Drawing on a rich oral tradition, numerous trips to the region, and the
latest scholarship available on this important but little-studied era,
scholar and author David Conrad explores the people, places, and ideas
that made up this trio of empires.
This encyclopedia is an attempt to illuminate
in a comprehensive yet readable way some of the complex cultures of the native
peoples of North America.
In school, the author learned that America was a pristine “wilderness” waiting
for the so-called right people to come along and build a “civilization.” Of
course, the truth is that millions of people were already living here. In fact,
they had been here for thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of years before
Eriksson, Cabot, and Coronado.
*Save the climate by saving the forests*
Paying people to leave carbon locked away in the rainforests sounds like a great idea, but can it work
*Has the Riemann hypothesis finally been proven?*
A lone researcher claims to have cracked one of the most famous problems in mathematics. Is it too good to be true
*Quantum randomness may not be random*
The quantum universe may seem random, but a closer look may reveal that it is actually predictable
*Being self-centred is the key to empathy*
The way we judge people is more egocentric than we'd like to admit, but it seems that's the key to understanding them
Once anthropologists thought that the Great Plains was a desolate place visited only periodically by hunting groups from the west and east and that native people could not have lived there permanently before they adopted horses and guns from Europeans. In fact, for thousands of years this region has been continuously occupied by people who relied on herds of grazing animals, particularly the bison. The life they made for themselves involved increasing technological sophistication and cultural diversity as they adapted to a series of environmental challenges.
