Introduces students to the topic of weather and natural disasters while delving into the scientific aspects of various types of disasters including: blizzards, earthquakes, flooding, tornadoes, volcanoes, and wildfires. Attention is given to recent natural disasters such as: Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the Philippine mudslide.
Most essays in this set are taken from Ready Reference: American
Indians (1995), Great Events from History: North America (rev. ed.,
1997), and Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (1999). Fifteen newly
commissioned articles on recent developments in American Indian history
also appear. All articles over 1,000 words offer annotated
bibliographies and the bibliographies of all previously published
essays have been updated.
American Indian Mythology
Have you ever wondered how the world was made? American Indian Mythology discusses this mystery, along with other myths and legends from different culture areas throughout North America.
Mathematics from the Indian subcontinent has provided foundations for much of our modern thinking on the subject. They were thought to be the first to use zero as a number. Our modern numerals have their roots there too. And mathematicians in the area that is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were grappling with concepts such as infinity centuries before Europe got to grips with it. There’s even a suggestion that Indian mathematicians discovered Pythagoras’ theorem before Pythagoras.
Some of these advances have their basis in early religious texts which describe the geometry necessary for building falcon-shaped altars of precise dimensions. Astronomical calculations used to decide the dates of religious festivals also encouraged these mathematical developments.
So how were these advances passed on to the rest of the world? And why was the contribution of mathematicians from this area ignored by Europe for centuries?
American Indian Mythology
