Animals 'dressed' in scarlet hues
The Inuit and the Yupik people are credited with developing early forms of sunglasses and snow goggles somewhere around the 1890s. After realizing the glare caused eye damage, they fashioned goggles from wood, bone, or leather with little slits in them that simulated squinting.
The Inuit in the Arctic were the first to develop the design for a small, narrow boat with a closed cockpit that would protect the paddler and wouldn’t sink if the boat flipped upside down, according to Canadian historians David Johnston and Tom Jenkins. Though the materials now differ from the original wood, bones, and sealskin, the kayak persists.
Not many people know that rubber actually originated from Native Americans harvesting natural latex from tree sap. Christopher Columbus took a rubber ball back to Europe, and through the vulcanization process Charles Goodyear was able to commercialize it in the 1830s.
Modern vegetable production recognizes the benefits of raised-bed farming as a way to protect crops from swamps, runoff, and erosion, but fewer recognize that it was the native peoples in South and Central America who invented an early version of the technique.
The Inca of South America were the first to weave long mountain grasses into thick cables and tie them together in such a way to build strong suspension bridges that spanned across gorges, which far surpassed the stone bridges made by European engineers of the time.
Though it would be hard to imagine for many people today, the Iroquois fashioned early versions of baby bottles using dried and greased bear gut and adding a bird’s quill as the nipple, according to Iroquois historian Arthur C. Parker.
The Iroquois also created baby formula for the infants to consume, which reportedly contained nutritious concoctions of pounded nuts, meat, and water.
Indigenous peoples have always been expert healers, and pioneered many pharmaceuticals. Some Native Americans used capsaicin (a chemical derived from peppers) and jimson weed as a topical analgesic, grinding the root to make a plaster that could be applied to external cuts and wounds.
Christopher Columbus wrote in his letters about landing in the Caribbean and finding indigenous peoples resting in beds made from cotton netting suspended between two trees or poles. The hammock was a way to cool off at night and avoid the insects that crawl in hot climates. European sailors quickly adopted them on merchant and naval ships.
Healers would reportedly also have patients ingest jimson weed as an anesthetic. Another common early pain reliever and anti-inflammatory that preceded aspirin was tea brewed from the bark of the American black willow (Salix nigra), which contains the chemical salicin that, once in the body, produces salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin tablets.
While syringes showed up in European medicine around the 1850s, reports show Native Americans had previously fashioned a similar mechanism using animal bladders and hollow bird bones to inject medications.
Indigenous peoples were some of the first to even conceptualize the idea of chewing gum, and Mayans and Aztecs were among the first to slice resin from the bark of the Sapodilla tree and chew on it.
Though not as effective as modern birth control, the Shoshone and Navajo tribes reportedly used things like dogbane and stoneseed as an oral contraceptive long before the pharmaceutical industry caught wind.
Apparently humans have long had problems back there, but, before modern suppositories, native peoples had created small plugs using the moistening properties of dogwood trees.
The Iroquois lived in long, tall houses, which reportedly spurred them on to develop the bunk bed as a way to accommodate more living space.
While the snowshoe can be traced back to Central Asia, the versions we know today resemble more closely what the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples fashioned out of natural materials.
Though the earliest version of democracy is credited to the ancient Greeks, in the 1700s the Iroquois developed another version which is said to have directly influenced the founding fathers of the United States. Six nations came together to form the Iroquois Confederacy, in which each tribe governed themselves but came together for issues of interest to all.
Indigenous peoples created many early forms of pest control, from the Paiute and Shoshone who combated lice by washing their hair in a hot infusion made with sweetroot, to the Inca cotton farmers who burned lemon verbena as pesticide, to the pre-Columbian peoples who built structures with cashew wood, and much more.
The boomerang has achieved worldwide fame for its sound and masterful aerodynamic "asymmetrical lift," and it was entirely an Australian aboriginal invention.
As one of the many medicinal purposes native peoples have found among plants, an early version of sunscreen was fashioned by mixing plant substances (like sunflower oil, wallflower, and sap from aloe plants) as well as animal fats and fish oils, to protect the skin from sun damage.
Indigenous peoples of Australia were reportedly known to beat the resin out of porcupine grass, then clean and heat it over fire to create a sticky black substance that would harden as it cooled and was strong enough to bind rock to wood to create tools like spears and axes.
Though it was acknowledged as indigenous by Europeans at the time, many people today don’t know that lacrosse was a sport devised by Turtle Island's Iroquois for centuries prior.
Despite Edwin L. Drake being credited with discovering oil in the US in 1859, reports have shown that Native Americans were known to have sunk pits into the Oil Creek Flats of Pennsylvania more than 400 years earlier, setting fire to the oil that seeped out for ceremonial fires and fashioning protective lotion from it, similar to petroleum jelly.
The native populations of Australia had maintained fields for centuries through a form of controlled burning called "firestick farming," in which they would expertly aim the fires to clear tracks or create fields of open grass ideal for farming.
Firestick farming was especially innovative because it forced out animals that could be killed for food while also creating space for new grasses to grow and welcome ideal conditions for game animals like wallabies, while also encouraging the growth of low-growing food plants. The native fire practices of low intensity burning continue to be necessary in preventing more serious fires in Australia.
Sources: (History) (Discover Magazine) (Indian Country Today) (BuzzFeed) (Forbes)
See also: Behind an ancient script that has remained unsolved for over a century
According to Matthew Sanger, curator of North American Archaeology at the National Museum of the American Indian, the ceremonial pipes that Native Americans and ancient priests in Mexico often used during spiritual rituals—which came in various shapes and materials—were what influenced Europeans and people around the world.
The corn we know and love and enjoy in many forms was actually not naturally occurring. Ancient indigenous farmers in northern Guatemala and southern Mexico as long as 10,000 years ago practiced selective breeding to enlarge the ear and develop kernels that humans could eat, then they taught European colonists how to grow the crop.
While the thought of mouthwash these days evokes the smells of chemicals, various indigenous tribes in North America, as well as the Mayans and Aztecs, used the wildflower goldthread (Coptis trifolia) as a mouthwash and a treatment for oral pain.
Due to centuries of historical discrimination and the persistent failure of many school systems, Indigenous peoples have not been given their due credit in terms of how much they have contributed to our modern, everyday lives. Native populations have been responsible for numerous innovations that impressed early European colonizers so much so, in fact, that they felt the need to make up fictional stories in an effort to explain many of these technologically-advanced indigenous inventions.
Click through to see a few of the many things our modern societies owe to native populations.
Everyday things that were invented by indigenous peoples
From bunk beds to painkillers, we have a lot to be thankful for
LIFESTYLE History
Due to centuries of historical discrimination and the persistent failure of many school systems, indigenous peoples have not been given their due credit in terms of how much they have contributed to our modern, everyday lives. Native populations have been responsible for numerous innovations that impressed early European colonizers so much so, in fact, that they felt the need to make up fictional stories in an effort to explain many of these technologically-advanced indigenous inventions.
Click through to see a few of the many things our modern societies owe to native populations.