How to Use pre-Columbian in a Sentence

pre-Columbian

adjective
  • Many of these coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are over 300 feet tall and have been alive since pre-Columbian times.
    Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 19 Apr. 2023
  • But the roots of Día de los Muertos go back thousands of years to rituals that honor the dead in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
    Caron Golden, San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Oct. 2023
  • Both a social activity and a caffeine-fix, mate dates back to pre-Columbian times, when the leaves were hand-picked in the same manner as Lemos has been doing for the past 30 years.
    Stefano Pozzebon, CNN, 1 Feb. 2024
  • This was probably true in pre-Columbian Mexico as well.
    Jp Brammer, Los Angeles Times, 11 Oct. 2023
  • With the aroma of copal (the iconic pre-Columbian incense of choice in Tulum) permeating the space, the restaurant is warm and inviting.
    Jamie Ditaranto, Travel + Leisure, 15 Apr. 2023
  • The spools frame her mask-like open mouth, decorating voids in the human skull that signaled the soul’s vivacity in pre-Columbian culture.
    Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The parts of the chairs that someone would be in contact with (like the seat, back, and armrests) are made smooth to the touch using a pre-Columbian technique of burnishing, which involves rubbing the surface with a stone to seal it.
    Curbed, 5 June 2023
  • The authors hope this analysis gives further insight into the lives of pre-Columbian people of the Americas.
    Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 11 Oct. 2023
  • More than 25 percent of the state's roughly four million inhabitants are indigenous, and most of its 12 ethnic groups trace their roots to pre-Columbian Mayan peoples.
    Travel + Leisure Editors, Travel + Leisure, 22 June 2023
  • Concentric circular trenches, some as much as 60 feet deep, had been carved into the volcanic rock of the mountaintop, bringing to mind a pre-Columbian earthwork.
    Dennis Overbye Marcos Zegers, New York Times, 18 Apr. 2023
  • The ancestral beverage has deep roots in Indigenous Ecuadorian culture, dating back to the pre-Columbian era.
    Jessica Chapel, Condé Nast Traveler, 1 Dec. 2023
  • For visitors, the structures demonstrate a living version of pre-Columbian engineering that’s far more accessible than the Inca citadel to the north.
    Tim Brinkhof, Discover Magazine, 12 Nov. 2023
  • Beginning in pre-Columbian America, Native peoples have ground the tree’s acorns into meal and knew its strong roots could be counted on during disasters.
    Shannon Sims, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Each space is accented by the artists’ collections of African art, Mexican folk art and textiles, pre-Columbian pieces, contemporary art and ceramics, and their own work.
    Michael Wollaeger, ELLE Decor, 15 Feb. 2023
  • Ergo pre-Columbian people must have achieved flight, millennia before Orville and Wilbur Wright, with help from extraterrestrials.
    Discover Magazine, 4 Dec. 2023
  • History of Chia Seeds Chia seeds have their origin in pre-Columbian indigenous populations.
    María Quiles, Glamour, 21 Mar. 2024
  • In a town in northern Peru, Renzo, a teenager who dreams of becoming a professional gamer, is contacted through a video game by the spirit of an ancient pre-Columbian warrior.
    John Hopewell, Variety, 27 Oct. 2023
  • His ceramic pieces — inspired by pre-Columbian mythology and the Mexican landscape — are a prominent feature within the show.
    Carolina A. Miranda, Los Angeles Times, 7 Oct. 2023
  • In the contemporary, helter-skelter sweep of Mexico City, there is one place — in the southern borough of Xochimilco — where a vision of a watery, pre-Columbian capital may still be imagined.
    Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 2024
  • Such hallucinogenic substances have been used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas to induce altered states of consciousness and healing since pre-Columbian times.
    Claire Rush and Gene Johnson, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Oct. 2023
  • Auctions are a stimulating mess of things coming together: a perfume bottle from 1900, a pre-Columbian artwork, a contemporary African painting.
    Laura May Todd, New York Times, 18 Sep. 2023
  • And Ximena made these sculptures from ceramic and steel, combining a traditional material and technique also used in pre-Columbian cultures with steel used in industrial processes like petrol extraction.
    Francesca Aton, ARTnews.com, 12 June 2024
  • International companies hungry for carbon offsets have paid big money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques.
    Chelsea Fisher, The Conversation, 26 Feb. 2024
  • Her research helped Mexicans understand their pre-Columbian national heritage, in its sophisticated engineering, gardening, artistry, and cosmology, as being as glorious as that of Mediterranean societies in the classical era.
    Merilee Grindle, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pre-Columbian.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: