The most amazing thing about Australia’s indigenous people is their highly sensitive sense of smell and vision. They have very strong judgment. If these skills are used in tracking, they will have miraculous results. In New South Wales, a 4-year-old girl was lost and nowhere to be found, so the police hired an Aboriginal man to assist in the search. The native arrived at the girl's house before dawn and walked quickly around the house, going further and further. Suddenly, he confidently walked in a straight line, even picking up a fallen leaf, a broken branch, and a stone. , are all the objects he is looking for. Sometimes he moves forward quickly, sometimes he kneels down on the ground. A few hours later he found the lost little girl lying exhausted next to a big tree. Doctors have conducted in-depth analysis of this ability of indigenous people, but still have not found the crux of the problem. Therefore, to the world, the various extraordinary features of Australian Aboriginals are still an unsolved mystery.
It was not until the 20th century that the Australian government began to realize that it had infringed on the rights of Australia's original inhabitants and began to gradually improve its relations with the indigenous people. After the Second World War, the government began to try to assimilate the indigenous people and force them to People settled in towns and received education in European culture. The real improvement of indigenous human rights began in 1960, when the government established the Aboriginal Affairs Agency, the indigenous people became the original inhabitants of Australia, and part of the land was returned to the original indigenous inhabitants. In 1962 Aboriginal people gained the right to vote. Aboriginal people in Australia now receive many preferential policies.
Indians, also known as Native Americans, are the general term for all Native Americans except Eskimos. When the Italian navigator C. Columbus sailed to America, he mistakenly thought that the place he visited was India, so he called the indigenous residents here "indians". Although his mistake was discovered later, the customary term has become popular, so English and Other European languages ??refer to Indians as "Western" Indians, and when necessary, for purposes of distinction, refer to real Indians as "Eastern" Indians. When translating into Chinese, the word "West Indian" is directly translated as "Indian" or "Indian" to avoid the trouble of confusion. This race is distributed in various countries in North and South America and belongs to the American branch of the Mongoloid race. Indian languages ??are spoken, including more than a dozen language families, and there is still no generally accepted classification of languages.
Human race constitution:
Indians, yellow people, the oldest inhabitants of America. It is said that they migrated from Asia through the Bering Strait 15,000-25,000 years ago and were distributed in North and South America. In the extreme north there are the Eskimos and Aleuts; in North America there are the Athabascans, Algonquins, Iroquois, Sioux and Muskogee; in Central America there are the Aztecs Turks, Mayans, Caribs, Chibchas, etc.; South America has Incas, Guaranís and Arawgans, etc. The language belongs to the Indian language family. They were the first to cultivate crops such as corn, potatoes, sunflowers, cotton, and cinchona trees, making their contribution to mankind. Before the 16th century, most of them were still in the matrilineal clan stage, but a few, like the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, had formed early slave-owning countries and had quite high cultures. Beginning in the 16th century, it was devastated and killed by European colonists. Its development was interrupted and its population declined. There are now more than 32 million people. Mainly engaged in agriculture. There are approximately 800,000 people left in North America, most of whom have been driven into reservations and live a difficult life. In Central and South America, they are generally discriminated against and assimilated by the rulers of the host countries.
Wedding customs
The weddings of chief Indians have strong ethnic colors. The wedding venue is usually held in a public building in an Indian settlement, usually a larger wooden house. During the wedding, relatives, friends, neighbors, and village residents came to the wooden house one after another. Everyone sat on the ground and exchanged greetings. Men, women, old and young wear national costumes with novel styles and bright colors. Although Indians have a cheerful temperament, they are very quiet at weddings, and even when they speak, they are soft-spoken.
Others
Due to historical reasons, most Indians now live in remote rural areas. Like the Mayans, most other Indian peoples also retain their traditional living customs. When Indians cook, they still like to use rough clay pots, stone bowls, and wooden spoons. When someone was sick, they gathered herbs, burned them to smoke, or made soup to bathe them. They still like to wear traditional clothing with their own national characteristics. Maya women in the Yucatan Peninsula, regardless of age, wear loose white embroidered skirts and colorful flowers on their heads; men wear loose white clothes, straw hats, and straw sandals. Indian women on the central plateau like to wear embroidered blouses and wide vertical-striped skirts, and wear a multi-purpose shawl called "reboso". This kind of shawl can protect you from the sun and cold, and can also be used to carry children and pack things. Costumes with strong ethnic characteristics have become an obvious symbol of Indians. Many Indians still live in their original homes. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the Mayans dug out a flat land in the woods, used local materials, fixed thick branches on the ground one by one, forming a large circle, and put the big leaves of palm trees on it, and the house was built. .
Culture:
In fact, the Mayans are members of the Indian family. There are 56 Indian ethnic groups in Mexico, with a total population of about 10% of the country's population, about 10 million people. In the past, Indians have been the masters of this land in Mexico.
They created the world-famous ancient Indian cultures such as the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, and Aztec, and Mexico became a center of ancient Indian culture. It was only after Spanish colonists invaded Mexico in 1519 that the Indians became a minority in Mexico due to massacre and interbreeding.
The Mayan culture is one of the most famous ancient cultures in the world and is known as the cradle of American Indian culture. The areas where the Maya culture developed include what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, Tica in Guatemala, Copán in western Honduras, Huaxatun (the oldest known Maya city), and parts of Belize and El Salvador,* **About 325,000 square kilometers.
The development of Maya culture can be divided into three periods: the Preclassic period (about 1500 BC-317 AD), the Classical period (317-889 AD) and the Postclassic period (889-1697. 1697 The last organized group of Mayans was conquered by the Spanish in 1968).
Corn agriculture was the most important economic activity of the ancient Maya. They adopted primitive slash-and-burn farming methods and were the first to cultivate crops such as corn and sweet potatoes. They also mastered the technology of raising turkeys, dogs and dense bees, used agave fiber and kapok for weaving, and could make painted pottery. Commercially, the Maya mainly engaged in barter trade activities, sometimes using cocoa beans as a common currency. The Mayans also made outstanding achievements in the fields of architecture, sculpture, painting, hieroglyphics, astronomy, calendars and mathematics.
Around 1500 BC, the Maya entered the era of settled agricultural life. Before and after BC, city-states gradually formed. Around AD 300-900 was the heyday of the Mayan civilization, with more than 100 city-states of various sizes appearing. These cities have large populations, are well organized, have magnificent architecture and are rich in culture. Religion occupies a very important position in Mayan culture. The temples where grand sacrificial activities are held are built on the pyramids as altars, which is spectacular. Offering sacrifices was an important form of Maya worship, including food, ornaments and even living people.
The Mayans have achieved high attainments in both bust sculpture and bas-relief. Maya paintings generally take the form of murals, in which the characters are expressive. In addition, there are gorgeous pictures on pottery and metal plates.
Before BC, the Mayans independently created hieroglyphics. They flattened bark strips and soaked them in gum, then applied a layer of slaked lime, painted on the bark strips, and wrote hieroglyphics, numbers, and gods. and animal images. Ancient Mayan writing consists of more than 800 graphics and symbols. The text is juxtaposed with colorful pictures, and both pictures and texts are included. Many manuscripts recorded Mayan history, myths, legends, calendars, etc., but most of them were burned by Spanish colonists as "devil's works". Only three ancient Mayan manuscripts have been preserved so far, and they are all collected in European museums. In addition to manuscripts, ancient Maya scripts are also preserved in inscriptions on stone pillars, stelae and ancient buildings. The Mayans attached great importance to history, and would erect a stone pillar in some city-states every 20 years to record major events in Mayan script. Therefore, the Mayan culture is the only culture in the ancient history of the Americas that has a clear dating basis. The Maya tradition of recording history on pillars lasted for more than 1,200 years and was later interrupted by the invasion of Spanish colonists.
The Mayan calendar was produced in BC. This calendar uses 13 days as a week, 20 days as a month, 18 months as a year, plus 5 days as taboo days, 365 days in a year, and 52 years. Round and round. The Mayan calendar is more accurate than the ancient Greek and Roman calendars. The Mayans also built some astronomical observatories that could calculate the time of solar eclipses and the cycles of the moon and planets.
The Mayans made remarkable achievements in mathematics. They used the fingers and toes to calculate, using the twenty-digit calculation method. It is particularly worth mentioning that the Mayans knew how to apply the concept of zero seven or eight hundred years earlier than Europe.
During the postclassic period of Mayan culture, due to natural and man-made disasters such as hurricanes, plagues, and wars, the ancient Mayan civilization declined rapidly, and all major cities were abandoned. When the Spanish invaded, the Mayan city-states on the Yucata Peninsula were fragmented, declining and dilapidated.
As mentioned before, the Mayan culture is one of the most advanced ancient cultures in the Americas. Its material and cultural achievements are very impressive, and it still has an important influence on Mexico and some countries in Central America. . But compared with the advanced civilizations of the European continent at the same time, it seemed primitive and outdated. Therefore, when the Spanish invaded in the 16th century, the fragile Mayan culture was severely destroyed
The Indians believed in "animism". They respected nature and paid close attention to every plant, tree, mountain and stone in nature. Repay with an attitude of awe. The Indians have been assimilated by European Christian beliefs to a considerable extent. In today's United States, most Indians believe in Christianity, but the original Indian beliefs still exist. They are mixed with Christianity and become a strange religious belief. Cayet said that religious belief occupies a high position in Indian life, and the most important tribal leader is the religious leader, who has more power than the tribal chief in internal affairs. In most tribes, the tribal chief is only responsible for external affairs, mainly dealing with federal or local governments. He represents the tribe externally, but his appointment power lies with the religious leader, and he must listen to the religious leader on internal affairs.
Indians: hovering on the edge of modernity and tradition