then it reappears in another place so it was deemed the divine twin so the twins appear in the mythologies of virtually all mesoamerican peoples the maya are recognized for more than their advanced calendar they were the first civilization in the world to use the number zero in their counting system there was an early finding back in the 1930s of a monument that dated back to about 150 a.d uh once the fra the fragments were brought together and other glyphs were found they realized that they had a bar and dot numeral system and what made it or completed it as a system that was something more than just finger counting was the concept of the zero they invented the zero and the zero allowed to create numerals that extended well beyond the billions at a time when we have to wonder why they would be counting into the billions and the trillions and even beyond it was invented independently in the new world by the american indian by either the maya or other mesoamerican peoples it extends well before the common era so at least three centuries prior so we're looking at about 2 300 years ago this system if not at that point perhaps earlier had already been invented the zero the bar and dot numerals and the founding of the calendrical system the aztec civilization developed their own dual calendar system their lunar calendar had 13 20-day months and was used for agricultural purposes the aztec also had a sacred solar-based calendar the solar year was also charted and that solar year consisted of 18 months of 20 days and so for 360 days with five days that the aztecs referred to as nemo demi the aztec day count calendar and the maya shortcount calendar each had 260 day cycles the short count is is really something that developed after the lung count those are two systems that we know from contact with the aztecs but we also know that the maya were able to introduce a level of precision that we don't see in the later systems by studying the sun moon stars and planets our ancestors developed advanced calendar systems and plan their lives around the changing seasons the origins of a written language in mesoamerica can be traced to a 3 000 year old olmec stone tablet found in eastern mexico hundreds of years later the maya developed a complex writing system that used symbols to represent sounds and words found in the maya spoken language most indigenous peoples in the americas recorded their history by passing it down orally from one generation to the next mesoamerica had the only written language and it was recorded using 800 unique hieroglyphs the glyph system is an amazing contribution bear in mind that there were only five world civilizations that produced literate traditions and contrary to what one of my professors used to tell me in graduate school that the maya did not write histories the americas were a place non-literate and prehistoric the reality is the maya completely dispensed with that whole thing and it wasn't so much that the maya were a non-literate tradition it was that we western scholars were incapable of understanding this literate tradition we couldn't read it and therefore it was irrelevant maya writing was painted on walls and pottery carved in stone and written down on bark paper in books known as codices while many of these books were destroyed by the spanish after 1491 some murals and sculptures still exist that describe day-to-day life and important events like battles and conquests the language used to record the maya world reveals a culturally rich storied civilization that placed a significant value on preserving its history for future generations we now know it to have been a fully literate tradition with over 800 characters and it was not only logographic but it was also phonetic just as we write in block letters and italics uh they had more fonts than you can imagine today close to 90 percent of maya glyphs have been deciphered revealing a wealth of knowledge about this civilization [Music] the development of writing systems took place independently in mesopotamia and egypt around 5000 years ago other societies that had writing systems since ancient times are the olmec and maya in mesoamerica and the chinese in asia the earliest mesopotamian writing was carried out with a blunt instrument that made wedge shape marks on clay tablets this inspired other nearby societies to use pictograms as the basis for their writing systems [Music] the rosetta stone was created more than 2 000 years ago and features the egyptian and greek languages written in three different scripts the message on the stone was recorded by priests to honor the egyptian pharaoh maya writing evolved from a system that was developed earlier by the olmec society of mesoamerica using more than 800 symbols maya scribes recorded significant political and religious events on folding books called codices the evolution of early writing systems in mesoamerica asia africa and the middle east offer a window into the worlds of ancient people dating back thousands of years about two thousand years before the birth of a written language in mesoamerica a unique system of information storage was invented in south america the discovery of a nodded string device called a kipu in the 5000 year old city of kerala makes it one of the oldest record-keeping instruments in the world kipu was a coded accounting system for both small and large societies in south america information and data was recorded using multiple strands of knotted string or a rope strung together along a main court it's a accountability device is artifact for to get numbers for recording quantities and qualities of products it's like a computer because the society is so complex as karate needs to have organization about the work that you need to build a pyramid you need to have an organization of the numbers of the people and the products that you are taking or sharing almost 4 000 years after kipu was used by the people of kerala they were still an important record-keeping tool in andean cultures including the inca empire one of the main functions of kipu was to record numbers such as population tributes and levels of crop and art production los angeles but another kippu sample found at the keral site proved to be were made from cotton while those from the inca period were usually made from alpaca wool information was recorded on the device through variations in the cord color length type of knot location on the string and even how the cord was twisted the kipu had a base-10 numeric system the knots were made at specific intervals to indicate groups of tens hundreds and thousands the inca had highly trained information keepers who recorded the data and also memorized the stories connected to it some researchers have suggested that the kipu was also used to record oral histories and genealogies but if this is true it would be challenging to decipher these stories today organizations socialism the fact that kipu was in use in south america for several thousand years demonstrates the important economic and record-keeping role this device had in successive andean societies [Music] in ancient societies the need to keep track of crops materials and populations led to the development of recording instruments that ranged from beaded counting tablets to string counting devices [Music] the abacus is a counting device that uses sliding beads on a frame to perform math calculations it was used by many ancient societies including china rome greece mesopotamia and egypt [Music] a bone tool found in a cave in south africa is one of the oldest examples of a record-keeping instrument ever discovered the animal bone has 29 notches cut into it and may have been used to count objects or track the cycle of the moon [Music] kippu also known as talking knots were made from colored cords that were knotted in a specific order to signify numbers they recorded important civic information like crop yields population and tax payments record keeping is an important part of every society and some of these ancient innovations are the models for the calculators and computers that we use today the ancestors of today's inuit people have lived in the arctic region for about 5 000 years to adapt to one of the world's harshest climates northern peoples developed a wide range of innovations for hunting shelter and clothing that ensured their survival we lived in igloos and sat huts you know all winter long and we would travel mostly out in the sea ice hunting seals all winter because that's what we lived on seals we would travel and when we stopped we would build an igloo and we would you know spend the night and go traveling the next day or if the hunting was good we would stay for a while but mostly in the winter we lived on the sea iceland foreign [Music] foreign seals were the staple food source of the inuit but caribou and other game were hunted for meat and hide in the winter we wore uh coats that were made of caribou skins uh we the inner coat uh we wore with the fur on the inside uh right up against our skins and on top of that if we were going to be outside for long periods we wore another coat which is a coat with the fur on the outside seal skin [Music] these coats were made um [Music] in a very special way so that you know they weren't too bulky under your arms and they gave you you know free movement and they've been designed you know a long long time ago and they're still used that way today one of the necessities of arctic survival was a dependable source of transportation which included sled dogs we made all our sleds we made all our own harnesses for the dogs and even the little booties in the spring when the ice was really sharp they would you know cut the pads on their on their feet the origins of domesticated dogs in the arctic dates back more than 4 000 years historically their primary role was to work with hunters to track seals and other prey the earliest archaeological evidence of sleds with dog harnesses dates back about 800 years when we had regular sleds you know which are maybe 12 14 16 feet long we would have about eight nine ten dogs to pull the sled a lot of the runners of our sleds uh used to have caribou antler that was shaped to be thin and flat and that's what we would use on our little sleds you know little sets about this big to protect their eyes from the harsh glare of the sun and snow the inuit devised a unique type of snow goggles they're mostly made of bone like caribou antler you know and with a little slit and the nice thing about them is that they don't fog up you know unlike regular sunglasses you know they don't fog up because they're just slits and they're they're really good for you know getting rid of the glare because in the spring where we come from you know the sun is up all the time in the summer and we get glare off the ice and snow [Music] so [Music] [Music] m hey [Music] um [Music] hey [Music] [Music] foreign mmm [Music] [Music] foreign today [Music] [Music] in the summer months when the arctic ice would melt dog sleds were replaced by small-skinned boats we built kayaks and kayak was invented because we have so little wood you know where i grew up and where i come from we don't have any trees so wood was very very scarce to build a neat uh kayak uh you use very little wood you know the ribs are made out of wood of course uh usually and and i suppose in the old days you know they were built a lot of them were built out of bone you know the whale bone and seal bones and caribou bones caribou antlers and that kind of thing i think it's absolutely amazing how people can survive you know in this very harsh land for thousands of years to live we have invented all these amazing things you know we have invented the kayak we invented sleds and we invented this incredible structure called an igloo and skin tents and all the stuff and sod huts and we survived uh because uh we learned how to get along with each other we have a great camaraderie with all the other arctic peoples of the world because you know we were nomads like we traveled you know to alaska greenland all over the north and then we have all these stories you know these incredible legends that teach us how to live with each other a lot of us really don't think of it as surviving that we think of it as living you know because even though it's really cold it's the most incredible part of the world in every part of the world people develop calendars to mark the passage of days weeks months and years the moon sun and planets were the basis for most of these calendar systems [Music] a piece of bone found in france may be the oldest lunar calendar in existence marks on the bone appear to show the phases of the moon [Music] calendars used during the middle ages in ethiopia were based on cycles of 532 years these calendars set the date of biblical creation as the starting point [Music] the maya developed an accurate calendar system more than 2500 years ago that used the cycles of the moon sun and the planet venus to measure time since ancient times people have used calendars to plan their religious agricultural and hunting practices tracking the passage of time is one of mankind's greatest achievements archaeological evidence and the oral histories of indigenous peoples confirmed that the earliest inhabitants of the americas were seafarers with extensive knowledge of ocean navigation and marine lifestyles over the millennia our ancestors developed different styles of boats to travel and fish the rivers lakes and coastlines of north and south america water travel offered greater access to fishing and hunting and to trade with distant nations these are people who may have been able to travel on the open ocean without much compunction it's quite clear that plenty of people along the coast had perfectly good boat technology in fact the onana or elliott people have some of the most extraordinary tradition of boating skills in tiny incredibly fragile little craft made out of nothing but skin and driftwood and yet they would travel hundreds of kilometers over some of the world's most dangerous and difficult water routinely going from island island just to visit family the coast off of washington and oregon has no sheltering islands so without the inside passage they must have been traveling out on the open water yet there was nothing wrong with that likewise klinket folks in recorded history have traveled extraordinary different distances in open canoes indigenous people developed a range of seafaring skills to safely journey along coastlines including celestial navigation and the use of landmarks in the pacific northwest the tlingit devised a unique system of open ocean navigation that included an understanding of waves tides and winds in fact klinke culture has a story of um a man who with his nephews was blown out in a terrible storm out into the open ocean and he washed up with his nephews on apparently a tropical island because klinket maintains the word kane for bamboo and it's in this story that it's described how there wasn't any water on the island because there was no rivers but they figured out that rainwater was caught in the broken off stems of bamboo and that's what they used to survive on while they killed seals and then filled their the the seal stomachs up with more water for their journey so oral history even tells us that these folks not only travel to some very remote island where bamboo grows which could be midway or further south but still quite far out in the open ocean but then made it back using traditional navigation techniques laying on the bottom of the boat to detect the rippling patterns of the north pacific storms bouncing off of the islands and each of these storms has its own pattern of waves that hit the shore and bounce back and by studying how those waves cross over each other you can use them to triangulate in the direction of the shore and so this was a technique that um that the the seal hunters and whale hunters out of yakitat would would use whenever they got blown so far off um off of shore that they couldn't find their way back studying the patterns of storm waves wasn't the only navigational tool that clingit and other seafarers used for ocean travel watching the birds and we see the same story coming from the polynesians the birds that travel out during the day and always go back to shore at night if you know what time of day it is you know what direction the shore is because of the direction that they're traveling by applying their intimate understanding of boat technology and the ocean itself these ancient mariners mastered navigation over some of the most challenging waters in the world from navigation to brain surgery from snow goggles to accounting systems the indigenous peoples of the americas are responsible for countless discoveries in science and technology innovations like the first use of the number zero and life-saving medicines are still in use today these legacies are a tribute to our ancestors ingenuity and remind us that their accomplishments were as significant as those made by other societies in the world before 1491 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we are the first peoples of the americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars [Music] crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors [Music] we created distinct societies and built vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear [Music] today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the untold stories of the americas before columbus [Music] the creative spirit is at the heart of every indigenous culture in the americas the artistic genius of our ancestors was evident in every aspect of life from traditional ceremonies to the creation of everyday objects our histories were carefully passed down from generation to generation through stories songs and dances perhaps the most visible reminders of our past are the works of art that our ancestors left for us through ceramic metal wood and woven materials we've discovered the very essence of our cultures before 1491 thousands of years indigenous people have been creating tools and art from gold silver copper and bronze the technology of metallurgy in the americas before 1491 was possibly the most advanced in the world the mining and manufacturing of metals was an established technology in western south america around 2000 years ago evidence of simple gold beads was discovered near lake titicaca that dates back 4 000 years the inca are often credited with developing the metallurgy traditions in south america they were after all the dominant society when gold production was at its peak 600 years ago but the extraction and purification of metals and the creation of metal alloys was practiced by indigenous cultures in the andes a thousand years or more before the inca civilization existed gold objects were a status symbol reserved for the sappa inca and the elite commoners only wore gold during religious and state ceremonies they were the most advanced civilization in the processing of metallurgy in the american continent they live in an area where the ore was abundant and with techniques that perhaps were superior to the european ones skilled artisans throughout the inca empire were conscripted to produce jewelry and ceremonial objects for the sapa inca and his extended family the artisans were often required to move from their own cities to work in the inca capital of cusco there was a cosmology an ideology identified with the metals gold was identified with the sun and silver was identified with the moon and the tombagas which were mixtures or alloys of gold and silver and copper were identified with kind of the androgynous being of the metals such that they represented uh both the male and female element the heavens and the earth and a whole host of other things that were sacred to the people that worked in those metals inca goldsmiths used a variety of different smelting techniques to produce alloys there is one element more than gold or silver there is one element that the ink has had in abundance mercury why mercury because you need mercury to basically remove impurities in the ore and obtain only pure silver and pure gold i've identified over 50 metallurgical traditions from the electrochemical plating of gold onto less precious metals all the way through to gilding processes and even the production of platinum which is among the first uses of platinum in the world these 50 traditions have often been identified with things like sheffield plating and last i recall sheffield is in england and yet we have the earlier precedence for this innovation and technology in peru a region as rich in resources and people as the inca empire required an efficient road system for transportation many of the products used by the ruling family such as precious stones woven material and feathers were transported along this vast road system the inca empire stretched from colombia to the southern tip of chile connecting the millions of people living in this region was the great inca road a 40 000 kilometer highway that crisscrossed mountains deserts and forests the chasky was a long distance relay runner who traveled a great road to deliver packages to the rulers and the artisans who created works of art for the sapa inca's family [Music] foreign so [Music] handed his packages of precious materials to the next runner out of tambo's resting house [Music] foreign [Music] the jewelry and other objects that the inca artisans created from gold and silver were part of a complex cultural dynamic that connected the ruling sapa inca and his family to the important deities like the sun god inti although they were highly regarded in society creating the metal objects for ceremonies artisans performed their work at the pleasure of the sappa inca and the elite class perhaps we lost many other possible paths that perhaps were better perhaps were more efficient perhaps were more beautiful perhaps we're even like more sustainable at the peak of the inca civilization the goldsmiths and artisans were masters of metallurgy techniques and the creation of brilliant works of art [Music] one of mankind's greatest achievements was developing technologies to extract metals from rock this led to the invention of bronze and iron tools and weapons and the creation of gold and silver jewelry and art [Music] the earliest manufactured gold in the world was discovered at an ancient cemetery on the western shores of the black sea more than 3 000 pieces of gold jewelry and artifacts were found at this site the egyptians were among the first civilizations to mine and use gold it was an important part of the ceremonies associated with the burials of the pharaohs and their families [Music] the first evidence of metal art in the americas was found in the form of gold foil beads near lake titicaca later methods of metal extraction and processing were developed in northern peru and colombia today gold continues to be as powerful as symbol of wealth and status as it was in ancient times while story is at the core of every art form oral storytelling has preserved the cultural identity of indigenous peoples for thousands of years stories are the memories of our ancestors and through them they ensure that the values rituals knowledge and ways of life are kept alive those stories are what are held as being the foundation of an understanding of where you have come where you are and where you may go in the future every indigenous culture has a story about their origins as a people these creation stories tell us how they came to be in northwest north america a haida creation story tells of a raven discovering first people as they emerged from a clamshell on a beach the tsimshan people have a story about the origins of the killer whale a white wolf longed to tell the history of the world through song he left the land and went under sea where he transformed into a killer whale today he calls out to his wolf family who still live on the land there is a journey through a storied landscape and so as as you begin to hear descriptions of this journey the people will usually say that they stopped in different places the inuit and their ancestors have lived in the arctic for thousands of years a rich storytelling tradition evolved over countless generations through the sharing of legends between elders and children [Music] we have a great camaraderie with all the other arctic peoples of the world because you know we were nomads like we traveled you know to alaska greenland all over the north and we all speak the same language with many different dialects so i can talk to people from alaska and institute i can talk to people from greenland and we can understand each other pretty well so we had all these stories these traditional legends and they were told right across the north as you listen to these stories you know you fall asleep to them every night and and they teach you a lesson and you dream you know about these characters and and they become your heroes the most famous person that you know i can think of is a man called kibio my grandmother said kimio was born so long ago that he was the very first person the beginning of the kiddos stories actually talks about a little boy who's also an orphan he was being bullied by all these kids in the community and then his grandmother made him clothing out of young seal and she said i would like you to go down to the beach and when you get to the water's edge i would like you to take the seal skin and pull it over your head and jump into the water and go for a swim and come up right in front of all your mean friends were playing on the beach and sure enough all the mean boys were playing on the beach the little boy took the seal skin he pulled it over and said so that it fit nicely and he looked like a little seal and then he took a deep breath and he jumped into the water and he came up right in front of all the mean boys who were playing on the beach they thought he was a little seal they grabbed their kayaks and all their long skinny skin boats and they started paddling following the little seal the little sea would go down in the water and he would swim a little bit farther out and then he would come up again and then he would go down and he would swim a little bit farther out and then he would come up again and when they were way out at sea when the little seal came up he would lift up his arm and his leg and he would sing [Music] where's my wind i want my wind people say the weather that was on the day you were born is your very own weather and this little boy was born on a very very windy day and he was calling the weather that was on the day he was born the wind hurt him and it started to come it got windier and windier and windier and before long there were huge waves in the water and the kayaks with all the mean boys were going up and down up and down in the big waves and every now and then a giant wave would come and he would trip the kayaks over and before long there was only one person left that person was kivio kivio landed his kayak over on the other side of the ocean and so he started traveling trying to find his way home and while he was trying to find his way home it seems like he traveled through every part of the north because there are stories about him everywhere he traveled across this ocean and ended up on the other side in this very strange place and he got homesick so he started traveling trying to find his way home what people say about kivio is that he was the first person but he's still alive today he is so old his body is turning to stone and someday when his heart turns completely to stone it stops that will be the end of the universe in the finnish language they have a word which sounds just like evil and it means stone man so if you go back far enough and finish history you might find stories about this very same person of all the indigenous forms of art storytelling remains the most essential to the teaching of culture our relationship with others and our connection to the environment we have all these stories you know these incredible legends that teach us how to care for the young and to help the more disadvantaged people in our world and teach us how to live with each other because you know nobody survives if they don't have a structure like that they came to know something about themselves something about relationship and responsibility and they carried that knowledge and that perspective to the next place that they journeyed to the story is mirror you know the deepest longings the deepest understandings the most profound thoughts if you will of a people and their guiding thoughts their thoughts that guide through generations rock art is one of the oldest art forms in the world by carving or scraping the surface of rocks with stone or bone tools indigenous people in the americas created visual stories called petroglyphs many of the images carry deep cultural meaning and provide us with a connection to our past there are many petroglyph sites that tend to be concentrated at really interesting locations on the landscape why the rock art is there is of great interest to archaeologists however we cannot fully understand these sites without considering the cultural knowledge associated with them petroglyphs had many functions to mark a trail record an important event or tell a story for me as an indigenous archaeologist i do use the science aspect of trying to find and locate sites but we can also look at our oral histories and our place names and our traditions we can come to understand landscapes from a cultural perspective and a scientific perspective but when we layer those two together we only enhance our understanding of the past [Music] the mountains haven't changed since the days of our ancestors we see paths of their travels prehistoric trails that they've taken and yes definitely the petroglyphs you know the symbols and designs that remind us of our traditional religious practices our ceremony our rituals all those things are evidence of their presence and their use of this landscape they're etched in the stone because they wanted them to survive those messages to survive they wanted those symbols designed to be recognized and utilized by the people these are messages or reminders to all our ottoman people you know to continue our way of life [Music] [Music] today we find petroglyphs in every part of the western hemisphere they offer us a glimpse into the way of life and dream worlds of our ancestors [Music] on cave walls cliff faces and rock overhangs throughout the americas indigenous people painted images that represented the world around them pictographs were drawn painted or stained on the rock's surface using organic materials like ochre and charcoal one of the oldest pictograph sites in the americas is the cave of hands site in argentina the ancestors of the people of patagonia covered the ceilings and walls with hundreds of handprints artists filled hollow bird bones with pigment then place their hand against the wall or ceiling by blowing the pigment through the tube the paint left the outline of a hand painted over the course of several thousand years the illustrations on the walls of this site reveal the hunting practices of the people of the region pictographs are also found throughout north america with the largest concentrations in the great lakes region the southwest and along the west coast like those in south america most of the pictographs of north america were painted with ochre ocher being very rich dark red really symbolizes life and power and it provides a way to spiritually connect with your ancestors and of course the landscape and the resources that surround you in squamish culture we refer to this as tameth and it translates as paint the images portrayed in pictographs are more than storyboards of ancient times the ochre itself offers a valuable insight into the lives of the people who used it as paint one of the ways that i've researched tumuth ochre is by doing some non-destructive analysis called x-ray fluorescence this gives me an elemental signature of the yolker so i can then go and find natural outcrops of the ochre and try and match the signature from a pictograph to a geological deposit where that material was gathered and so that gives us a little more understanding on how people use their landscape and the way they associated those paintings with what surrounds those sites one of the mysteries of rock art is its frequent similarity with artistic styles in different regions of the americas many researchers have noted that the styles and patterns of certain rock hard images are the same and early on in archaeological research many people said well maybe this was a widespread tradition or maybe it was a certain group of people who moved around really this is just a reflection of what is in the local environment and of course a shared human nature storytelling through petroglyphs and pictographs is one of the earliest forms of creative expression collectively rock art stands as a visual library of natural and human history throughout the americas before 1491. [Music] [Music] rock art is one of the earliest forms of creative expressions in human history the oldest pictographs have survived tens of thousands of years in the shelter of rocky landscapes where they were painted [Music] australia is home to more rock art than any continent on earth detailed drawings of birds wildlife and plants and pictographs found in the northern territories offer a glimpse of ancient flora and fauna in the region [Music] the ancient caves of southern france are home to a remarkable collection of rock art horses bears and bison some as large as five meters adorn the walls of these caves [Music] argentina's cave of hands was created over a span of several thousand years the illustrations on the walls of this site reveal the hunting practices of indigenous people over 10 000 years ago the artwork at pictograph sites and the detailed depictions of vegetation animals and humans make rock paintings a visual library of natural and human history around the world the art of weaving natural fibers into baskets clothing and bedding has been part of indigenous cultures in the americas for thousands of years the techniques used to create these materials vary from nation to nation iroquoian and algonquin basket makers used pounded ash bark and braided sweetgrass for their baskets the cherokee made baskets out of bundled pine needles coiled sumac and willow the anishinabe and dene made bark baskets in northern california maidu women developed basket weaving to a high art form their baskets were so tightly woven they could be used to carry water and cook food in many indigenous cultures skilled basket makers blended dyes and a variety of materials to weave their baskets some things were decorated with beautiful geometric designs and you could tell that somebody took the time to make those patterns to make it beautiful in the pacific northwest cedar bark roots and grasses were the materials used to make a wide range of woven products there's traditional basketry that goes on all the way from alaska all the way down the coast and there are some similarities and there's you know a lot of differences as well you know from tribe to tribe the new channel and macaw nations were among the finest basket weavers in the americas when the 400 year old ozet village site was discovered long buried beneath a mudslide it gave contemporary weavers a rare look at the traditional forms of weaving of the macaw people underneath the mud was whole houses filled with everything a person needed in those days to survive and so you could see you know how advanced and the knowledge was that these folks had in the things that they made for the macaw as with other indigenous peoples the art of weaving wasn't limited to making baskets they had mats that could be folded up and then rolled up and stored capes to keep you warm rain hats to keep the rain off baskets to store your fish and your ceremonial items and beautifully made too they were artfully created both men and women in those eras had to make their own items some of the turndowns and weaves are very complicated and you think man how did somebody you know come up with how to execute making a knob top hat and keeping it at a certain pitch gathering all these different materials and learning how to create a wii to make these things who figured it out how to pull bark from the tree and take the outer bark off and to pound it make it really really soft enough to make a diaper for a baby [Music] the materials used in basketry depended on the natural resources available in each territory for the new channel and the macaw of the northwest cedar proved to be the ideal material for weaving with the cedar tree there was cedar boughs that were used for making auwitz baskets which are packed baskets in in our language they people would use them to carry heavy heavy loads such as uh firewood or clams and things like that and then the cedar root was used as the uh tension weavers that go around the basket and then also cedar bark or what we call pizza just a cedar tree alone was utilized for everything basketry with its many forms styles and distinct patterns provides insight into the resources cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples throughout the north american continent while the earliest pottery was used for cooking over the centuries the technology evolved into an art form the distinct materials designs and colors used in pottery provides clues to the cultural origins of its maker the earliest pottery in the americas was produced in the lower amazon basin about 7 500 years ago around 6000 years ago pottery emerged in other regions of south america the people of north america began their own pottery traditions about four thousand years ago in the american southwest pottery played a utilitarian and spiritual role the pueblo developed traditions for molding firing and decorating clay artists use brushes made from yucca leaves to paint their pottery they also use tools to create designs on the wet clay after firing the pottery smooth stones were rubbed over the surface to create a polished finish just as stories were woven into baskets capes and blankets story was part of each piece of pottery we have representations of buffalo of deer of turkeys of all of the different animals that are part of our landscape and you see an ecological tapestry that tapestry of inter-relationship of connection to plants to animals to the natural forces of the world those things that sustain the people through time through generations there's a whole process that that parallels the creative process in that every stage of the creation of a pot becomes a a way to meditate and to think about some of those ideas those primal ideas that are part of our stories relationship to the land in terms of leaving offerings and thanking the earth mother for her gift of clay to thinking about the kinds of designs and symbols that one will place on one's pottery represent which is another stage of thinking and learning about the story and learning through the story uh to the actual you know creation of the pot the polishing of the pot the firing of the pot and then finally the gifting of the pot all of which in many ways incorporate indigenous core values of of respect responsibility of relationship these are the principles these are the essences of thought that still remain as being the thread that holds us together the community is the holder of culture language tradition and so through time the community becomes the real vessel that you try to sustain [Music] ancient peoples in every part of the world developed pottery traditions the earliest pieces were bowls and pots used for storage and cooking later clay was molded into ceremonial items masks pipes and even musical instruments the first pottery makers in japan coiled ropes of clay to form round bowls after smoothing the surface with tools they baked the clay in fire pits to produce ceramic pots that could be used for cooking [Music] the oldest pottery tradition in the world had its origins in southeast china their pots and bowls were made from clay mixed with ground quartz sand and feldspar [Music] the earliest potters in the americas lived in the lower amazon basin they made red and black clay pots often decorated with paint that were used to store and cook food while the first pottery in the world was used for cooking over the centuries the technology evolved into an art form as well as an important expression of cultural identity masks have been a part of indigenous culture in the americas for thousands of years some of the earliest masks were carved in ivory by the dorset people later inuit of the arctic used masks for storytelling and ceremonies the hopi and pueblo cultures use kachina masks in traditional dance ceremonies in northwest north america artists carve intricate masks from cedar you and alder using distinct form lines that can be seen on 5 000 year old petroglyphs west coast nations created masks depicting humans animals and supernatural beings for ceremonies called potlatches the families who host potlatches bring out their masks songs and dances to record their family lineage display wealth and honor a birth marriage or death carver started their training as young boys often learning from an uncle or grandfather when the apprenticeship was completed they would spend their lives carving masks and poles for their family and community a mask can be a very powerful thing amongst our people a mask means so much more than just an art piece for our people even today but especially before contact it means connections to our stories we don't just make it up and and carve any old mass that we want we have to have that right in order to wear that mask the masks are created in order to retell origin stories and old stories and it's a way of of bringing those old legends to life in our in our ceremonies in the light of a big house reflective properties are really crucial and so we like to decorate our masks and frontlets with reflective shell in order to cast light back to the viewer and for us light you know in the darkness of the of the winter months light is so important and that reflection um has a has a spiritual quality to it presented together at potlatches carved masks dances and songs told stories owned by the host families and we believe that our our ancestors were able to take off their animal clothes and they were human underneath and so there's a time of transformation when they can go back and forth between being a human or animal creature we create masks in order to tell those stories while potlatch has bonded families and communities through ceremony they also played a central role in establishing relationships with neighboring nations during the winter time is when we held our most important ceremonies when we invite other villages to come to our communities to witness our dances and listen to the songs that are owned by the host family we invite other people to witness what we have to show and share and they validate the ownership of those rights and prerogatives by attending potlatches or winter ceremonials [Music] one of the most important things that that we create to this day are items that are used in ceremonial contexts reminds us of our role in the community a role that's continued through countless generations and connects us to the artists that we're creating the exact same pieces it connects us to those same people that did the exact same thing for the exact same reason when we see one of our masks being used in the big house or one of our frontlets being danced it shows that connection to the past and connection to our culture and and really gives us as artists a reason for for being and it's about that connection to culture and place and our ancestors [Music] totem poles are wooden monuments created by artists in many nations in the northwest they were raised in prominent locations like the entrance to a big house or along the shoreline to a village animal crests and supernatural beings carved on the poles represented the stories that belonged to a family when we look at totem poles it's often telling those same stories as well because you look at them and you see those same animals and sometimes you'll see the human ancestor figure depicted as well so it's showing that pre-history for our people the very first histories during the time of transformation it's about that connection to culture and place and our ancestors [Music] art sculpted from stone wood clay and fiber are reminders of the artistic genius of our ancestors but art was not the only cultural expression of indigenous peoples before 1491 ancient peoples in every part of the world used masks for rituals celebrations and storytelling the earliest evidence of masks can be found in rock paintings that date back more than 30 000 years the oldest masks in the world were discovered in the judean hills near jerusalem they were created at a time when agriculture was first developing in mesopotamia and people were establishing permanent towns throughout the region mycenae was an important center of power and trade in ancient greece some of the earliest gold masks from this area were found in burials of people who had high social status in the community [Music] the earliest masks in the arctic were made of ivory by the dorset peoples later the inuit made and used masks for storytelling and ceremonies [Music] masks continue to be used throughout the world in traditional ceremonies that honor ancestors and preserve cultures [Music] music dance and storytelling are a part of every nation in the americas these diverse cultural expressions bring us together through sacred ceremonies and community celebrations in many ways art is the expression of indigenous people's relationship with the natural and spirit worlds we have come to know our ancestors on a deeper level through their artistic traditions before 1491 passed down from generation to generation these traditions continue in our communities to this day [Music] we are the first peoples of the americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars [Music] crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors [Music] we created distinct societies and built vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear [Music] today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the untold stories of the americas before columbus [Music] the creative spirit is at the heart of every indigenous culture in the americas the artistic genius of our ancestors was evident in every aspect of life from traditional ceremonies to the creation of everyday objects our histories were carefully passed down from generation to generation through stories songs and dances perhaps the most visible reminders of our past are the works of art that our ancestors left for us through ceramic metal wood and woven materials we've discovered the very essence of our cultures before 1491. for thousands of years indigenous people have been creating tools and art from gold silver copper and bronze the technology of metallurgy in the americas before 1491 was possibly the most advanced in the world the mining and manufacturing of metals was an established technology in western south america around 2000 years ago evidence of simple gold beads was discovered near lake titicaca that dates back 4 000 years the inca are often credited with developing the metallurgy traditions in south america they were after all the dominant society when gold production was at its peak 600 years ago but the extraction and purification of metals and the creation of metal alloys was practiced by indigenous cultures in the andes a thousand years or more before the inca civilization existed gold objects were a status symbol reserved for the sapa inca and the elite commoners only wore gold during religious and state ceremonies they were the most advanced civilization in the processing of metallurgy in the american continent they live in an area where the ore was abundant and with techniques that perhaps were superior to the european ones skilled artisans throughout the inca empire were conscripted to produce jewelry and ceremonial objects for the sappa inca and his extended family the artisans were often required to move from their own cities to work in the inca capital of cusco there was a cosmology an ideology identified with the metals gold was identified with the sun and silver was identified with the moon and the tumbagas which were mixtures or alloys of gold and silver and copper were identified with kind of the androgynous being of the metals such that they represented both the male and female element the heavens and the earth and a whole host of other things that were sacred to the people that worked in those metals inca goldsmiths used a variety of different smelting techniques to produce alloys there is one element more than gold or silver there is one element that the incas had in abundance mercury why mercury because you need mercury to basically remove impurities in the ore and obtain only pure silver and pure gold i've identified over 50 metallurgical traditions from the electrochemical plating of gold onto less precious metals all the way through to gilding processes and even the production of platinum which is among the first uses of platinum in the world these 50 traditions have often been identified with things like sheffield plating and last i recall sheffield is in england and yet we have the earlier precedence for this innovation and technology in peru a region as rich in resources and people as the inca empire required an efficient road system for transportation many of the products used by the ruling family such as precious stones woven material and feathers were transported along this vast road system the inca empire stretched from colombia to the southern tip of chile connecting the millions of people living in this region was the great inca road a 40 000 kilometer highway that crisscrossed mountains deserts and forests the chaski was a long-distance relay runner who traveled a great road to deliver packages to the rulers and the artisans who created works of art for the sapa incas family [Music] m so so hmm [Music] handed his packages of precious materials to the next runner at a tambo's or resting house [Music] me [Music] the jewelry and other objects that the inca artisans created from gold and silver were part of a complex cultural dynamic that connected the ruling saba inca and his family to the important deities like the sun god inti although they were highly regarded in society creating the metal objects for ceremonies artisans performed their work at the pleasure of the sapa inca and the elite class perhaps we lost many other possible paths that perhaps we're better perhaps we're more efficient perhaps we're more beautiful perhaps we're even like more sustainable at the peak of the inca civilization the goldsmiths and artisans were masters of metallurgy techniques and the creation of brilliant works of art so oh [Music] one of mankind's greatest achievements was developing technologies to extract metals from rock this led to the invention of bronze and iron tools and weapons and the creation of gold and silver jewelry and art [Music] the earliest manufactured gold in the world was discovered at an ancient cemetery on the western shores of the black sea more than three thousand pieces of gold jewelry and artifacts were found at this site the egyptians were among the first civilizations to mine and use gold it was an important part of the ceremonies associated with the burials of the pharaohs and their families [Music] the first evidence of metal art in the americas was found in the form of gold foil beads near lake titicaca later methods of metal extraction and processing were developed in northern peru and colombia [Music] today gold continues to be as powerful a symbol of wealth and status as it was in ancient times while story is at the core of every art form oral storytelling has preserved the cultural identity of indigenous peoples for thousands of years stories are the memories of our ancestors and through them they ensure that the values rituals knowledge and ways of life are kept alive those stories are what are held as being the foundation of an understanding of where you have come where you are and where you may go in the future every indigenous culture has a story about their origins as a people these creation stories tell us how they came to be in northwest north america a haida creation story tells of a raven discovering first people as they emerged from a clam shell on a beach that simshan people have a story about the origins of the killer whale a white wolf longed to tell the history of the world through song he left the land and went under seat where he transformed into a killer whale today he calls out to his wolf family who still live on the land there is a journey through a storied landscape and so as as you begin to hear descriptions of this journey the people will usually say that they stopped in different places the inuit and their ancestors have lived in the arctic for thousands of years a rich storytelling tradition evolved over countless generations through the sharing of legends between elders and children [Music] we have a great camaraderie with all the other arctic peoples of the world because you know we were nomads like we traveled you know to alaska greenland all over the north and we all speak the same language with many different dialects so i can talk to people from alaska and institute i can talk to people from greenland and we can understand each other pretty well so we had all these stories these traditional legends and they were told right across the north as you listen to these stories you know you fall asleep to them every night and they teach you a lesson and you dream you know about these characters and and they become your heroes the most famous person that you know i can think of is a man called tibio my grandmother said qiviu was born so long ago that he was the very first person the beginning of the kitty of stories actually talks about a little boy who's also an orphan he was being bullied by all these kids in the community and then his grandmother made him clothing out of young seal and she said i would like you to go down to the beach and when you get to the water's edge i would like you to take the seal skin and pull it over your head and jump into the water and go for a swim and come up right in front of all your mean friends while playing on the beach and sure enough all the mean boys were playing on the beach the little boy took the seal skin he pulled it over and said so that it fit nicely and he looked like a little seal and then he took a deep breath and he jumped into the water and he came up right in front of all the mean boys who were playing on the beach they thought he was a little seal they grabbed their kayaks and all their long skinny skin boats and they started paddling following the little seal the little sea would go down in the water and he would swim a little bit farther out and then he would come up again and then he would go down and he would swim a little bit farther out and then he would come up again and when they were way out at sea when the little seal came up he would lift up his arm and his leg and he would sing [Music] where is my wind i want my wind people say the weather that was on the day you were born is your very own weather and this little boy was born on a very very windy day and he was calling the weather that was on the day he was born the wind hurt him and it started to come it got windier and windier and windier and before long there were huge waves in the water and the kayaks with all the mean boys were going up and down up and down in the big waves and every now and then a giant wave would come and it would flip the kayaks over and before long there was only one person left that person was kiddio kivio landed his kayak over on the other side of the ocean and so he started traveling trying to find his way home and while he was trying to find his way home it seems like he travel through every part of the north because there are stories about him everywhere he traveled across this ocean and ended up on the other side in this very strange place and he got homesick so he started traveling trying to find his way home what people say about kivio is that he was the first person but he's still alive today he is so old his body is turning to stone and someday when his heart turns completely to stone it stops that will be the end of the universe in the finnish language they have a word which sounds just like evil and it means stone man so if you go back far enough and finish history you might find stories about this very same person of all the indigenous forms of art storytelling remains the most essential to the teaching of culture our relationship with others and our connection to the environment we have all these stories you know these incredible legends that teach us how to care for the young and to help the more disadvantaged people in our world and teach us how to live with each other because you know nobody survives if they don't have a structure like that they came to know something about themselves something about relationship and responsibility and they carried that knowledge and that perspective to the next place that they journeyed to the story is mirror you know the deepest the longings the deepest uh understandings the most profound uh thoughts if you will of a people and their guiding thoughts their thoughts that guide through generations rock art is one of the oldest art forms in the world by carving or scraping the surface of rocks with stone or bone tools indigenous people in the americas created visual stories called petroglyphs many of the images carry deep cultural meaning and provide us with a connection to our past there are many petroglyph sites that tend to be concentrated at really interesting locations on the landscape why the rock art is there is of great interest to archaeologists however we cannot fully understand these sites without considering the cultural knowledge associated with them petroglyphs had many functions to mark a trail record an important event or tell a story for me as an indigenous archaeologist i do use the science aspect of trying to find and locate sites but we can also look at our oral histories and our place names and our traditions we can come to understand landscapes from a cultural perspective and a scientific perspective but when we layer those two together we only enhance our understanding of the past [Music] the mountains haven't changed since the days of our ancestors we see paths of their travels prehistoric trails that they've taken and yes definitely the petroglyphs you know the symbols and designs that remind us of our traditional religious practices our ceremony our rituals all those things are evidence of their presence and their use of this landscape they're etched in the stone because they wanted them to survive those messages to survive they wanted those symbols designed to be recognized and utilized by the people these are messages or reminders to all our other people you know to continue our way of life [Music] [Music] today we find petroglyphs in every part of the western hemisphere they offer us a glimpse into the way of life and dream worlds of our ancestors [Music] on cave walls cliff faces and rock overhangs throughout the americas indigenous people painted images that represented the world around them pictographs were drawn painted or stained on the rock's surface using organic materials like ochre and charcoal one of the oldest pictograph sites in the americas is the cave of hands site in argentina the ancestors of the people of patagonia covered the ceilings and walls with hundreds of handprints artists filled hollow bird bones with pigment then placed their hand against the wall or ceiling by blowing the pigment through the tube the paint left the outline of a hand painted over the course of several thousand years the illustrations on the walls of this site reveal the hunting practices of the people of the region pictographs are also found throughout north america with the largest concentrations in the great lakes region the southwest and along the west coast like those in south america most of the pictographs of north america were painted with ochre ocher being very rich dark red really symbolizes life and power and it provides a way to spiritually connect with your ancestors and of course the landscape and the resources that surround you in squamish culture we refer to this as tumuth and it translates as paint the images portrayed in pictographs are more than storyboards of ancient times the ochre itself offers a valuable insight into the lives of the people who used it as paint one of the ways that i've researched thomas ocher is by doing some non-destructive analysis called x-ray fluorescence this gives me an elemental signature of the ochre so i can then go and find natural outcrops of the ochre and try and match the signature from a pictograph to a geological deposit where that material was gathered and so that gives us a little more understanding on how people use their landscape and the way they associated those paintings with what surrounds those sites one of the mysteries of rock art is its frequent similarity with artistic styles in different regions of the americas many researchers have noted that the styles and patterns of certain rock hard images are the same and early on in archaeological research many people said well maybe this was a widespread tradition or maybe it was a certain group of people who moved around really this is just a reflection of what is in the local environment and of course a shared human nature storytelling through petroglyphs and pictographs is one of the earliest forms of creative expression collectively rock art stands as a visual library of natural and human history throughout the americas before 1491. [Music] [Music] rock art is one of the earliest forms of creative expressions in human history the oldest pictographs have survived tens of thousands of years in the shelter of rocky landscapes where they were painted [Music] australia is home to more rock art than any continent on earth detailed drawings of birds wildlife and plants and pictographs found in the northern territories offer a glimpse of ancient flora and fauna in the region [Music] the ancient caves of southern france are home to a remarkable collection of rock art horses bears and bison some as large as five meters adorn the walls of these caves [Music] argentina's cave of hands was created over a span of several thousand years the illustrations on the walls of this site reveal the hunting practices of indigenous people over ten thousand years ago the artwork at pictograph sites and the detailed depictions of vegetation animals and humans make rock paintings a visual library of natural and human history around the world the art of weaving natural fibers into baskets clothing and bedding has been part of indigenous cultures in the americas for thousands of years the techniques used to create these materials vary from nation to nation iroquoian and algonquin basket makers used pounded ash bark and braided sweet grass for their baskets the cherokee made baskets out of bundled pine needles coiled sumac and willow the anishinabe and dene made birchbark baskets in northern california maidu women developed basket weaving to a high art form their baskets were so tightly woven they could be used to carry water and cook food in many indigenous cultures skilled basket makers blended dyes and a variety of materials to weave their baskets some things were decorated with beautiful geometric designs and you could tell that somebody took the time to make those patterns to make it beautiful in the pacific northwest cedar bark roots and grasses were the materials used to make a wide range of woven products there's traditional basketry that goes on all the way from alaska all the way down the coast and there are some similarities and there's you know a lot of differences as well you know from tribe to tribe the new channels and macaw nations were among the finest basket weavers in the americas when the 400 year old ozet village site was discovered long buried beneath a mudslide it gave contemporary weavers a rare look at the traditional forms of weaving of the macaw people underneath the mud was whole houses filled with everything a person needed in those days to survive and so you could see you know how advanced and the knowledge was that these folks had in the things that they made for the macaw as with other indigenous peoples the art of weaving wasn't limited to making baskets they had mats that could be folded up and then rolled up and stored capes to keep you warm rain hats to keep the rain off baskets to store your fish and your ceremonial items and beautifully made too they were artfully created both men and women in those eras had to make their own items some of the turndowns and weaves are very complicated and you think man how did somebody you know come up with how to execute making a knob top hat and keeping it at a certain pitch gathering all these different materials and learning how to create a weave to make these things who figured it out how to pull bark from the tree and take the outer bark off and to pound it make it really really soft enough to make a diaper for a baby [Music] the materials used in basketry depended on the natural resources available in each territory for the new channel and the macaw of the northwest cedar proved to be the ideal material for weaving with the cedar tree there was cedar bows that were used for making auwitz baskets which are packed baskets in in our language people would use them to carry heavy heavy loads such as firewood or clams and things like that then the cedar root was used as the tension weavers that go around the basket and then also cedar bark or what we call pizza just a cedar tree alone was utilized for everything basketry with its many forms styles and distinct patterns provides insight into the resources cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples throughout the north american continent while the earliest pottery was used for cooking over the centuries the technology evolved into an art form the distinct materials designs and colors used in pottery provides clues to the cultural origins of its maker the earliest pottery in the americas was produced in the lower amazon basin about 7 500 years ago around 6000 years ago pottery emerged in other regions of south america the people of north america began their own pottery traditions about 4 000 years ago in the american southwest pottery played a utilitarian and spiritual role the pueblo developed traditions for molding firing and decorating clay artists use brushes made from yucca leaves to paint their pottery they also use tools to create designs on the wet clay after firing the pottery smooth stones were rubbed over the surface to create a polished finish just as stories were woven into baskets capes and blankets story was part of each piece of pottery we have representations of buffalo of deer of turkeys of all of the different animals that are part of our landscape and you see an ecological tapestry that tapestry of inter-relationship of connection to plants to animals to the natural forces of the world those things that sustain the people through time through generations there's a whole process that that parallels the creative process in that um every stage of the creation of a pot becomes a a way to meditate and to think about some of those ideas those primal ideas that are part of our stories relationship to the land in terms of leaving offerings and thanking the earth mother for her gift of clay to uh thinking about the kinds of designs and symbols that one will place on one's pottery represent which is another stage of thinking and learning about the story and learning through the story uh to the actual you know the creation of the pot the polishing of the pod the firing of the pot and then finally the gifting of the pot all of which in many ways incorporate indigenous core values of of respect responsibility of relationship these are the principles these are the essences of thought that still remain as being the thread that holds us together the community is the holder of culture language tradition and so through time uh the community becomes the real vessel that you try to sustain [Music] ancient peoples in every part of the world develop pottery traditions the earliest pieces were bowls and pots used for storage and cooking later clay was molded into ceremonial items masks pipes and even musical instruments the first pottery makers in japan coiled ropes of clay to form round bowls after smoothing the surface with tools they baked the clay in fire pits to produce ceramic pots that could be used for cooking [Music] the oldest pottery tradition in the world had its origins in southeast china their pots and bowls were made from clay mixed with ground quartz sand and feldspar [Music] the earliest potters in the americas lived in the lower amazon basin they made red and black clay pots often decorated with paint that were used to store and cook food while the first pottery in the world was used for cooking over the centuries the technology evolved into an art form as well as an important expression of cultural identity [Music] masks have been a part of indigenous culture in the americas for thousands of years some of the earliest masks were carved in ivory by the dorset people later inuit of the arctic used masks for storytelling and ceremonies the hopi and pueblo cultures use kachina masks in traditional dance ceremonies in northwest north america artists carve intricate masks from cedar you and alder using distinct form lines that can be seen on five thousand-year-old petroglyphs west coast nations created masks depicting humans animals and supernatural beings for ceremonies called potlatches the families who host potlatches bring out their masks songs and dances to record their family lineage display wealth and honor a birth marriage or death carver started their training as young boys often learning from an uncle or grandfather when the apprenticeship was completed they would spend their lives carving masks and poles for their family and community a mask can be a very powerful thing amongst our people a mask means so much more than just an art piece for our people even today but especially before contact it means connections to our stories we don't just make it up and and carve any old mass that we want we have to have that right in order to wear that mask the masks are created in order to retell origin stories and old stories and it's a way of of bringing those old legends to life in our in our ceremonies in the light of a big house reflective properties are really crucial and so we like to decorate our masks and frontlets with reflective shell in order to cast light back to the viewer and for us light you know in the darkness of the of the winter months light is so important and that reflection has a has a spiritual quality to it presented together at potlatches carved masks dances and songs told stories owned by the host families and we believe that our our ancestors were able to take off their animal clothes and they were human underneath and so there's a time of transformation when they can go back and forth between being a human or animal creature we create masks in order to tell those stories while potlatch has bonded families and communities through ceremony they also played a central role in establishing relationships with neighboring nations during the winter time is when we held our most important ceremonies when we invite other villagers to come to our communities to witness our dances and listen to the songs that are owned by the host family we invite other people to witness what we have to show and share and they validate the ownership of those rights and prerogatives by attending potlatches or winter ceremonials [Music] one of the most important things that that we create to this day are items that are used in ceremonial contexts reminds us of our role in the community a role that's continued through countless generations and connects us to the artists that we're creating the exact same pieces it connects us to those same people that did the exact same thing for the exact same reason when we see one of our masks being used in the big house or one of our frontlets being danced it shows that connection to the past and connection to our culture and really gives us as artists a reason for for being and it's about that connection to culture and place and our ancestors [Music] totem poles are wooden monuments created by artists in many nations in the northwest they were raised in prominent locations like the entrance to a big house or along the shoreline to a village animal crests and supernatural beings carved on the poles represented the stories that belong to a family when we look at totem poles it's often telling those same stories as well because you look at them and you see those same animals and sometimes you'll see the human ancestor figure depicted as well so it's showing that pre-history for our people the very first histories during the time of transformation it's about that connection to culture and place and our ancestors [Music] art sculpted from stone wood clay and fiber are reminders of the artistic genius of our ancestors but art was not the only cultural expression of indigenous peoples before 1491. ancient peoples in every part of the world used masks for rituals celebrations and storytelling the earliest evidence of masks can be found in rock paintings that date back more than 30 000 years the oldest masks in the world were discovered in the judean hills near jerusalem they were created at a time when agriculture was first developing in mesopotamia and people were establishing permanent towns throughout the region mycenae was an important center of power and trade in ancient greece some of the earliest gold masks from this area were found in burials of people who had high social status in the community [Music] the earliest masks in the arctic were made of ivory by the dorset peoples later the inuit made and used masks for storytelling and ceremonies [Music] masks continue to be used throughout the world in traditional ceremonies that honor ancestors and preserve cultures [Music] music dance and storytelling are a part of every nation in the americas these diverse cultural expressions bring us together through sacred ceremonies and community celebrations in many ways art is the expression of indigenous people's relationship with the natural and spirit worlds we have come to know our ancestors on a deeper level through their artistic traditions before 1491 passed down from generation to generation these traditions continue in our communities to this day [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 406,746

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, native american history, first nations, indigenous americans, america before columbus, 15th century america, american history

Id: NbhudH1xhyY

Length: 185min 5sec (11105 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022