- The indigenous peoples of North and South America
have invented a ton of things that made a great impact
across areas as different
as the medical world and leisure time.
It's eight incredible inventions
of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
If you're a skier or snowboarder,
you have the Inuit people to thank
for inventing one of your most important pieces
of equipment, goggles.
For thousands of years, the indigenous residents
of the Arctic Greenland, Canada, and Alaska,
also known as the Inuit,
have been fashioning their own special goggles
to protect their eyes from sunlight
bouncing off the snow.
The Inuit spend hours each day on the frozen tundra,
working and hunting for food.
When exposed to these harmful ultraviolet rays
for too long, they experience snow blindness,
which basically meant their corneas got a sunburn.
So the Inuit learned to use wood, bone, antler,
baleen, or leather to cover their eyes,
then cut a thin slit across the middle to see out of.
The goggles essentially mimicked squinting.
It's also been found that the goggles
can improve vision
by focusing light in such a way that it makes
faraway objects appear sharper.
You can also thank the Inuit
and other Arctic cultures
for inventing the thing
your dad always insists on pulling out
when you're at a lake house, the kayak.
Used primarily for hunting and fishing,
kayaks were designed to have no opening
so that it wouldn't fill with water
or sink if it capsized.
The captain of the kayak wore a shield
covering where he sat,
completely sealing the vessel from filling up.
The kayaks were super light.
The frame was made of wood and then seal skin
or other animal hides were stretched over it.
They were then rubbed down
with animal fat to waterproof it.
Their size and weight made them
easy to transport through the woods
and shallow areas
and to silently glide through water undetected.
Modern kayaks are typically made of plastic
and manned by aunts on vacation
or adrenaline junkies
on a ton of Mountain Dew flying off a waterfall.
But the basic design is still exactly the same.
The Brooklyn and Golden Gate Bridges
are famous examples of suspension bridges.
Centuries prior, indigenous peoples
of South America were masters of their own version.
From the 1400 to the 1600s,
the Incas in Peru built
what was basically a highway system
of over 200 suspension bridges
across their vast, mountainous empire.
Made entirely of rope
woven from plant fibers and wood,
these bridges resemble the types
you'd see a movie adventurer racing across
high above a crocodile-infested river.
Although dangerous in high winds,
nobody's feet were crashing
through planks of the real ones.
They were strong enough to transport livestock
and large enough that if llamas
fell on their sides, they would not fall off.
Stretching up to 150 feet across rivers and ravines,
these were the longest suspension bridges
on the planet at the time.
The longest suspension bridges in other parts
of the world were almost half the length.
One of these Incan rope bridges
still stands today and is repaired annually,
accompanied by a three-day festival.
Communities on both sides
are happily roped into the event.
The medicine man often appears
in popular culture in representations
of indigenous people.
This person's practice often
combines herbal medicines with spiritual healing.
Native American peoples developed
a number of natural remedies
for pain management that are the basis
of painkilling drugs used today.
Healers in several places in North America
grounded jimson weed into a soothing plaster
to spread over cuts and bruises,
and people would eat it
as an anesthetic when setting broken bones.
There was also a tea
made from the American black willow,
which contains salicin, which caused
the body to produce salicylic acid,
the modern ingredient in aspirin.
Over 1,000 years before you took
luxurious summer afternoon naps
on one in the backyard,
the hammock was the main mode of sleeping
for the indigenous peoples of Central America.
Originally made from woven bark
of the hamack tree,
hammocks protected the suspended sleepers
from being stung or bitten
by critters, snakes, and insects.
The savviest snoozers lit small fires
beneath their hammocks
to keep them warm and repel bugs.
Meanwhile, mattresses of the day
stuffed with straw
were the perfect breeding ground
for pests and disease.
Hammocks' swaying motion
may also allow for deeper sleep.
A recent study showed that people
who slept in rocking beds
had better synchronization
between their brainwaves and body motion.
The highest strung hammock ever recorded,
the ones brought on board on Apollo 12
in 1969, of course.
Needless to say, the hamm-ock ham-rocked.
Skip this one if you're squeamish.
Indigenous people actually invented the syringe.
The early indigenous people of South America
developed a device
that closely resembled the modern syringe,
and they used it for the very same purposes,
a sharpened hollow bird's bone attached to an animal bladder
that could inject the body with medicines
and irrigate wounds.
We appreciate the contributions
indigenous doctors have made
to the medical community, but also,
why do they have to do that?
Shots are scary, but my doctor
says I'm too old for a lollipop.
The Aztecs of the 1400 to 1600s mastered
an agricultural technique that had existed
for centuries and is still used today.
Chinampas are essentially mini islands,
enriched soil piled up in marshy,
swampy areas around lakes
for the purpose of growing crops.
Think of them like an ancient version
of the Palm Islands off the coast of Dubai
and instead of sunbathing
and snorkeling, you're growing food.
The capital of the Aztec empire
was called Tenochtitlan,
located on two islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco,
modern day Mexico City.
In response to the city's rapidly increasing population
and with a lake between them and any fields,
the Aztecs built a vast,
super organized system of chinampas.
Each one was 30 by 2.5 meters,
evenly spaced for canoes to move through,
and carefully irrigated.
Chinampa agriculture was passed orally
from generation to generation.
Today, they occupy about 2,000 hectares of land
and support a ton of biodiversity in the region.
More than 3,000 years ago,
the Olmec civilization of southern Mexico
invented the chemical process of creating rubber.
They were so well known
for their incredible use of rubber
that they even got their name from it.
Olmec is the Nahuatl, or the Aztec language,
word for "rubber people."
They would tap rubber trees,
Ficus elastica, to extract
latex the same way you'd tap a maple for syrup.
Then they'd mix it with juice from the morning glory vine
and when it coagulated, it was rubber.
These early indigenous people had all sorts of uses for it
that we all recognize today.
Straps for tools, the soles of shoes
and, of course, bouncing balls for playing games.
In the 1700s, a chemist named Joseph Priestley,
who clearly wasn't great at math,
noticed that the material was good
for rubbing away pencil marks
and the name "rubber" was coined,
which is a shame
because "bouncy syrup" is way more fun.
That was just a few of the many inventions
and contributions of indigenous people
on modern society.
Let us know if we missed your favorite
in the comments below.