urvived and continued to adapt. Before the first Indians disappeared, hundreds of tribes spread out in the continent, and developed their own language and culture. Many American Indian tribes today attribute their ancestry to the ’Clovis’ Indians. Then some of these tribes settled due to various objective and subjective factors. And from these settled villages, rose great civilizations in about 1500 BC. These civilizations emerged in the South American Continent, where environmental conditions were best suited. The earliest of these civilizations was that of the ’Olmecs.’ The Olmec was not just a separate culture entity that arose in the Gulf of Mexico; it was also a religion that spread to most of the civilized parts of South America. This religion consisted of symbols, rituals and spirits. The main god of the Olmec religion was the Rain God, a figure with both human and jaguar-like features. This Rain God was worshipped by later civilizations like the Aztecs, the Mayans etc. Civilizations like the Olmec, the Zapotec and the Maya shared many things in common. Chief among them was their calendar system. American civilizations had a calendar system that consisted of 2 calendars: a solar year of 365 days and the ritual cycle of 260-days. The two calendars worked in such a way that they converged once every fifty-two years. For the native Americans this convergence every 52 years was very auspicious, thus celebrated through public ceremonies to mark the event. Another important civilization was at Teotihuacan, with its majestic pyramids. Not very far from Mexico City, this civilization flourished in 150 BC and lasted for a millennium. Teotihuacan was a well planned city, neatly divided into neighborhoods knows as ’barrios.’ Besides Pyramids (600 totally), the town also had beautifully carved temples, along with a huge market place. The civilization grew due to its vast stretches of irrigated fields. The ...
