Exhibit Tells of Human Life in Americas

A display of ceramic pottery from the Moche culture, who lived along the northern coast of Peru, is seen at The Field Museum's new exhibit called "The Ancient Americas." Tuesday, March 6, 2007, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Charles Rex Arbogast - AP)

CHICAGO -- Aztec. Incan. Mayan.

They're the most widely recognized ancient cultures of North, South and Central America, according to visitors surveyed by The Field Museum.

But a new exhibit called "The Ancient Americas" shows that the Western Hemisphere was home to hundreds of diverse societies established long before European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

The hunter-gatherers of the Clovis society of North America perfected a spear 13,000 years ago that could pierce the skin of a mammoth. The Tairona culture of present-day Colombia crafted elaborate gold jewelry 1,500 years ago. And in 500 A.D., more people lived in the city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico than in Rome.

The permanent exhibit, which opened last week, encompassed five years of work, including the public surveys that helped guide its developers. It represents a major overhaul of the museum's old exhibit, which dated to the 1950s and focused on the archaeology of the Americas.

Not only was some of the information incorrect or outdated, according to museum staff, it also was not engaging enough to compete with television, the Internet and travel _ all options for learning about other cultures in the 21st century.

"It used to be case after case after case of objects, sitting there with label after label after label," said David Foster, the Field's project management director. "Very little means for the visitor to understand these societies in all their dimensions _ to understand what an artifact signified, or why it was made, or who used it, or what they used it for."

"The Ancient Americas" takes a very different approach.

Exhibits no longer are grouped in chronological order, but around the strategies early ancient Americans developed to meet their unique challenges.

For example, one section is devoted to cultures _ such as the Pueblo people of the North American Southwest _ that settled in villages to raise crops and livestock. Another section addresses cultures governed by powerful rulers, such as the Zapotec of Oaxaca, Mexico, who controlled the military, economic and religious aspects of their societies.

Visitors can watch videos of archaeologists working in the field, push a button and hear the Mayan language, or trace a path through a glass model of a massive city laid out in a grid pattern, much like Chicago is. Through text, they also learn that bloodletting and human sacrifice was a feature of some of the culture's religions.

The exhibit seeks to move away from the idea that cultural evolution is necessarily a sign of progress.