page_title: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans
section_title: A
hierarchical_section_title: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans / A
caption_attribution_description: Las Jarillas Cave is one of the least known and hardest to get to archaeological cliff dwellings sites of the Paquime Culture at Cuarenta Casas, scrambled along the canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. La Cueva de las Jarillas es uno de los sitios arqueológicos menos conocidos y mas difíciles de acceder, de la cultura Paquime, esparcidos entre las barrancas de la Sierra Madre en el noroeste de Chihuahua, México.
context_page_description: This is an alphabetic list of Pre-columbian achievements in science and technology made by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas during the 15,000 years that they have inhabited the Americas.
context_section_description: Abacus – the Aztec and Maya of Mesoamerica performed arithmetic operations using an abacus. It served as a more accurate and faster alternative to a written out solution or relying on memory alone. This Mesoamerican abacus, the Nepohualtzintzin, has been dated by archaeologists to had first been present in Mesoamerica from about 900–1000 CE, and possibly earlier.
  Abstract art – abstract art was used by nearly all tribes and civilizations of North and South America. Indigenous art was believed to be primitive until the 1890s when it served as inspiration for the modern American abstract art movement. See also Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  Adobe – adobe was used by the peoples from South America, Mesoamerica, and up to Southwestern tribes of the U.S. It is estimated that it was developed around the year 3000 BCE.
  Agave wine – is made from the same plant, blue agave, as tequila but with a lower alcohol content.
  Almanacs – almanacs were invented independently by the Maya peoples. Their culture arose, and presumably began using almanacs, around 3,500 years ago, while Europeans are known to have created written almanacs only after 1150 CE. Almanacs are books containing meteorological and astronomical information, which the Maya used in various aspects of their life.
  Alpacas – the Andean civilizations were amongst the first to domesticate alpacas.
  American football – the Iroquois claim to have played football. While no specification is made as to whether this is meant to be American football or soccer. Soccer is said to have been invented in Asia.
  Anesthetics – indigenous peoples used coca, peyote, datura and other plants for partial or total loss of sensation or consciousness during surgery. Western doctors had effective anesthetics only after the mid-19th century. Before this, they either had to perform surgery while the patient dealt with the pain or they needed to knock the patient out unconscious.
  Apartment blocks – the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) and other tribes which once thrived in the present day Southwest of the US, developed complex multistory apartment complexes, some of which are still in use today. Pueblo communities in present-day New Mexico continue to reside in some of these ancient multistory apartment complexes–which were constructed by their ancestors many centuries ago–even before the first apartments were built in the United States during the 18th century. Pueblo Bonito, one of the seminal archaeological sites today, is an example of this indigenous multistory apartment complex construction from the Anasazi and Hohokam time periods; approximately dating back one thousand years ago.
  Art to be viewed from space – the Nazca Lines were created by the ancient Nazca culture in modern-day Peru. The Nazca built these artworks, which could only be viewed from the sky or from space. It was as if the Nazca were building monuments, which only their gods could view from up in the sky. Some of these artworks, otherwise known as the Nazca Lines, could only be viewed from the sky and each one of these works of Nazca art spans several miles across in size and dimension in the Sechura Desert.
  Aqueducts – the ancient Andean cultures such as Chimu, Moche and Nazca lived in very dry environments, yet they were able to sustain large scale agriculture consisting of a wide variety of crops by employing aqueducts connecting various freshwater sources, such as mountain streams and lakes to their agricultural fields which were sometimes injecting pressure with the aid of puquios (wind-based water pumps). The Inca later expanded on these already constructed aqueducts and built even more complex and large aqueduct system in the Inca Empire. The Mesoamerican Aztecs also constructed complex, dual-pipe aqueducts to supply their vast city of Tenochtitlan.
  Aspirin – indigenous Americans have been using willow tree bark for thousands of years to reduce fever and pain as were the peoples of Assyria, Sumer, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. When chemists analyzed willows in the last century, they discovered salicylic a
caption: Adobe buildings at Cuarenta Casas
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