American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations

This reference work contains over 450 entries providing a panorama of little-known information about the rich inventiveness of the American Indians. For many years, they were not given credit for the numerous creations that stemmed from their cultures. For example, the Olmec of the Yucatan Peninsula developed a way to treat raw latex in order to make usable items from rubber as early as 1700 BCE, and expert American Indian surgeons performed operations such as plastic surgery, skin grafts and thoracentesis to remove fluid from the chest cavity. Each entry, many of which include photographs, covers a single invention or innovation. To be included in the book each item or process originated in North, Central or South America, was used by the Indian people and has been adopted in some way by other cultures. Entries include cigars, diabetes medication, geometry, hydraulics, scalpels, tax system, trousers and urban planning.