Characteristics of Australian Aborigines

The most amazing thing about the Australian Aborigines is their highly sensitive sense of smell and vision, and they have very strong judgment, which can work wonders when used in tracking. In New South Wales, when a 4-year-old girl got lost and was nowhere to be found, the police hired an Aboriginal man to help with the search. The Aboriginal man arrived at the girl's house before dawn, walked briskly around the house, circling farther and farther, and then suddenly he was confidently following a straight line, even a leaf, a broken branch, a stone. Sometimes he traveled quickly, sometimes he knelt on the ground. After a few hours, he found the lost girl lying exhausted next to a tree. Doctors have analyzed this Aboriginal skill in depth, but still have not found the problem. Therefore, to the world, the Australian aborigines of all sorts of extraordinary things is still an unsolved mystery.

It was not until the twentieth century that the Australian government began to realize that it was infringing on the rights of the original inhabitants of Australia, and gradually began to improve relations with the Aborigines. After World War II, the government began to try to assimilate the Aborigines, forcing them to live in the townships and to be educated in European culture. The real improvement in Aboriginal rights began in 1960 with the establishment of the Aboriginal Affairs Agency, Aboriginal people became the original inhabitants of Australia and some of the land was returned to the original Aboriginal people, and in 1962 Aboriginal people were given the right to vote. Now Aboriginal Australians are favored by many policies.

The Indians, also known as Native Americans, are a collective term for all Native Americans except the Eskimos. Italian navigator C. Columbus sailed to the Americas, mistakenly thought that the place was India, so the indigenous people of this place called "indians", and later, although his mistake was found, but the customary name has been popularized, so the English language and other European languages called the Indians as "West". Therefore, in English and other European languages, the Indians are called "West" Indians, and when necessary, the real Indians are called "East" Indians for the sake of distinction. Chinese translations directly translate the word "West Indian" into "Indian" or "Indian", eliminating the need for confusion. This race is distributed in the countries of North and South America and belongs to the American branch of the Mongoloid race. They use Indian languages, including more than a dozen language groups, and there is no recognized language classification.

Ethnic constitution:

Indians, the yellow race, the oldest inhabitants of the Americas. They are said to have migrated from Asia by way of the Bering Strait 15,000-25,000 years ago, and were distributed throughout North and South America. In the far north there are Esquimaux and Aleuts; in North America there are Athabascan, Algonquin, Iroquois, Sioux and Muscogee, etc.; in Central America there are Aztecs, Mayans, Caribs, Chibchas, etc.; in South America there are Incas, Guarani, and Araucanian people, etc.. The language belongs to the Indian language group. Before the 16th century, most of them were still in the stage of matrilineal clans, and a few of them, such as the Maya, the Aztecs and the Incas, had already formed the early slavery system and had a high culture. 16th century onwards, they were ravaged and killed by the European colonizers, and their development was interrupted, and their population declined. There are now more than 32 million people. They are mainly engaged in agriculture. In North America, there are about 800,000 people left, most of whom have been driven into reservations and live in hardship. In Central and South America are generally discriminated against and assimilated by the rulers of the countries in which they live.

Wedding

Chief Indian wedding with a strong national color. Wedding location more choice in the Indian settlement public **** building held, generally a larger wooden house. When the wedding was held, friends and relatives, neighbors, village residents have come to the wooden house, people sitting on the ground, greet each other. Men, women and children dressed in national costumes, new styles, colorful. Although the Indians are cheerful, but the wedding occasion is very quiet, even if the speech is softly spoken.

Other

For historical reasons, most Indians now live in isolated rural areas. Like the Mayans, most of the other Indian nations have kept their traditional living customs. When Indians cook, they still like to use rough-textured clay pots, stone bowls and wooden spoons. When someone is sick, they pick herbs, or light them on fire to smoke the patient, or cook soup for the patient to bathe. To this day, they wear traditional clothing that is characteristic of their people. The Mayan women of the Yucatan Peninsula, young and old, wear loose white embroidered dresses and brightly colored flowers on their heads; men wear loose white pants, straw hats and straw sandals. Indian women on the Central Plateau love to wear embroidered smock and vertical stripes of the wide skirt, wearing a kind of upper body called "Reboso" multi-purpose shawl. This shawl can not only shade the sun, but also can keep out the cold, but also can carry children, pack things. Extremely rich national characteristics of the dress has become a clear symbol of the Indians. Many Indians still live in primitive houses. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the Maya carved out a flat piece of land in the woods, took materials from the ground, fastened a thick branch to the ground one by one, formed a large circle, put the large leaves of the palm tree on top, and the house was built.

CULTURE:

In fact, the Maya were part of the Indian family. There are 56 Indian nations in Mexico I***, totaling about 10 percent of the country's population, which is about 10 million people. In the past, the Indians have been the masters of this part of Mexico. They created the world-famous Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Aztec and other ancient Indian cultures, Mexico has thus become a center of ancient Indian culture. It was only after the Spanish colonizers invaded Mexico in 1519 that the Indians became a minority in Mexico due to massacres and mestizos.

Mayan culture is one of the world's most famous ancient cultures, known as the cradle of American Indian culture. The geographical area in which Maya culture developed includes the Yucatan Peninsula in present-day southeastern Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, Copan in western Honduras, Huasaktun (the oldest known Maya city), and parts of Belize and El Salvador, ****about 325,000 square kilometers.

Mayan culture developed in three periods: the Preclassic Period (ca. 1500 BCE - 317 CE), the Classic Period (317-889 CE), and the Postclassic Period (889-1697. The last organized Maya were conquered by the Spanish in 1697).

Maize agriculture was the dominant economic activity of the ancient Maya. They used primitive slash-and-burn farming methods, cultivated the earliest crops such as corn and sweet potatoes, and mastered the techniques of raising turkeys, dogs and dense bees, weaving with agave fibers and kapok, and making painted pottery. Commercially, the Maya mainly engaged in barter trade activities, sometimes using cocoa beans as a common currency. The Maya also achieved excellence in the fields of architecture, carving, the art of painting, hieroglyphics

lettering, astronomy, calendars, and mathematics.

Around the beginning of 1500 B.C., the Maya entered the era of sedentary agricultural life. After BC, city-states gradually formed. Around 300-900 A.D. was the heyday of the development of Maya civilization, with the emergence of more than 100 city-states of various sizes. These cities were populous, well-organized, architecturally magnificent and culturally rich. Religion played a very important role in Mayan culture, and the temples where great sacrifices were held were built on pyramids that served as altars, which were spectacular. Offerings of sacrifices were an important form of Mayan worship, including food, jewelry and even living people.

One by one, the Maya both in the bust sculpture and in shallow relief have achieved a high level of attainment. Maya paintings were generally in the form of frescoes, in which the figures were expressively portrayed. In addition, pottery and metal plates also have brilliant pictures.

Before and after A.D., the Maya independently created hieroglyphic writing, they will be flattened and soaked in gum bark strips, and then coated with a layer of quicklime, in the bark strips of painting, writing hieroglyphic characters, numbers, gods and animal images. Ancient Mayan texts consisted of more than 800 shapes and symbols, with text juxtaposed with colorful pictures and illustrations. Many of the codices contained Mayan history, myths and legends, and calendars, but most of them were burned by the Spanish colonizers as "the work of the devil"

. So far, only three ancient Mayan codices have been preserved, all of which are collected in European museums. In addition to codices, the ancient Mayan language is also preserved in stone pillars, monuments and inscriptions of ancient buildings. The Mayans attached great importance to history, and every 20 years and in some city states to erect a stone pillar, with Mayan records of major events. Therefore, the Maya culture is the only culture in the ancient history of the Americas have a clear chronology can be based on. The Mayan tradition of erecting pillars to record history lasted for more than 1,200 years before it was interrupted by the invasion of the Spanish colonizers.

The Mayan calendar was created in B.C., the calendar to 13 days for a week, 20 days for a month, 18 months for a year, plus 5 days for taboo days, 365 days a year, 52 years for a cycle. The Mayan calendar is more accurate than the ancient Greek and Roman calendars. The Mayans also built astronomical observatories that could project the timing of eclipses and the cycles of the moon and planets.

One of the Maya's notable achievements in mathematics was the twenty-digit method of calculation, which they used to perform calculations through the **** of their fingers and toes. It is particularly noteworthy that the Maya knew how to apply the concept of zero seven or eight hundred years before Europe.

During the post-classical 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. By the time of the Spanish invasion, the Mayan city-states on the Yucata Peninsula were a fragmented, decaying and dilapidated landscape.

One by one, as mentioned earlier, the Maya culture was one of the most advanced ancient cultures of the Americas, and its material and cultural achievements were so impressive that it still exerts a significant influence on Mexico and parts of Central America. However, compared with the advanced civilization of the European continent at the same time, it appeared primitive and outdated. Therefore, in the 16th century, when the Spanish invasion, the fragile Mayan culture was severely damaged

Indians believe that "animism", they respect nature, the natural world of a grass, a tree, a mountain and a stone are reported to the attitude of reverence. Indians have been assimilated to a considerable extent by the European Christian faith, in today's United States, most Indians believe in Christ, but the Indian primitive faith still exists, it is mixed with Christianity, becoming a strange religious beliefs. Cayet says that religious beliefs occupy a high place in Indian life, and that the most important tribal chief is the religious leader, who has authority over the tribal head in internal matters. In most tribes, the tribal head is responsible only for external affairs, mainly dealing with the federal or local government, and he represents the tribe externally, but his power of appointment lies with the religious leader, whom he listens to even more in internal affairs.

Indians: teetering on the edge of modernity and tradition