Word: pre-columbian
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What the workmen found was not gold, but a treasure nonetheless. It has now been identified as a huge pre-Columbian bas-relief of the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. Probably sculpted in the early 15th century, the circular stone, 3.3 meters (11 ft.) across and weighing some 20 tons, has relief images of the dismembered goddess's limbs, torso and head scattered all over its surface. The carnage depicts a well-known episode from Aztec mythology. When the mother of the gods was pregnant for the last time, so the story goes, her other offspring-the moon, planets...
Davis loathed American regionalism -Thomas Hart Benton with his buckeye Michelangelo plowboys, Grant Wood's Midwestern Arcadias. "The only corn-fed art that was ever successful was the pre-Columbian," Davis snapped in 1934. His own vision of America as subject was much broader. It took in "wood-and ironwork of the past; Civil War and skyscraper architecture; the brilliant colors on gasoline stations, chain store fronts and taxicabs," as well as "Earl Hines' hot piano and Negro jazz music in general." His desire, he wrote, "is to construct formal souvenirs which are an agreeable emblem...
...PRE-COLUMBIAN ART OF SOUTH AMERICA by Alan Lapiner. 460 pages. Abrams. $50. The pottery, statuary, textiles and metalwork of the ancient Americas are no longer considered mere artifacts of forgotten peoples but art forms that reflect the sophistication of complex civilization. The late Alan Lapiner chose to illustrate his book with outstanding examples of ritual tomb furnishings and gold and silver mummy ornaments from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil. The result is a trove for collectors and browsers alike...
...chants relate many familiar tales, including the Semitic creation story and Aesop's fables," Fell says. "They also clarify a good dcal of pre-Columbian American history, such as the events surrounding the collapse of the ancient Hohokam Empire...
Until such bold adventurers as Verrazano and Hudson penetrated its unpolluted waters, North America enjoyed extraordinary freedom from epidemics. In pre-Columbian times there had been no plague (Black Death), cholera, yellow fever, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, diphtheria or even measles...