pre-Columbian Americas

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the cultures, civilisations, and historical developments of the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, encompassing an extraordinarily diverse range of societies from Arctic hunters to Amazonian forest peoples, from Mississippian mound builders to the great city-states of the Maya, the Aztec Empire, and the Inca civilisation; pre-Columbian civilisations produced monumental architecture including Teotihuacan and Machu Picchu, sophisticated writing systems including Mayan hieroglyphics and quipu knotted records, complex astronomical calendars, large-scale agriculture through terracing and raised fields, and populations that may have totalled sixty million or more before European contact; the term emphasises the historicity and sophistication of Indigenous American cultures on their own terms, challenging Eurocentric narratives that treated the Americas as an empty or uncivilised world awaiting European discovery