The Ancient Americas, The Field Museum's innovative new exhibition, is an exploration of the challenges that human beings everywhere have faced for millennia. It tells the epic story of human life on the American continents, from the arrival of small groups of hunter- gatherers, whose way of life survived into the 20th century, to the great but fragile empires of the Aztecs and the Incas - empires that stretched thousands of miles, encompassed as many as 10 million people, and came to sudden, brutal ends. Seven listening posts inside the exhibition offer gallery overviews in Spanish. All exhibition videos are subtitled in Spanish, and a Spanish language gallery guide is also available.
Based on ground-breaking research by Field Museum scientists and others, The Ancient Americas will shatter long-held preconceptions. Visitors will see for themselves the intelligence and creativity that distinguish human beings, the innovations that allowed groups to diversify and populate the hemisphere from the Arctic to the tip of South America, and the great cities, trade networks, and sophisticated cultures built by Indigenous Peoples long before Europeans decimated their populations and imposed their own cultures on these lands.
These stories of The Ancient Americas are told through captivating displays and activities, with something for visitors of all ages and all levels of interest. Visitors will step into the world of Ice-Age mammoth hunters - Chicago circa 11,000 B.C. They'll walk through a recreation of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling, survey the monumental earthworks of mound- building peoples, and explore the great cities of Tenochtitlan and Cuzco, capitals of the Aztec and Inca empires. They'll make new discoveries at interactive maps, dioramas, and computer activities, and watch animated videos created specially for this exhibition. They'll follow the Museum's own archaeologists at work in the field, and have opportunities to begin more intensive investigations of their own.
And the artifacts! The Ancient Americas is built on the Field Museum's unsurpassed archaeological collections. Thousands of objects from these collections bring depth and beauty to the stories of the people who made them, and allow visitors to see for themselves the evidence on which our knowledge of the ancient Americans is based. On display are more than 200 ceramic vessels from the Museum's world-famous Peruvian collections; hundreds of luxury and spiritual items from our comprehensive Hopewell collection; 200 of the scarce gold objects left after conquistadors raided Colombia of its treasures, and much more.
