Scientific Origin Stories IV::

Settlement

Evidence from artefacts for human habitation of the Americas beyond 12,000 to 14,000 years ago is open to fierce debate. Debate also rages as to precise dates and significances of certain finds.

Remains have been found that have suggested to some the remains of campfires or hearths, associated with artefacts, on California's coastline, dating some 29,000 years ago (Santa Rosa Island). Paleo-Arctic sites in the Yukon and Alaska have arguably revealed evidence of post-glacial occupation around 27,000 and 22,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating has placed apparent campfire and tool remains in central Mexico around 21,000 years ago. Apparent stone tools and the remains of butchered animals have been found in Peru dating to around 18,000 years ago, and similar remains in Virginia have been dated to 14,000 years ago and in Idaho to around 12,500 years ago.

The greatest number of human sites, however, dates from around 12,000 BP. As such, many scholars state that human settlement of the Americas occurred after this date, when the so-called Clovis peoples brought their highly developed stone technology from the north. Fluted stone spearpoints or arrowheads were found near Clovis, New Mexico, dating back to around 11,500 years ago, and such evidences of the so-called Clovis culture have been found throughout the, mainly northern, Americas.

It is believed that the Clovis peoples hunted migratory game, large and small, and gathered wild fruit, vegetables and nuts to supplement their diets. They were expert stone workers, shaping often exquisite stone points. Between 11,000 BP and 10,000 BP, the Folsom peoples left behind fluted flint knives and evidences that they too followed largely nomadic existences pursuing game and supplementing their diets with wild plant foods. The so-called Plano cultures were the last of the Paleo-Indian peoples, pursuing game with a diverse range of projectile points from around 10,000 to 8000 BP.

These Paleo-Indian big-game hunters then seem to have disappeared from the archaeological record. Some scholars have put their demise down to the climatic changes accompanying the apparent demise of the Ice Age, which gradually wiped out the big mammals on whom the Paleo-Indians' lives depended (although mammoth remains have been found dating to as recent as 3700 years ago - Wrangel Island in the Arctic Circle). Others have suggested that the Paleo-Indians over-hunted the abundant game to the point of extinction, and this led to a dramatic crash in human population levels. Most recently, one scientist has even posited the view that a mass spread of a virulent 'hyperdisease' or plague, initially transmitted from humans, wiped out the mammoths and scores of other species (see Dr Ross MacPhee in Mammoth Trumpet 14 (1) 1999).

An apparently new period began in pre-historic Native American history. The Archaic period, which supposedly began around 9000 or 8000 years ago, was characterised by increasing diversification in subsistence habits and cultural patterns. Broadly speaking, Archaic Indian peoples developed subsistence cultures unique to specific geographical regions, and subsistence practices expanded to encompass greater reliance on fishing, hunting smaller animals, gathering shellfish and plants and farming. Nomadism decreased generally, and territoriality and settlements rose. Evidence for long-distance trading appears from this time. Possibly sparked by the dramatic environmental changes occurring in the wake of the Ice Age, such patterns of life remained, more-or-less, constant until the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century AD.

It is well to bear in mind that it is lack of evidence, and thus lack of knowledge, that has led to the theory that the Paleo-Indian period was characterised by sporadic geographic occupation vis a vis the Archaic period. It is also well to bear in mind that dates given for Paleo-Indian and Archaic periods can be highly flexible. For example, a variety of sites and human skeletal remains have been found along the northwest as well as Californian coasts, dating back some 11,000 to 9000 years which suggest highly-developed intercoastal navigation and trading, as well as a well-established maritime diet based as much on fishing as on game hunting (see, for example, the sites at Prince of Wales Island and also the Tongass Cave Project, all in Alaska's coastal regions). One Californian coastal site has thrown up much evidence of basketry dating some 9000 years BP (Daisy Cave on San Miguel Island). Not only does this suggest that so-called Clovis or Paleo-Indian peoples were not necessarily almost-exclusively big-game hunters, but the complexity of such coastal communities (as evidenced by the established trade networks, navigational skills, subsistence patterns and material cultures) also suggests a greater antiquity than has commonly been assumed.

Another example of the flexibility of dates and periods is provided by evidence uncovered by the discovery, recently, of a pre-Clovis site in south-central Chile - a site that pre-dates known Clovis sites by at least a thousand or more years. The Monte Verde site has all the characteristics of an Archaic culture. Uncovered have been: hundreds of sophisticated artefacts made from wood as well as stone; several wooden house foundations; a wide variety of edible food plants, suggesting Paleo-Indian or pre-Clovis diets not dominated by game; a variety of exotic items not local to the region, such as quartz and an adhesive tar known as bitumen; non-food type plants identical to the medicinal plants used by local healers in the region today; and the outline of a human footprint. The site strongly points to a complex community that settled year-round in the same place.

As the site dates to around 12,500 BP, some archaeologists have been forced to reconsider long-held dogma that says that the first Americans arrived from Asia some 12,000 years ago. The complexity of settlement suggested at Monte Verde, and the considerable distance from Beringia specifically, and Asia generally, have led some scholars to posit a much earlier arrival date - one that may reach as far back as more than 20,000 years; although a coastal migration route via the Pacific Ocean could have meant an arrival at around 14,000 and 13,000 years ago. Indeed, another site at Monte Verde has revealed possible stone artefacts that may have been flaked by human hands some 33,000 years ago.

With the mammoths and other large mammals gone, many of the successors of the Clovis, Folsom and Plano peoples turned to the much smaller game of bison or buffalo. Over the following millennia, several cultural groups hunted the bison all across the Plains. A variety of means were employed to ensure human survival and wealth. Hunters hunted on foot, attacking with stone spears, darts, later bows and arrows, and later still guns. They also hunted by razing the earth with fire and propelling buffalo herds down ravines or over cliffs. Such hunting fires, recurring year after year, and over many thousands of acres, kept the Plains grasslands free from encroaching trees and shrubs, and pushed back the forests along the eastern edge. Over time, most Plains tribes settled in small farming villages on the fringes of the buffalo country, venturing out onto the Plains to hunt during the summer and fall. A few remained permanently on the Plains, engaging in little gardening or farming, subsisting on the buffalo, smaller game and on fruits, nuts and seeds gathered sporadically. During the winter, shelter was sought in valleys or canyons.

According to current existing evidence, it was during the beginning of the Archaic period that agriculture began, in the Mexican Highlands. Local inhabitants began to experiment with an indigenous wild grass. They germinated new strains of the grass from seeds and this eventually evolved into maize, or corn. Corn, squash and beans began to be domesticated all across the Americas.

The archaeological record shows that somewhere around 3500-4500 years ago, increasingly larger settlements began to appear across America. Such settlements revealed marked differences in wealth and new features of subsistence, material culture, technology, socio-political organisation and trade. As the woodland period began around 1500 years ago, new cultural practices such as deliberate cultivation of plants, pottery making and the building of earth tombs marked a dramatic change in the lives of first eastern and then most of the North American inhabitants. At around the same time, magnificent developments were occurring further south in Mesoamerica. Once again, the flexibility of dates must be borne in mind as pottery fragments have been discovered at various sites in South America that date back to between 8000 and 5000 years BP.

The best known of the so-called 'mound-builders' was the cultures of the Adena and the Hopewell, centred in the Ohio Valley. In the Southwest, in the Four Corners region where todays Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet, sedentary farming traditions intensified around the Hohokam, Mogollon, Anasazi and Salado cultures. These people enjoyed complex trading and ceremonial relationships with each other and down into northern Mexico. Sophisticated agricultural practices were developed, such as irrigation, terrace farming, dams, and seasonal crop planting. Hunting and gathering were still important for some of these cultures, but it is agriculture that defines them for us today. The subterranean ceremonial structures known as kivas were first developed by the Anasazi (believed by some to be the descendents of today's various Puebloan nations). Around 900 years ago, the Anasazi population congregated in fewer but larger pueblos, some of which were clustered under cliff overhangs - the so-called cliff dwellings. Some especially magnificent pueblos had large open courtyards and several kivas located in each of them.