Enduring Motives examines tradition and religious beliefs as they are expressed in landscape, the built environment, visual symbols, stories, and ritual.Bringing together archaeologists and Native American experts, this volume focuses on long-lived religious traditions of the native peoples of the Americas and how religion codifies, justifies, and reinforces these traditions by placing a high value on continuity of beliefs and practice.Using clues from the archaeol...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review).Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the lan...

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the...

The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. LouisWhile Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what i...

Scientists not so long ago unanimously believed that people first walked to the New World from northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge at the end of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. But in the last ten years, new tools applied to old bones have yielded evidence that tells an entirely different story.In Bones, Elaine Dewar records the ferocious struggle in the scientific world to reshape our views of prehistory. She traveled from the Mackenzie River valley in northern Can...

Ancient star lore exploring the mysterious location of Pueblos in the American Southwest, circa 1100 AD, that appear to be a mirror image of the major stars of the Orion constellation. Many readers are familiar with the correlation between the pyramids of Egypt and the stars of Orion. Beginning in 1100 A.D. on the Arizona desert, the Hopi constructed a similar pattern of villages that mirrors all the major stars in the constellation. "As Above, so Below." The Orion Zone explores this groun...

From the author of How the World Moves: A revelatory new look at the hallowed, diverse, and threatened landscapes of the American IndianFor thousands of years , Native Americans have told stories about the powers of revered landscapes and sought spiritual direction at mysterious places in their homelands. In this important book, respected scholar and anthropologist Peter Nabokov writes of a wide range of sacred places in Native America. From the “high coun...

Known as an advocate for the endangered earth, Barry Lopez is one of America’s preeminent writers on nature. This invigorating book invites readers to sit down with Lopez and his friend William E. Tydeman to engage with their conversations about activism, the life of the mind, and all things literary. Even readers who think they know everything there is to know about Lopez will learn much from this richly informative book, both from Tydeman’s concise biography of Lopez and from the dialogu...

Discover the spiritual threads that bind Amazonian life and culture.Tsewa’s Gift is a profound exploration of the cultural and spiritual life of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Anthropologist Michael F. Brown delves into the concept of tsewa, a spiritual force central to the worldview of the Aguaruna people, revealing how this belief system shapes social relationships, moral obligations, and the exchange of gifts. Through vivid ethn...

A transdisciplinary collaboration among ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia traces the emergence, expansion, and decline of cultural identities in indigenous Amazonia.Hornborg and Hill argue that the tendency to link language, culture, and biology--essentialist notions of ethnic identities--is a Eurocentric bias that has characterized largely inaccurate explanations of the distribution of ethnic groups and languages in Amazonia. The e...

The human mind needs monsters. In every culture and in every epoch in human history, from ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, imaginary beings have haunted dreams and fantasies, provoking in young and old shivers of delight, thrills of terror, and endless fascination. All known folklores brim with visions of looming and ferocious monsters, often in the role as adversaries to great heroes. But while heroes have been closely studied by mythologists, monsters have been neglected, even though t...

Over a period of centuries the Ancient Ones of the American Southwest constructed a pattern of sandstone villages that precisely matches key constellations in the sky. This book plunges you into the mysteries of these unified star correlations. Other fascinating topics include: Orion’s global stargate shrines, Arizona earth chakras, crypto-creatures and star ancestors; the lost empire of Aztlán; evidence of transoceanic migrations to the Southwest in early epochs; the purpose of massive pyra...