http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2009/04/10#pre-columbian <P>I guess I should specify: in the Americas! The <a href="maya.html">Maya</a> interest me enough to get their own notebook... <P>Query: did any of these civilizations have something recognizable as philosophy? (A question which would be easier to answer if so many of their books had not been burned.) <ul>Recommended (completely inadequate): <li>Charles C. Mann, <cite>1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus</cite> <li>George R. Milner, <cite>The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Richard E. Blanton, <cite>Ancient Mesoamerica: A Comparison of Change in Three Regions</cite> <li>Richard E. Blanton et al., <cite>Ancient Oaxaca</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521577878">Blurb</a>] <li>David Carraso, <cite>City of Sacrifice: Violence from the Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas</cite> <li>Inga Clendinnen, <cite>Aztecs: An Interpretation</cite> <li>Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz, <cite>Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs</cite> <li>Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, <cite>The True History of Chocolate</cite> <li>Susan Toby Evans and Joanne Pillsbury (eds.), <cite>Palaces of the Ancient New World</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/EVAPAL.html">blurb</a>] <li>Steven A. LeBlanc, <cite>Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery of the American Southwest</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LEBPAI.html">blurb</a>] <li>Steven A. LeBlanc and Lucia R. Henderson, <cite>Symbols in Clay: Seeking Artists' Identities in Hopi Yellow Ware Bowls</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LEBSYM.html">blurb</a>] <li>J. M. G. Le Clezio, <cite>The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilization</cite> [Sounds more like projecting fantasies onto another culture than anything else, but that can be very entertaining, if not taken seriously. <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/12403.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Miguel Leon-Portilla, <cite>Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind</cite> <li>Jill Leslie McKeever-Furst, <cite>The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico</cite> <li>Timothy R. Pauketat, <cite>Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521520669">blurb</a>] <li>Zoltan Paulinyi, "The 'Great Goddess' of Teotihuacan: Fiction or Reality?", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0956536106060020"><cite>Ancient Mesoamerica</cite> <strong>17</strong> (2006): 1--15</a> <li>Charles Stanish, <cite>Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia</cite> <li>Rebecca Stone-Miller, <cite>Art of the Andes: From Chavin to Inca</cite> <li>Richard Townsend, <cite>Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South</cite> </ul>