Pre-Columbian art has always been one an area of great interest to Tom Swope. He grew up in the American Southwest, and as a child explored Indian adobe ruins, and found potsherds and arrowheads on the desert floor.  While the history of the Indians in the Americas is not a happy one after Columbus, Swope was inspired by the great civilizations of the Pre-Columbian cultures, Aztecs, Maya, Olmec, and others.  The beautiful art objects left to us offer an alternate view of the world, of beauty, and a different spiritual path, than that of the Old world that our predominant culture came from.