Mississippi Valley Cahokians created a Sun Circle between AD 700 and 1200 that accurately predicts summer solstice, winter solstice, and the equinoxes.
California's Chumash counted the moon's phases and recognized familiar patterns of stars, including the Big Dipper and the Belt of Orion..
Definition.
Indigenous American cosmologies are archaic, integrated worldviews conceived by the ancient and protohistoric peoples of the Americas prior to substantive contact with European peoples in the sixteenth century.
The cosmos in these worldviews usually comprises several layered and axially organized realms.Dec 13, 2020.
In Indigenous cosmologies, the Land and all beings in the ecological web of homeland gave people our existence, languages, knowledge, ways of life, and understandings of our place in the universe..
Perhaps the most important, if apparently contradictory generalization, is that all cosmologies are local
In other words, each people, each nation, each pueblo, each city maintains its own cosmos
On some level, then, to understand Native American cosmology as a whole one must comprehend a multiplicity of individual Native American cosmologies
There is no room in the indigenous cosmologies of the Americas for the plurality of worlds and extraterrestrial life
These traditional cosmologies are delineated in mythic narrative that does not engage physical law, the geography of outer space, and modern astronomical knowledge
Generalizations about the role of the Underworld in Native American cosmologies are more difficult to make, although it is most frequently considered to be the abode of deceased human beings
The deceased, or ancestors, often play active roles in the lives of the "living," but the precise roles vary according to the tradition and the era
Form of Native American dance
