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Susan Elizabeth Ramírez, Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America, Journal of American History, Volume 111, Issue 3, December 2024, Pages 570–571, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaae192
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Extract
Timothy R. Pauketat's book is a sophisticated journey through the cross-border history of precontact North America and Meso-America for archaeologists, explorers, climatologists, and the erudite public. The author's attention to environmental oscillations and how they affected various civilizations focuses on the forces of wind and rain (and the lack thereof). In the process, he retells the stories of Native gods, such as Tlaloc, the god of rain and water; Chalchiuhtilcue, the goddess of groundwater; and Coatlicue, the source of all life.
These deities and many others mentioned in the text lead into his discussions of Indigenous world views. He asserts that Native cosmologies did not rigidly divide the world into animate and inanimate. The latter were considered alive and possessing an essence or soul. The Maya, for example, viewed the world as filled with nonhuman beings and things having a life-force that mattered. The Chichimec peoples of the Mexican altiplano believed in spiritual forces or gods that could be accessed by material items (such as medicine bundles) or practices (such as rain dances) that connected humans with supernatural powers and rebalanced spirit, mind, body, earth, sky, and water. Medicine bundles, for instance, were used to invoke spirits, predict the future, control the weather, and recall stories.