| Ancient
Civilizations – Americas , Australia , Pacific Islands
Historian,
Sir Kenneth Clark, defined civilization as “what we leave
behind.” Come explore what the ancient peoples of the Americas , Australia
, and the Pacific Islands left behind. We can learn about their everyday lives,
their customs, their politics, their religious beliefs, their languages, their
systems of commerce, and more as we explore their artifacts and ruins. 
Places To Go | People
To See | Things To Do | Teacher
Resources
Places To Go
National Historic
Park : Hopewell Culture
Hopewell
Culture
Visit ancient native peoples of North America . The tribes in the central,
northeastern part of what is now the United States were sometimes called
mound builders because of how they buried their dead. Some mounds were
simple, rounded shapes of soil over the top of one buried individual.
Other mounds had complicated shapes and often contained the remains
of many people who were buried with personal possessions such as jewelry,
pottery, and clothing. The
Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is shaped like a huge snake swallowing
an egg and is over 1300 feet long and 6 feet high.
Discovery Channel : Nazca Lines
About.com
Nazca Lines
Travel to the
Nazca Lines of the edge of the Atacama desert in Peru . The Nazca Lines
are huge outlines of animals, creatures, and geometric shapes that are
etched into the surface of the desert. These shapes are so large that they
can only be seen in their entirety from the air. Archaeologists are not
sure how or why the ancient Nazca peoples made these enormous shapes. The
Nazca lived in the area of Peru from about 200 BC to 600 AD, and their
creations have been preserved because of the extreme dryness of the desert
region. Some people think these incredible shapes were made by aliens.
Teotihuacan
: City of the Gods
Visit this ancient town just outside
of Mexico City that is called the City of the Gods. Among the ruins is
the Pyramid of the Sun which is the 3 rd largest pyramid in the world.
Tenochtitlan
Explore
the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan . It was built mostly on groups of islands
in Lake Texcoco in central Mexico . When Cortes’s Spanish
conquistadors first saw this city in 1519, one of the Spanish soldiers,
Bernal Diaz said, “These great buildings rising from the water,
all made of stone, seemed like an enchanged vision. It was all so wonderful,
this first glimpse of things never heard of, seen, or dreamed of before.” Find
out what happened to this city and what ruins still remain today.
Lake
Mungo
Discover the ancient
aboriginal peoples of Australia . The oldest remains of aboriginal civilizations
were discovered at Lake Mungo in New South Wales .
Machu
Picchu
The
Inca Trail and Machu Picchu
Machu
Picchu : Home of the Ancients
The Lost
City of the Incas
Explore the ancient Incan city of
Machu Picchu located high in the Andes mountains in central Peru .
City
Occupied by Inca Discovered on Andean Peak in Peru
Peru ’s
New Machu Piccu
Explorers
Find Last Stronghold of the Inca
Travel
to Cerro Victoria , a recently discovered ancient Incan city that is located
about about 25 miles from the famous Machu Picchu . “The
ruins so far consist of 12 sites with more than 100 structures, including
circular homes, storehouses, cemeteries, funeral towers, roadways, waterworks,
farming terraces, a dam and a truncated pyramid.”
Journey
though Tikal
Tikal National Park
Travel to the ancient Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala
, one of the oldest and largest of excavated Mayan cities. There are over
3,000 buildings and other structures excavated in an area of about six
square miles. It is thought that Tikal may have had about 10,000 people
living in it during its peak.
Uluru
- Kata Tjuta National Park
Uluru
Explore Uluru, also
known as Ayers Rock. To aboriginal Australian, Uluru is sacred site associated
with their creations stories.
Pyramid
of the Sun
Visit the Pyramid
of the Sun in the middle of the 2-mile-long Avenue of the Dead in the
city of Teotihuacan , the capital of the ancient Aztec Empire. The Aztecs
believed that the sun was born in the Pyramid of the Sun, and at certain
times of the year, human sacrifices were made there to keep the sun moving
across the sky. This Aztec pyramid is four times bigger than the pyramid
of Cheops in Egypt .
Easter
Island
Easter
Island History
Easter
Island
Travel to mysterious Easter Island
. It is located about 2000 miles west of Chile and about fourteen hundred
miles east of Pitcairn Island . It is thought to have been first inhabited
about 400 A.D. from peoples sailing on rafts from other Pacific Islands
. The more than 1000 standing stones called moai comprise most
of what is left of that ancient culture.
Mesa
Verde
Travel to Mesa Verde National
Park in southwest Colorado to explore the ruins and cliff dwellings of
its ancient inhabitants, the Anasazi.
People To See
Lords of the Earth
Meet the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan peoples. This
site explores and archaeology and anthropology of ancient cultures of
the Americas .
The
Mayas
PBS : Lost
King of the Maya
Get to know the ancient Mayans. Their
civilization flourished from about 1500 B.C. to about 1500 A.D. in what
is now southern Mexico, Guatemala , Belize , parts of El Salvador , and
western Honduras .
Hiram
Bingham
Meet
Hiram Bingham. He was an American archaeologist. While a professor at Yale
University , he led numerous expeditions to Peru from 1911 to 1915 and
investigated the ruins of Machu Picchu , bringing the archaeological site
to the attention of the outside world for the first time.
Maori
Maori
Spend time with the ancient Maori people of New
Zealand . The Maori arrived at the islands of what is now New Zealand in
about 950 A.D. They probably sailed from the eastern Pacific Islands in
huge canoes. Their first ruler was Kupe, and he named the islands Aotearoa which
means “land of the long white cloud.” When European explorers,
including Captain James Cook, eventually discovered and moved on to the
two main islands, they quickly sold much of the land belonging to the
Maori. By the mid 1800s, the Maori had become subordinate to the white
settlers whom they called Pakeha.
Ice Mummies
of the Incas
Treasures
of the Inca
Meet the ice mummies of the Incas.
Over 100 mummies have been found in ancient Incan burial places. The cold,
dry climate essentially freeze dried the remains of the ancient individuals
buried high in the Andes . Undisturbed remains have been found with gold
and silver figurines and offerings that were meant to go with them to the
gods. The Spanish conquistadors destroyed or looted many of the ancient
burial sites, but these mummies located at extreme high elevations have
largely remained untouched.
Thor
Heyerdahl
Thor
Heyerdahl and His Crews
Kon-tiki
Museum
Spend some time with Thor Heyerdahl.
He was a Norwegian explorer and anthropologist. He believed that the original
settlers of many of the Pacific Islands came from South America . He tested
his theory in 1947 by sailing over 4000 miles from Peru to the Tuamotu
Islands on a balsa raft called Kon Tiki.
Australian
Aborigines
The aborigines were
the first inhabitants of Australia . It is thought that they came to Australia
from southeast Asia about 40,000 years ago when the land mass of Australia
was still joined to Asia . When the first British colonists arrived in
Australia , there were about 300,000 aboriginal people on the continent.
Today, most of the aboriginal people no longer live in the Australian outback,
but have moved to cities and towns.
Anasazi
Indian
Ruins of the Southwest
Anasazi
Spend time
with some of the ancient inhabitants of the southwestern United States
.
Things To Do
Aztec
Calendar
Find your birthday on the Aztec
calendar.
Learner.Org
: Why Do Civilizations Fall?
Learn about the Mayan, Mesopotamian,
Mali , and Chaco Canyon civilizations and discover what may have lead to
their downfall.
The
Civilization of the Incas
Learn
about the history, geography, agriculture, clothing, laws, family life,
religion, and writing of the Incan people. The Incas were a pre-Columbian
civilization that flourished in South America beginning about 1200 A.D.
Find out what happened to Incan culture after the Spanish conquest.
Guggenheim
Museum: The Aztec Empire
Explore the
Aztec exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum . The artifacts are divided
into twelve different areas that offer a “representation
of Aztec society from its development to the zenigh of the empire and
its decline.”
Tjukurpa
Tjukurpa
Tjukurpa
- The Dreaming
The ancient Australian
aboriginal tradition called Tjukurpa refers to the time of creation when
ancestral beings moved across the face of the earth and gave it a shape.
All of the geological features of the earth and all its animals can be
attributed to what the ancestral beings did during the time of creation.
Olmec
Olmec
The
Olmec were a civilization that lived in the southeastern portion of what
is now Mexico between about 1000 B.C. and 300 B.C.
Lords
of Copan
Learn how
archaeologists, beginning in the 1800s, have excavated the Honduran site
called Copan to uncover the secrets of the Mayans.
Inca
The
Incan empire, at its peak, covered most of present-day Peru and parts
of Ecuador , Bolivia , Chile , and Argentina .
Civilizations
of the Americas : Aztecs/Mexicas
The highest ranking Aztec was
called the tlahtoani which means “he
who speaks.” He was considered to be the god-king. The most famous
of the Aztec tlahtoanis was Montezuma II who was the ruler when
Cortes and his conquistadors encountered the Aztecs.
Didgeridoo
Discover the magic of
didgeridoo music. The aboriginal people of Australia say that the didgeridoo
is the oldest instrument in the world and was developed by the ancient
peoples of the continent. They claim that if the earth had a voice it
would be the sound of the didgeridoo.
MesoWeb
Learn about Mesoamerican cultures. Both the Maya
and the Aztec bred certain kinds of dogs for eating.
Ancient
Aztec, Olmec, & Mesoamerica
Cortes and his conquistadors
came to the Americas looking for gold. Many of the Mesoamerican cultures
actually were very accomplished at working with gold and crafted figurines,
jewelry, cups, and ornaments from gold and other precious metals.
Maya
Civilization
Explore the geography,
languages, cities, society, writing, religion, and mathematics of the ancient
Mayans.
Aborignal
Australia
Learn about the Dreamtime.
It is part of Australian aboriginal culture and contains legends and stories
orally passed down from generation to generation that explain the origin
of the aborigines.
Aztec
Empire
Much
of what is known about the Aztecs is a result of documents recorded by
the Spanish in the early 1500s. The Spanish invaders brought priests with
them to teach the conquered cultures about Christianity. The priests had
Aztec scribes make books called codices to describe the history of their
people. These scribes used picture-writing to tell their history. The Mendoza
Codex is the most famous of the Aztec codices.
Social
Studies for Kids: Maya
Learn about a Mayan
ball game that was played on a stone court with a rubber ball with teams
of players. The goal was to get the ball through a hoop without touching
it with your hands. The winning team members were regarded as heroes.
Find out what would happen to the losing team.
Aztec
Chocolate
The
History of Chocolate
The Aztecs were famous chocolate-eaters.
Cacao trees were cultivated in the hot, damp coastal regions of the Aztec
empire. Cocoa beans were ground and boiled with liquid to make a thick
chocolate drink. Cocoa beans were also used as a form of money. The Mayans
had a similar relationship with chocolate.
The Maya
The peak of Mayan culture was from about
250 A.D. to 900 A.D. Their civilization consisted of more than 50 city-states.
Each city state consisted of a city center with pyramids, temples, and
civic buildings, and the city center was surrounded by farming communities.
Each city-state was covered about as much land as a person could walk
across in a day. Some of the more famous Mayan city-states were Tikal
and Calakmul.
Boomerang
The
ancient Australian aborigines probably started using the boomerang over
10,000 years ago. Learn about its history and get tips and tricks for
using them.
Mayan Kids
According to this site, the Mayans were
the most advanced of all ancient Mesoamerican cultures. This site has
a nice timeline of the Mayan civilization.
The
History of Mesoamerica
The Olmec,
Zapotec, Maya, Toltec, Aztec. Learn about the achievements of these amazing
pre-Columbian peoples. Their accomplishments rivaled those of western Europe
and Asia .
Mexico’s
Lost Civilizations
Maize was
an important food source for cultures throughout Mesoamerica . Several
dozen different strains of maize were cultivated.
Mexican
and Aztec History
The main god of the Aztec people was
Huitzilpochtli who was the Sun God and also the God of War. Human sacrifices
were sometimes made to Huitzilpochtli on festival days to please him and
to keep the sun shining. War captives were also sacrificed to him to help
ensure continued success in battle. The god Quetzalcoatl was also an important
diety whom the Aztecs adopted from the Mayans.
Aztec
Food and Drink
The
Aztec made a fermented, alcoholic drink from the sap of the maguey cactus.
The drink was called ochtli, and its use was strictly regulated. Only the
elderly could drink it freely.
Explore
the Mesoamerican World
No Mesoamerican
civilization made use of the wheel.
The
History of the Aztecs
Like some of the ruins of
ancient Rome existing right in the middle of busy, modern-day Rome (such
as the Coliseum and the Forum), there are numerous ancient Aztec ruins
that are right in the midst of busy, modern-day Mexico City .
Toltec
Learn
about the Toltec civilization. The Toltecs preceded the Aztecs in central
Mexico . The word Toltec means “master builder”,
and this civilization was more advanced in their art and architecture
than the Aztec.
Ancient Mexico
One of the best known Mayan rulers was Pacal.
He lived in the city-state of Palenque between about 600 A.D. and 683
A.D.
Mystery
of the Maya
The Maya developed the
idea of “zero”, and advanced concept
for a pre-Columbian society. They had accurate calendars which they used
to further their agricultural endeavors.
Mysteries
of the Maya
The Mayan empire lasted
approximately from about 1000 B.C. to 1700 A.D.
Return
of the Looted Treasures
Read the fascinating
story of how priceless ancient Mayan treasures anonymously turned up at
the National Geographic Society’s loading
dock in 1997.
Teacher Resources
Lesson Plan/Webquests/
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