Ancient America

Great Ages of Man

by Jonathan Norton Leonard

This is a volume in The Great Ages of Man: A History of the World's Cultures series, which are authored by scholars or acknowledged authorities and written for an intelligent, general audience. Chapters include The Earliest Americans, An Age of Warrior Kings, Triumphs of Native Genius and more. Profusely illustrated, including maps, bibliography and index.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, Ancient History, Reference, Historical, Art

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Jonathan Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get through this. It was interesting, but I'm sure a more up-to-date book might be able to fill in more of the gaps.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting book, and I enjoyed much of the art even if some of the pictures were lower quality. And I learned a bit about Ancient American societies I hadn't learn of before.

[Katrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great book! I always wanted to read about the famous cultures of the Aztec, Inka and Maya, and I finally had found a book on the flea market even :) It was very interesting, with a lots of pictures, maps, explanations. I liked the style it was written in, which followed the happenings not only chronologically. A timeline would have completed this book perfectly, but nevertheless this was a great read and I can but recommend this little but very enlightening book.

[Mark Toledo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spaniards with their habit of conquering seemingly peaceful civilizations to spread their gospels (and their genes) and to hispanicize an entire race. Mislabeled the First Peoples as Indians because they thought it was India.

Interesting read, given the same circumstances as the fate of the Philippines.

[Tlazeni Citlalli · Rating 3 out of 5]

La gloria de la América precolombina jamás será igualada siempre será la envidia del viejo continente una grandeza que no necesito de su influencia. Hasta el día de hoy se trata de desmeritar a la raza amerindia.

[Ricardo Cifuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro introductorio que me ha ayudado a ordenar de una buena forma la serie de eventos ocurridos en las tierras de América precolombina, se maneja el texto de manera respetuosa con la cultura, datos importantes y mucho visual, en estos tiempos de internet, pues las búsquedas son mucho más fáciles.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The American-born writer Jonathan Norton Leonard’s 1967 edition of the book, Ancient America, is a history of pre-Columbian Central American and Andes Mountains’ Civilizations. The book is for the series of Time-Life Books’ Great Ages of Man. Leonard was the Latin American and Science editor for TIME magazine. His spouse was Peruvian. Leonard was fluent in Spanish. Leonard also wrote the 1968 book in the same series on Early Japan. Leonard’s book is probably dated, but it is still worth reading if one is interested in the historiography of Central American and Andean Mountains’ Civilizations. One example of how the study of Ancient America has changed since Leonard’s time is the following. Leonard wrote the book, Ancient America when the study of the Mayan Civilizations was dominated by the Mesoamerican archaeologist, Eric S. Thompson, who promoted the idea that “the land of Maya suffered little from war” in the words of Leonard (42). Since Leonard wrote Ancient America, experts of Mayan Studies have shown that Mayan cities were sometimes violently in conflict with each other. That being said, Ancient America is worth reading. One can find a good introduction to the wonders of Central American and Andean Mountains' Civilizations. Ancient America is readable. The book has a beautiful layout, and each chapter is followed by a photo essay. At the end of the book, there is a Timeline. The history of the Mayan studies is told in the documentary called Breaking the Mayan Code (2013) directed by David Lebrun. The documentary is available on Amazon Prime Video. The documentary was useful when writing this ‘review’. The documentary was useful to watch while reading Leonard’s Ancient America. Even though it was dated I did not regret spending time reading the book, Ancient America.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of all the persons who most beneficially influenced me during childhood the most important was Father's mother, Lajla. Some of this was indirect, mostly unknown and unappreciated by me, such as the assistance she and her husband, Christian, gave to our family in obtaining homes near them in Park Ridge, Illinois. Some, however, was very much appreciated. Lajla, my "Nanny", would spend at least a month with Mother and me at the cottage her parents and grandparents had constructed across the lake in Michigan. There, me having little to do but to walking, she toilet trained me (perhaps my earliest memories are of that) helped me overcome early reading problems, taught me to knit and to play cards.

The help in reading worked. By second grade I was exploring what I thought of as grownup books and soon thereafter she was taking advantage of various discount offers to provide me with multi-volume series, some of them from Time-Life, one of them being The Great Ages of Man series of books about different human cultures and their histories.

Nanny has been dead for three decades now. I think of her almost daily.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overview of Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations, with an emphasis on reconstructing the political, religious, and social structures of the various kingdoms that arose in the Americas. The illustrations of sites and artifacts are nice and the history is fine, if a bit dated in its anthropological language. The book itself is somewhat dated; since it was written, much more information about the Maya has been uncovered through translations of their writings. If there is a theme here, it is tragedy: the rise of Native American civilizations independent of the Eastern Hemisphere, their great accomplishments, and their near total annihilation by the Spanish conquistadors. The authors try to balance this grim story by stressing the remaining traces of these cultures in modern Mexico and Peru.

[Lucinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was dusting shelves in the living room and found this book, when I was younger I know I looked at the pictures, but was like, hmm, why don't I try reading it this time, I've been having fun reading bits pieces throughout the day. I like the way things are organized in it and it doesn't try to sound 'smart'. The only thing was that sometimes it has long descriptions of artwork, and no pictures of the said piece of artwork to look at.

[James Violand · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly good summary of the pre-Columbian civilizations in the Western hemisphere. However, if you want to discover the Incas and Aztecs, I suggest you read William Prescott's seminal works.

[Wilson Liu]

i want to read this book, please send the PDF file to me, thanks my email address is: wilson@solarlink.co

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the stories of the ancient Americans, along with the photos of the structures and artifacts.