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What culture is considered to be the oldest in South and Central America?

Olmecs. The Olmec culture dates back to 1500 BC. Mayans are a bit younger, but Aztecs and Toltecs were relative newcomers to history, first appearing in approximately the 13th century AD. The Olmecs were also known as "rubber" or "jaguar" people: rubber was an important item to trade and there are a lot of "were-jaguar" motifs left. Today they are best known by the massive heads, made of stone.

Which civilization created the epic creation story, called "Popol Vuh"?

Mayans. It still survives to this day, despite all the efforts of those trying to covert the Maya to Christianity.

According to Mayan mythology, the earth is situated on the back of an animal. Which?

Crocodile. I was taught that it was a crocodile, but I believe that it could have been an alligator. Turtles, elephants and whales have also been quite common "earth-carriers" in other cultures. Sometimes it is said, that it was a "reptile", so it could have been as well turtle, but in most sources it is surely crocodile (cayman).

According to Mayan mythology, what are humans ultimately made of?

Maize. Finally the gods were satisfied with the variant of maize they had created. This is a very reasonable explanation since, in essence, it was the cultivation of maize that gave the early Maya culture the means to change from hunters and gatherers to a highly advanced civilization. After creating the animals, the gods wanted to have somebody to pray to them, so they first tried to make humans from mud, and after a complete failure, from wood. When that also failed the latter were turned into monkeys, and that is why monkeys look like humans, according to Mayans. As the gods also wanted to eat something, the human-beings, made of maize, were quite a useful meal for them, so the Mayans fed their gods with human beings ... (By the way: maize is the word for bread in Latvian.)

In Mayan mythology, a huge tree was at the center of the world. What was it called?

Ceiba. Ceiba is not a specific name for a single tree but rather for an entire species of tree. Such a tree exists nowadays, its name in Latin is "ceiba pentandra". The ancient Mayans believed that a great Ceiba tree stood at the center of the earth, connecting the terrestrial world to the heavens above. Long thick vines hung down from its spreading limbs, providing a connection between the real world, and the world above, to those souls that ascended them. Yggdrasill is the World-Tree of Norse mythology, it was an ash-tree; Sansang is one of the four World-Trees in China (situated in the North) and Ilmapuu is from Finno-Ugrian mythology, usually considered to be an oak-tree. (That version of the name is Estonian).

When was the last city of the Mayans conquered by the Spaniards?

1697. 1697, Tayasal. Why did it take so long? Probably because it was hard to find and even harder to send the troops there. The city which was never found by the Spanish was Macchu Picchu of the Incas, but that was already abandoned before the Spaniards reached America. It was discovered in 1911. 1521 is the year that marks the end of the Aztec Empire, and 1535, the end of the Incan nation (although the very end of Incan resistance dates from the 1570s).

Where Mexico City now stands, there once stood the capital of the Aztecs. What was it called?

Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan was founded not before 1325, but was considered to possibly be the largest city in the world already by the beginning of the 16th century. The three false answers were also all quite well-known metropoles of ancient Mexico.

What city was the center of the Incan Empire?

Cuzco. Macchu Picchu was once also an important center, but was abandoned for reasons that are unclear. Lima was built later by the conquistadors to govern the conquered lands. Quito was the second center of the Incan Empire, it was said that Pizzarro was lucky to reach Peru in the time when there were lots of tensions; Cuzco's Huascar and Quito's Atahualpa were battling for supremacy in a civil war.

The ritual ball-game of the ancient Indians was held during celebrations and ended with sacrifice. Who were sacrificed?

losers of the game. Actually, I have also heard that sometimes the winners were sacrificed (for not insulting the gods with second-rate stuff), but from the internet I have found that only the losers (or in some forms the captain of the losers) lost their heads. If somebody knows where I can find evidence that the winners were sacrificed, please let me know. The ball game was symbolic of the battle of gods (or forces of nature). There was also a lot of gambling involved: ancient Indians gambled nearly for everything.

In 1537 the then Pope, Paul III, issued a bull in which something very basic indeed was stated about the Indians. What?

The Indians are human beings. Since the Indians are human beings they have immortal souls and are candidates for conversion to Christianity; they have the right to private property and they cannot be enslaved. There was, however, a little problem: according to the Bible, Noah had only three sons and they became the fathers of all the known nations. But on discovering America and the people who lived there, the European Christians had to "find" an ancestor for them. As it was not given in the Bible, the question arose as to whether they were humans at all (although the "interaction" of Spanish soldiers and native women proved so). The bill solved that problem officially for Roman Catholics, but still at the end of the 17th century, Cotton Mather, the key figure in the Salem witch-hunt, stated that the "redskins" had been sent to America by none other than the devil personally.