Archive for the ‘Ancient North America’ Category
By: The Scribe on November, 2007
One of the fascinating components and great mysteries of ancient migration movements is how people – without GPS or maps – managed to make their way from one continent to the next, without getting horribly lost, starving to death, or making fatal wrong turns in the process. As it turns out, ancient humans who came to North America from Asia may have managed to make their way across the ocean by following a highway made of densely packed kelp.
Typically, “coastal migration theory” has centered around the idea that early seafaring people moved from one island to another by boat, hunting the sea creatures that lived in kelp forests for food. The potential ‘kelp highway’ from Asia to America only lends strength to this theory, and certainly provides a rational explanation for how so many people moved themselves across such a vast distance.
Kelp forests are among some of the richest ecosystems in the world today – as they were in ancient times – and are home to an incredible number of living creatures: abalone, urchins, hundreds of varieties of fish, otters, seals, and more, all of which would have provided excellent nutrition value and practical materials for people moving across the ocean.
Often referred to as ‘maritime people’, the ancient humans who made the migration move are believed to have boated along the Kurile and Aleutian Islands from Japan to Alaska approximately 16,000 years ago – some settlements of around 12,000 to 9,000 years old have been discovered along the coastlines of these islands, and they also have rich kelp forests that ecologists believe existed tens of thousands of years ago.
A group of maritime people who lived in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands around 35,000 to 15,000 years ago are known to have had the ability to travel 90 miles or more at once while moving between islands, so at the very least, humans already knew how to cover vast distances in relatively simple boats. In a place called Daisy Cave in the Channel Islands, located off of southern California, remains of some kelp resources have been found that date to around 10,000 BC!
With kelp forests found right next to plenty of the Americas’ earliest known archaeological coastal sites, it certainly seems that the ability of ancient peoples to move such enormous distances across the ocean was dependent on these kelp forests – after all, even today, a nearly continuous ‘highway’ of kelp stretches from Japan all the way across Siberia, past the Bering Strait to Alaska, and then moves down along the coastline of California!
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Tomorrow: The last Pagan Emperor of Rome
By: The Scribe on July, 2007
It was around 1100 AD that an obscure native culture, known as the Gallina, lived in a small area of New Mexico’s northwest. And it was around 1275 AD that the entire culture suddenly vanished without a trace.
Until recently, less than one hundred skeletons from the Gallina culture have been found, but a new cache of seven skeletons has added a twist to the tale of this vanishing group of people. The bones of five adults, one child, and one infant all show evidence of violent murder. One skeleton had a fractured skull, jaw, forearm, pelvis and thighbone, and several ribs were also cracked. Another body had cut marks on the upper arm, similar to the kind of marks made by an axe. The skull of the child, probably about two years old at the time of death, had been crushed.
Two of the bodies were also arranged in an unusual way: an adult male and a female were face down, on their knees, with their heads bent back far enough to rest between their shoulder blades. The female’s head had been snapped back so far that a piece of her vertebrae had been forced into the back of her skull. This could have been the result of a deliberate pose, or it is possible that the individuals were crouched defensively when their necks were broken. This kind of position also shows that whoever killed these people did not bother to bury them – they simply carried out the murders and moved on.
Another unusual feature of the murder scene was a burnt pit house quite near to where the bodies were found. According to reports from previous Gallina sites, in 90% of cases, attackers tended to throw their Gallina victims inside their own houses and then burn the houses on top of them. However at this site, the bodies had simply been thrown into a pile. According to archaeologists working at the site, it is extremely likely that more bodies and burnt houses are nearby – though whether they will show such evidence of brutal murder is uncertain.
Although very little is known about this culture, two of the adult skulls showed distinct evidence of culturally-induced cranial deformation – they have an unusual flattened shape which has not show up anywhere else in the American southwest. It is entirely possible that distinctive internal traits such as these were the cause of violent conflicts with other groups of Gallina people in the area, or it may have also been the result of drastic climate change in the region.
In fact, one of the main theories on the massacre site is that the Gallina culture’s disappearance was the result of genocide. Around 1100 AD, shortly after the culture appears in the archaeological record, the southwest of New Mexico was struck with severe drought. By about 1150 AD, the water table had begun to drop, preventing inhabitants of the region from growing as much corn as was needed to survive – it is possible that this could have been the source of stress between villages, as they struggled to ensure each group had enough resources. With competition for water and arable land, it is possible that internal strife took a turn for the worse – resulting in mass killings for the sake of food and water.
A second theory rests on the known evidence that other established cultural groups in the area, such as the Anasazi, abandoned their own massive settlements during the drought. If established groups like the Anasazi saw the new Gallina people as a threat – new, alone, without any political allies – they may have done what they thought they needed to do to restore the land’s harmony. After all, if they had no problems growing their corn for hundreds of years – and then a new group of people came into the area, and all of a their sudden corn wasn’t growing anymore – who were they going to blame?
Although the fate of the Gallina culture remains undetermined, the horrendous violence inflicted on the most recent skeletons certainly shows that whatever happened, the conflict was swift and ruthless – and let toward a complete destruction of an entire culture.
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Tomorrow: 2000 year old noodles, yummy!
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Something North America seems to be famous for is revealing ancient flora… very, very ancient, in fact. In 2007, archaeobotanists working near Gilboa, Ohio, found what may be the world’s oldest known tree – a giant palm that lived around 380 million years ago.
Hearkening back 140 million years before the dinosaurs, and earlier than the Wollemia pine from Australia that may have lived with the dinosaurs, the Wattieza tree fern had a thin palm-like trunk with a top that resembled the fronds of a modern palm tree. It was likely only around 10 meters high during maturity, though this would have been high enough to reach sunlight through the dense forest canopy.
Archaeogeologists have identified this period of time as the Middle Devonian Period, between 397 and 385 million years ago, which is thought to have been an incubator period that saw the development of new reproductive strategies for land plants. Other life at the time included small insects, spiders, and oceanic crustaceans, as identified through fossil remains.
With the rise of land plants, the atmosphere and ecosystem of the entire Earth would have shifted, creating new micro-environments that could have sustained additional smaller plants and insects, eventually storing enough carbon to support an extensive amount of land life.
Previously, the oldest known tree was a plant called Archaeopteris, which had leafy twigs and long roots and branches, very unlike the small fern-leaves and reproductive spores from Wattieza. Archaeopteris was placed in the Late Devonian Period, around 359 million years ago.
The discovery of the world’s oldest tree has managed to shed significant insight into how the Earth’s landscape developed over the course of time, as well as helping to understand how much impact a forest’s growth can have on the rest of an area’s environment. So far, archaeobotanists have realized that it was the growth of these early forests and plant systems that must have paved the way for the sustainable development of early reptilian and mammalian life.
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Tomorrow: Nostradamus…OoOoOoooh
By: The Scribe on May, 2007
The site of Cahokia is located near Collinsville, Illinois, and was home to an ancient Native American city between 650-1400 AD. It is made up of a series of earthen mounds, which were constructed by the city’s inhabitants around 1050 AD, when the city’s population suddenly exploded at the beginning of the Mississippian cultural period.
The most interesting aspect of this city is a giant hill called the Monk’s Mound, which was built with four levels of terraces and is the largest man-made earthen mound known in North America. On top of the mound, there seems to be some evidence for a large building, possibly a temple or ceremonial center for the city’s religious leader. It would have been visible to the entire city, and so it seems that the religion of these people was a focal point of their daily existence.
To the west of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists have identified a series of postholes forming what has affectionately been coined as “Woodhenge”, since it is likely that this area was used for astronomical observations such as seasonal equinoxes and solstices. During the 300-year occupation of the site, it seems that Woodhenge was rebuilt several times, and therefore must have played an integral role in the community.
Although it was visible to the rest of the city, the Monk’s Mound was also surrounded by a wooden stockade and a series of watchtowers placed at regular intervals. This stockade seems to have separated the religious district or ceremonial center from the rest of the city itself, which was settled in a diamond-shape of about a mile long. There are about 120 additional mounds within the city area, and they are of varying shape, such as: conical pyramid, platform style, or ridge-top.
One intriguing find at Cahokia was the burial of a 40-year-old man who seems to have been an important community figure, possibly a religious leader or respected warrior. His grave-bed was an arrangement of more than twenty thousand seashell disc beads in the shape of a falcon – and the man’s body was placed on the falcon so that his head, arms, and legs aligned with those of the bird. This kind of burial must have held a very powerful significance for the inhabitants of the city. He was also found with a large cache of arrowheads from across North America, which demonstrates the extensive trade that must have been conducted at the site.
A number of other burials in the city were simply mass graves, and many of the skeletons here were missing hands and heads, which has led to the speculation of human sacrifice at the city.
Cahokia’s high point as a major urban center held a population of around 40,000 inhabitants, making it the largest prehistoric site in North America – a close rival to the great cities of Mesoamerica in Central Mexico. Its decline was likely caused by the depletion of natural resources as a result of climate change, and by 1400 AD the city was completely abandoned.
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Tomorrow: State of the art siege weaponry, diseased corpses?
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