North American Science
Probably the greatest contribution of North American
people to science before 1500 AD was the domestication
of several plants that were very useful both to them and now to the people
of the whole world, especially sunflowers in eastern North America. People
had to work for many hundreds of years to help the wild plants that grew
near them to evolve into plants that would be useful to people.
North American people also worked hard to develop medicines
to take care of people who got sick. Different tribes used different plants,
depending on their environment. For example, people chewed milkweed roots
to cure lung diseases like bronchitis. Native American doctors (who could
be men or women) made tea from boneset leaves to treat fevers and colds.
They mixed pokeweed roots with fat to cure skin diseases, and a tea made
from pokeweed berries to treat arthritis and rheumatism. They used jewel
weed to cure cases of poison ivy. Most of these medicines didn't work, but
neither did European,
Asian, South American, or
African medicines from the
same time.
Another North American invention was the snowshoe. Probably
the earliest snowshoes were invented in Central Asia, about 3000 BC, and
then people in North America learned about them through the Inuit in Alaska.
But soon people were using snowshoes all over the snowy parts of North America,
and they each developed their own different kinds of snowshoes.
As you go further south, where the snow was warmer and wetter, people made their snowshoes longer and narrower. Cree snowshoes were nearly six feet long, almost like skis! Iroquois snowshoes are narrower and shorter so that they could walk in forests where the trees were close together.
People in North America also invented the bow and arrow. While the bow and arrow were first invented in Asia in the Early Stone Age, long before people first came to North America, apparently the people who came to North America did not know how to use bows and arrows. They invented the bow and arrow for themselves, independently, about 500 AD. Soon people were using bows and arrows all over North America, and they became very important for hunting and for war.
As you go further south, where the snow was warmer and wetter, people made their snowshoes longer and narrower. Cree snowshoes were nearly six feet long, almost like skis! Iroquois snowshoes are narrower and shorter so that they could walk in forests where the trees were close together.
People in North America also invented the bow and arrow. While the bow and arrow were first invented in Asia in the Early Stone Age, long before people first came to North America, apparently the people who came to North America did not know how to use bows and arrows. They invented the bow and arrow for themselves, independently, about 500 AD. Soon people were using bows and arrows all over North America, and they became very important for hunting and for war.
