Ancient America: In Notes On American Archaeology

by John D. Baldwin

Ancient In Notes On American Archaeology by John Denison Baldwin surveys the archaeological remains of the American continents, focusing on the Mississippi Valley mound-builders and the great civilizations of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. Baldwin argues that the mound-builders were a settled, civilized people whose earthworks, enclosures, and mining remains attest to organized industry, agriculture, and craft. He compares North American mounds with the terrace platforms and pyramidal foundations of Mesoamerican cities such as Palenque, Uxmal, Copan, Mitla, Chichen-Itza, and Mayapan, highlighting architectural unity and symbolic forms, including serpents and sun-worship motifs. The work traces the distribution and antiquity of these cultures, discusses the possible origins of the old civilizations—Toltecs and Colhuas from the south, Nahua and Maya groups, and other hypotheses such as Atlantis or Phoenician contact—and argues for a native, American origin of civilization in some regions. It also assesses native writing, metallurgy, and agriculture, and offers appended discussions on the Norse, Welsh, and Pacific antiquities, urging cautious, evidence-based conclusions.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1874

About the author

John Denison Baldwin was an American politician, Congregationalist minister, newspaper editor, and popular anthropological writer. He was a member of the Connecticut State House of Representatives and later a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts.
In Ancient America, In Notes on American Archaeology he speculated on the origins of the "Mound Builder" people then believed to have constructed the famous mounds around the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, suggesting that they had been an aboriginal people who had migrated northwards from Central America or Mexico. He rejected the then-common notion that they had been a lost European, Semitic, or Asiatic people who had been wiped out by the North American Indians, asserting on the contrary that the Mounds were "wholly original, wholly American" and "did not come from the Old World".
He did, however, still subscribe to the idea that these "Mound Builders" were not the same as the American Indian inhabitants of the region at that time, who he believed were a separate race originating in Asia.

Reviews

[Jim Long]

Interesting

Obviously dated information of course, but interesting nonetheless. Amazing just how many items are listed in this work. Lots of the information has changed since this was first published, but it still can serve as a starting point for some research.

[Maggie Reed]

Sometimes it is just too painfully frustrating to read an old book like this, especially since this happens to be in my bailiwick and I know the advances. There was nothing new here. In n fact, there were more things that have been proven differently. It was okay if one just remembers this was a basis for discovery, not expected to now, more than 100 years later, be complete fact. I totally abhorred the prejudicial references, but that was the way they spoke of unknown cultures in the past.

[Stephen]

This is a very good overview of American archaeology. By American I include North and South America. The most interesting chapter to me, keeping in mind that this work dates back to the 1870s, was the chapter on the possibility of the Americas having been populated by lost Israelites. It is the first of several chapters giving the different postulations on civilization in the Americas.

[William Jackson]

informative but, reading savage again and again drove me mad. yes it is a book from the era of high racism, but really! race hate is NOT science.