Wiktionary
a. Referring to the cultures of the American continent before the European influence, specifically to the era before the continent was visited by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher%20Columbus.
WordNet
adj. of or relating to or originating in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus
Usage examples of "pre-columbian".
So Splendid, an amateur archaeologist, had expected, before being selected for this experimental mer-colony, to specialize in one of the pre-Columbian American Indian cultures and to trace the connections between it and the prehistoric Mongolian cultures from which the Amerinds derived.
It has been assumed that the Chimu, as other American pre-Columbian cultures, had no knowledge of electricity.
Other ideas or inventions missing from pre-Columbian societies were coined money, ethical monotheism, the idea of the experiment and, in general, writing.
He totally ignored the climate control system that nurtured his well-being, the Tanganyikan carvings, the pre-Columbian figures, the abstract expressionist oils, the limited-edition art books that fed or stimulated his aesthetic needs.
Ortiz mentions divers occasionally find Roman and Greek amphoras in the waters off Brazil, bucking the idea that pre-Columbian civilizations did not visit the Americas.
Ortiz mentions diversoccasionally find Roman and Greek amphoras in the waters off Brazil,bucking the idea that pre-Columbian civilizations did not visit theAmericas.
As luck would have it, our brother Samuel in New York had sold Rummel most of his collection of illegal pre-Columbian antiquities and knew the location of the concealed gallery that held the suit.
He had never seen so many pre-Columbian antiquities so rich in rarity and beauty displayed in one place.
Magnificent pre-Columbian artworks filled room after room of the apartment.
It, too, ran from Chihuahua to Ciudad Juarez, but along a route well to the west, through such picturesque towns as Cuauhtémoc, Guerrero and Casas Grandes, which had been an important center a thousand years ago, with ancient pyramids and ruined streets still proving how great the pre-Columbian Indians had been.
Theories that the lines were runways for alien spacecraft or tracks laid out for pre-Columbian athletics meetings have long been laughed out of court.
Against that grim list, the sole crowd infectious diseases that can be attributed with certainty to pre-Columbian Native American societies were nonsyphilitic treponemas.
If recent reappraisals of the pre-Columbian New World population are correct, it was not far below the contemporary population of Eurasia.
Is it possible that the many similarities between the cultures of pre-Columbian Central America and Ancient Egypt could have stemmed from an as-yet-unidentified ‘third-party’ civilization that influenced both widely separated regions at a remote and early date?
Designs found on pre-Columbian clay pottery show twodecker boats sporting raised stem and sternposts with carved serpent heads similar to the dragons gracing Viking longships.