946 science: The Americas gina However, intellectual activity in such subjects increasingly centered on the explication of earlier works, and little new research was done Philosophy flourished for a while in the form of the Neoplatonism and also as Christian theology, but neither of these doctrines emphasized the investigation of the natural world Non-Christian philosophy was increasingly linked to magic and to evil, and Christian understanding of the world located authority in sacred texts rather than in inquiry and experiment and the pagan works of the past Saint Augustine, considered a brilliant theologian of the fourth and fift h centuries c.e., did not believe that the world was round, a fact well known to Greek and Roman intellectuals since the fourth century b.c.e Many pagan works of science and philosophy were translated into Arabic and survived in the Islamic tradition The Western world became reacquainted with them after the Middle Ages THE AMERICAS BY MICHAEL J O’NEAL Although the chronology and routes by which the Americas were populated are still debated, one version envisions people spilling over the Bering land bridge into Alaska beginning some 30,000 years ago Migrating steadily southward to form communities throughout North, Central, and South America, they had to become astute observers of nature For thousands of years they had to adapt to new and sometimes changing climates, new flora and fauna, new food supplies, and new landscapes and terrains Some settled in the wet regions of the Pacific Northwest, some in the dry regions of Central America, some in the flat plains of the American Midwest, some in the mountainous regions of South America Some coped with tropical heat and others with arctic cold In time they adapted so successfully that they were able to build some of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world COSMOLOGY AND SCIENCE The way the aboriginal peoples of the Americas looked at their universe can be difficult for the modern world to understand In modern life a sharp distinction is made between the natural and supernatural worlds Some people not believe in a world of the supernatural, but among those who do, the two realms tend to be thought of as separate; the very word supernatural suggests that the world of the gods and the spirit exists above (“super”) or outside the physical world This separation, however, would have been unthinkable to ancient Americans Every aspect of their lives had religious significance They saw the universe as composed of spiritual and divine forces that affected them every moment of their lives At the center of this view of the world was a cosmos that ancient Americans saw as a hierarchy of spheres or planes Some of them were superior to the world of the earth; others were inferior One example is provided by the Nahua people of central Mexico, precursors to the Aztec, also a Nahua people The Nahua believed that above the earthly level were numerous other spheres, variously nine, 11, 12, or 13, with 13 being the most common This belief influenced the calendar, which was composed of 13 periods, somewhat inaccurately called “months,” each in honor of the divinity that ruled each sphere The highest divinity was referred to as Ometeotl, which translates roughly as the “god of duality.” Ometeotl was responsible for what the Nahua saw as the duality of the universe: positive and negative, male and female, the spirit and the physical worlds Artworks depicting Ometeotl are few Modern researchers working in sophisticated laboratories with the most advanced equipment might regard this duality as myth, not science To the Nahua, however, it was science Their belief was based on observations of the world they lived in and explained the origins and development of their universe and humankind Because they were keen observers and experimenters, like many other ancient civilizations, the ancient Americans can be regarded as scientists in fields like agriculture, architecture, engineering, construction, metallurgy, and mathematics Ancient American peoples, for example, made early observations in the fields of astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics As astronomers they learned about the movements of heavenly objects and used those observations to create calendars and to predict changes in the seasons They observed the “hole” in the Big Dipper long before European astronomers did In fact, so keen was the interest of the ancient Americans in astronomy that priests and astronomers were often one and the same Because science throughout much of the ancient world was associated with magic and with understanding the power and will of the gods, the earliest scientists were shamans, priests, and others who claimed knowledge of the divine and could read it in the heavens As geologists, early Americans knew long before the Europeans did that the world was round This knowledge was reflected in their myths about the origins and creation of the world (In this context, a myth is not something that is untrue; rather, it is a narrative that conveys a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe and humans’ place in it.) For example, the ancient Lakota nation of North America saw the world’s four original beings—Inyan (rock), Maka (the earth), Taku Skan Skan (the sky), and Wi (the sun)—as round, because in the cosmology of the Lakota roundness was the most sacred shape As chemists, early Americans often turned their attention to their food supply They learned, for example, how to deal with stored corn that had become lignified, or hardened They learned that if they applied alkaline substances (that is, substances that are bases rather than acids) to the corn, they could break down the hardened outer layer and soften the kernel inside In this way they could return dried corn to an edible state, and the alkaline substance, usually lime water, added valuable calcium to their diet Sometimes they left the corn in its hardened state to make popcorn Even in physics the early Americans made astute observations During lightning storms, for example, they learned