Lawmakers defiantly chewed coca in Peru's Congress on Thursday while criticizing a U.N. recommendation to criminalize traditional uses of the plant ( Read more... )

By David Alexander ( Read more... )

Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina
for National Geographic NewsJune 19, 2007 ( Read more... )

I'd posted a question here a while back regarding tobacco use in Pre-Columbian cultures, and I think I may have found a partial answer in this video.

Click to view

To surmise, the main source of lung cancer in cigarettes is the 17% of sugar added to cigarettes (20% in cigars, and 40% in pipe tobacco). From this we can surmise that because sugar was (most likely ( Read more... )

Heather Whipps Special to LiveScience ( Read more... )

Uncontacted Indian tribe found in Brazil's Amazon
Source

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- An Indian tribe that has had very limited contact with the outside world has been located in a remote Amazon region, federal authorities said Friday.

The tribe is a subgroup of the Kayapo tribe, and lives on its 12.1 million-acre Menkregnoti Indian reservation ( Read more... )

Indian community justice is making a comeback under Bolivia's first indigenous president with the emphasis on the whip.

In Wilicala, a remote village in the Andean highland, a group of men were on their way to a meeting.As they walked through the market square I noticed some coloured ropes slung around their chests ( Read more... )

Skulls shed new light on migration to Americas
Cranial shapes hint at two separate waves of settlers, scientists say

By Bjorn Carey

For decades it has been believed that the first peoples to populate North and South America crossed over from Siberia by way of the Bering Strait on a land-ice bridge.
However, a new study examining the ( Read more... )