Younger Dryas-Sudden Cooling

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.gr/search/label/Younger%20Dryas

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Younger Dryas-Sudden Cooling

This reconstructed temperature map for the younger dryas event is more significant than the makers realised. It is also virtually a snapshot of the condition of the earth at the point the celestial-body-impact began to make its effects known: this is because when the event hit, it was like going from a mild early-summer climate in the Northern hemisphere immediately into the middle of a harsh winter. And this map basically goes to indicate where the thick cloud of dust covered the land and brought down the temperatures from the onset of the event (compare the next map below)

Using the figures provided by Otto Muck about the submergence of Atlantis, the eruptions at the mid-Atlantic ridge in the vicinity of the Azores led to the immediate formation of a mushroom cloud 25 to 50 miles high and up to 1000 miles wide in a disc shape. It contained 5  million cubic miles of water and up to 1/2 million cubic miles of aerated volcanic dust and debris. Within a very short while, the jet stream winds had whipped the debris cloud around the Northern Hemisphere : it was high enough and thick enough to eventually reach the Southern Hemisphere and disrupt weather patterns there also. The cloud was mostly heavily laden with water vapour and atomized volcanic dust, but also included lethal levels of carbon monoxide and carbon  dioxide.

Younger Dryas Impacts on Climate
From a different website, but indicating specific evidences that go toward reinforcing the big picture. There was also a strong upwelling (deepwater rsing to the top layers and altering temperature levels and possibly even the atmosphere) along the US East coast. This upwelling could also have come along with belches of methane gas from the great depths. The volcanic activity is gone into with more specific details below.

The  inspiration for this posting comes because of Rodney Chilton's book and blog Sudden Cold, concerning the Younger Dryas period. The younger Dryas really was an aburpt change in climate but also in mant other ways, including some geophysical readjustments and not to neglect evidences for both a geomagnetic inversion but also a shifting of the Earth's outer crust over the inner layers (The outer crustal layers are not in any way anchored to the lower levels and a molten band called the Athenisphere separates the two: and also it is known now that the different layers of the earth's interior rotate at different speeds and are not in synch; therefore slippage between the different layers is not only to be expected, it is a continual ongoing process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/climatedebate
http://anthropology.net/2009/12/09/the-clovis-comet-that-wasnt-mystery-deepens/http://www.joyofcrisis.com/JoyofCrisis.com/Something_Strange_Happened.html
http://ie.lbl.gov/mammoth/mammoth.html
http://bcclimate.com/
http://bcclimate.com/Comet%20Impact%20Hypotheses.html
http://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Cosmic-Catastrophes-Stone-Age-Changed/dp/1591430615

 Arctic conditions were heralded by the presence of this flowering tundra plant, the Dryas octopetalia

Chronology of the Younger Dryas event as recorded in Greenland Ice layers Using the unadjusted C14 dates 

Nature, Vol. 323 18 September 1986 p. 247
"Late-Glacial Climatic Oscillation in Atlantic Equivalent to the Alerod/ Younger Dryas Event" Robert J. Mott, Douglas R. Grant, Ralph Stear and Serge Occhetti.

The shores of Newfoundlandland and New Brunswicke at ca 10000 BC were lined with birch and spruce trees during a relatively warmer interval, but were struck with a sudden "widespread and synochrous climatic disturbance of sufficient magnitude to strongly affect depositional environments throughout Atlanic Canada." Organic deposition was replaced by mineral deposition and sand banks covered the former forest beds at about 11000 years ago. the mineral deposits covered over all ponds, lakes, peat beds, land areas and water courses [in fact the Carolina Bays were filled in with similar sediment at the same time. see photo below for Carolina bays] This is asociated with "Stirred" sedimrentary layers and false radiocarbon dates.
This event is correlated to North Atlantic cores which demonstrate that at 14000-15000 BP the polar front lay across the Ocean at about 40 degrees North back to a nearly "modern" polar front N. of Iceland before 11000 years ago (C14 dates about 9200 BC) and then with an excursion to another polar front as before at almost exactly 11000-10000 BP C14 nonadjusted dates, averaging at Muck's date of ca 8500 BC for this event. Furthermore there is an ash bed full across the North Atlantic at exactly this same level, and it extends from New England to Iceland to Scandinavia again at the dates estimated at 8500-8600 BC. From the depositional qualities mentioned  in the article, it wseems there was a massive  wave scouring off the coastlines before the glacial advance : Water and then followed by Ice: increased precipitation and erosion, including flushing sediments into the ocean beds, had occurred BEFORE the glaciers had re-advanced. This Younger Drryas event was one of global scope: "Not simply a North Atlantic  regional phenomenon resulting from ice shelf breakup, meltwater diversion, reorientation of atmospheric flow or deepwater production" although all of threse things were asociated with the event. 

Map of glaciation at glacial maximum. The Younger Dryas was a period when the glacier was in retreat in an intergalcial stage, marked in Britain by the presence of warm-weather beetles in forest bed deposits, and then the climate did a suddenn about-face to full-glacial conditions again.

One of the things I found out about this recently was that the event was marked by a sudden glacial melting at the margin which was linked to the idea of a comet exploding over the region. Robert Kline specifies that the explosion was over Hudson's Bay, then the North Pole going by Hapgood's construction. I do not follow Hapgood so rigidly but I do note that the event occurred near Hudson's Bay. 

another map indicating the melt area as a forerunner of Lake Agassiz: the ACTUAL Lake Agassiz would not form until the melting of the glacier which READVANCED after this event. At this time, approx 9000 BC uncalibrated C14 date, there was an extensive forest over Michigan, Illinois and Indiana known as the Two Creeks Forest bed: the forest got knocked down when the glaciers readvanced. The usually-recognised Lake Agassiz was formed in the wake of the Younger Dryas in RETREAT

This is a map of a more extreme estimation of how much inland area was under water following the event just described and comparable to an estimated Intergalacial high. as I see it, this represents the approximate boundaries of the sea wave before the reglaciation-a colossal tsunami that met the coastlines at several thousand feet high and swept inland to an altitude of 1000 ft mid-continent. In certan older books about the glacial period you would get references to the submergence, or more  limited subsections of it such as the "Hershey Sea". This event was also the one in which whale skeletons became stranded on mountaintops, oceanic seashells wound up in the Midwest of the USA and in European Russia, and many of the small lakes and soils of the area registered as distinctly saline after the wave retreated. (I have articles from SCIENCE magazine about this salinization event)

Illustration of the "Black Bed" layer in a cross-section of a hillside The Black beds are visually distinctive And there are the Black beds everywhere, indicating the precipitation out of black carbonaceous (sooty) material out of the Atmosphere over a wide area.

Carbonized upper layer of fossil soil, illustrating the ash layer caused by intense forest fires of the period. This carbonized layer is the layer that can contain tektites and minidiamonds (indicating a collision with a large comet or asteroid)

Carolina Bays, Putative massively cratered beds all along the US East coast and commonly thought to be the result of heavy meteorite showers at the end of the Ice Age and simultaneous woth the Cape Yourk meteorites in Northern Greenland, also from the end of the Pleistocene. 

Zhirov's Atlantis states on p383 bottom to 385 top, "Many investigators point out that Plato's date of the destruction of Atlantis synchronizes with many geological and other events. For example, Y.G. Reshetov draws attention that this date harmonizes with the eruption of Eifel [volcanic field in Germany] and Puy de Dome, and with tectonic activity in the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathians, the Caucasus and elsewhere. A.A. Gorbovsky likewise underscores this date. G. Arrnius notes that the end of the last glaciation was accompanied by violent volcanic eruptions at Lake Laachern in Central Europe, in Iceland, and the North Atlantic generally, in the Mediterranean, along the entire Andes coast of Central and South America, in Patagonia and in other areas" Zhirov gives dates for the destruction of Atlantis from Muck's date of 8498 BC to a more general date of 9500 BC, which is within the same general margin for error (My notes speak of the problems of C14 dates at this juncture at tis point)
Zhirov's chart on p. 382 includes #13, Great volcanic eruptions of the North Atlantic after Bramlette and Bradley, Klenova and Larov, and the Piggott-Urrey cores, at about 10000 years ago.
#14 End of Allerod interstadial in Europe after Barendsen, Deevey and Gralenski approx 9500-8500 BC [Thereafter the Dryas Glacial period-DD]
#15, First considerable penetration of warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic ocean after Yermolayev, 1000 to 8000 years ago (ie, earliest Postglacial 8000 to 6000 BC: and this also includes spreading of loose Atlantic volcanic debris into the Arctic Ocean near Spitzbergen noted by more recent American authors)
#16 Latest eruption of the Eifel volcano after Straka, 9350 years ago or 7350 BC
Elsewhere Zhirov also notes a lava flow on the site of modern Mexico city at just before 8100 BC

The Smithsonian Institution's publication Volcanores of the World list the following from the earliest Postglacial period (Glacial-period eruptions are not on this list):
ca 8000-9000 BC Lassen Peak, California
ca 8600 to 8000 BC, Eifel Volcanic field
ca 8450 to 8150 BC, Mount Shasta, California
ca 8250 to 8050 BC, Emuangogolak, East Africa
ca 8100-8000 BC, Taupo volcanic crater New Zealand (very large)
ca 8100-8000 BC, Mt Edziza, Canada
ca 8250-8000 BC (possibly less) Chaine des Puys, France
ca 8040-7635 BC SW Lake, Taupo fields,New Zealand
b.7900 BC, Ruapehu, New Zealand (very large)
b. 7900 BC, Lipari Islands, Italy
ca 7750 BC, Taupo volcanic crater, New Zealand (very large)
ca 7950- 7550 BC Tongariro New Zealand (very large)
ca 7750-7500 BC, Hijiori, Japan
ca 7610-7475 BC, Mt Adams, Washington
ca 7660-7460 BC Witori group, New Britain, Melanesia
ca 7530 -7440 BC, Luinaya Pas'i, Kurile Islands, Siberia (very large)
ca 7530-7000 BC, secondary cone formation at Mt Shasta (very large)
ca. 7500 BC, Ushiship caldera, Kurile islands, Siberia

The Denise skeleton was buried in a lava flow associated with Le Puy and was considered very ancient as a result, but it turns out to be final-Pleistocene because the contemporaneous skeleton of a mammoth later also turned up in the same stratum. The Laschamp magnetically inverted period is associated and this lava flow is magnetically reversed. The latest possible date of this would be 7500- 8000 BC as the date of a sediment laver over the deposits.

A lava flow at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, is thought to date from the end of the Pleistocene, 8000-9000 BC. (Volcanoes in the Sea, Gordon A. MacDonald, 1983) There are also mudslides in late-Pleistocene Hawaii that are simultaneous to mudslides in the Cascade mountains area, including Mt St Helens.

Charles Hapgood in Path of the Pole mentions five Japanese volcanoes thought to have erupted at the end of the Pleistocene (C14 dates estimated variously at 7000 to 12000 BC, p 135-136) and he notes the volcanoes in Patagonia gioing off simultaneously(Dated asaround 8000 to 7000 BC). Furthermore he quotes Frank Hibben of the U of New Mexico as to the existance of lava debris beds in association with the quickfrozen Mammoth beds of Siberia and Alaska.(Hibben, Frank C, The Lost Americans, 1946). There are also extensive lava flows in Central Asia at this time: all of these flows are at dates around 8000-9000 BC (Radiocarbon-non-adjusted)

Fred M Bullard's Volcanoes of the Earth, 1984, gives us the further information:
Mt Mazuma (>Crater Lake) erupted several times prior to its final explosion at about 6000 BC which blew 15 cubic miles off the top of the mountain (p 83). The original cones of Mt Aetna,  Krakatoa and Vesuvius are thought to have formed during eruptions at the end of the Pleistocene. There might well have been lesser eruptions at Thera/Santorini at this same period in time.(p 85-87)
Sometime about 10000 years ago a volcano erupted in Nicaragua leaving ash beds which preserve the tracks of ice-age animals and people. Mount Pelee, Martinique is also formed inside a prehistoric caldera (p 121) Pelee and other volcanoes on Guadeloupe and Dominica were volcanically very active at the close of the pleistocene (118-119)
Mount Lanington, Papua New Guinea, also erupted at this time, somewhere between 9000 and 11000 BC (p 147) Jamaca isd not volcanic, but it experienced massive earthquakes which collapsed a large part of its cave system and tuned the collapsed areas into "Valleys"
Iceland is covered with late-Pleistocene lava flows thought to date to 8000-9000 BC. The Westmann Islands were built up in eruptions of that age and lay quiescent  for 6000 years or more after that, until the building up of the recent volcanic island Surtsey.
Mount Baker began in a series of eruptions starting about 8300 BC and continuing up to about 6000 BC. Mount Ranier experienced a major eruption which blew away half of its original mass and generated large mudflows at about the same time (p 592)    Mount St Helens erupted several times in succession at this time, and has interbedded lava flows with glacial deposit layers (p 547). Mount Newberry in Oregon had a great eruption at about 7000 BC (Frederick Johnson in "Radiocarbon Dating", 1951)
And besides the eruptions at the Azores, there were apparently other erutptions of the Canary Islands , including periods of submergence into the ocean and subsequent re-emergence, plus possible eruptions in the mid-Sahara and possibly elsewhere in Eastern Africa.

Volcanic Ash bed in Alaska of Younger Dryas age. Volcanic eruptions in Kamchitka and Japan, and even Mount St Helens, were contemporaneous with these beds and Hibben had mentioned that such volcanic traces mark the faunal zone where the extinction of the mammoths occured. This would be the level where the numerous frozen mammoths, bison and other creatures are found in Alaska and Siberia: there are similar mass killings of mammoths and mastodons south of the Continental icesheets, notably in New York state, but the area did not remain permafrost and if any of the creatures were quick-frozen there, the area thawed out later and all of the corpses rotted over time. Best Wishes, Dale D.

Across The Younger Dryas Threshold

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.gr/search/label/Younger%20Dryas

Across The Younger Dryas Threshold

The maps above illustrate the changes from the milder interglacial conditions before the Younger Dryas and then during the Younger Dryas. The most obvious change is that the entire firested region of Northern Europe has been levelled flat and forests only cling to more mountainous regions in Southern Europe. Strata of that time do also explicitely contain the indications for the felled forests. The felled forests in both Europe and Noth America bear witness to enormous tsunamis crashing across the continents and subsequent flooding of all the low-lying districts. Below are the maps for the comparable periods in North America. For the Younger Dryas, I have altered the second map to reflect other information I have that there was also a deforestation event in the Deep South, accompanied by more saline soils, and that the newer forests were at first of a drier climate scrub and then rapidly replaced by swampy growth. The nascent icefree corridor also closed up again.

Both of thes maps are unadjusted C14 dates reflecting the problems involved in dating these periods. You will commonly find corrected dates as being two thousand years older, or more.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044580398000163
Calcolithic Coppers of Peru J.A. Pero-Sanz*, J. Asensio†, J.I. Verdeja†, J.P. Sancho† * Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, E.T.S.I. de Minas, 28003 Madrid, Spain † Universidad de Oviedo, E.T.S.I. de Minas, 33004 Oviedo, Spain
[The chart has been amended to allow for the new finds of copper use in the oldest Holocene in coastal Peru, mentioned in an earlier posting to this blog. This makes the oldest copper use in the New World traceable to the oldest Holocene in both Eastern North America and in coastal Perue survivals from the older Archaic establishment of what Donnelly called the Atlantean American Empire ancate about the same geographical area]

Mesolithic inhabitants of Europe shown on rock art as wearing feathered headgear and wearing loincloths and leggings a arrows. They have cattle and goats and they could also be herding deer: and they are aided by shepard dogs that bear a resemblance to our German shepards (see blowup below)

The Mesolithic European settlers, men above and women below. The men are marching off to war and the women are dancing in a religious ritual. The women are often called "Witches" in this scene

This is the physical type basic to both the European Mesolithics (Azilians and Capsians) and to the American Archaics, the Iswanids of Neumann, close to the Arawak type.

Mesolithic Europeans surviving the Younger Dryas, a lot like the Native Americans at the same time across the Atlantic Ocean. Bows and Arrows were introduced early on in Archaic times in North America, but fell out of favour and had to be re-introduced again mych more recently.

Neolithic groups of Europe. The Atlantic bunch is distinguished as using varieties of Cardial and Impresso ware: these are very similar to the older types of North Africa and entered into the area through Sicily and Malta (not indicated on this map)-the hows up in Palestine but it obviosly derives from the West when it does (it is intrusive there and more highly developed, and older, in the West).

http://www.proto-english.org/o1.html

A CONTINENTAL ORIGIN

Simplified recolonisation of Europe by hunter-gatherers according to Dr. Oppenheimer.

The Ice Age ended with the beginning of the Younger Dryas Age (12000 - 8000 BC) [1].

But the Ice Age actually ended in two steps: the first warming happened around 12000 BC, the second one, one can call this one 'the real warming', around 8000 BC and is called the Holocene. We still do live in the Holocene period. The Younger Dryas was still cold and dry. Bordeaux had then the same climate as Stockholm today. As a consequence the ice melted in two stages.

Previously, the north of Europe was simply too cold to be inhabited by the Cro-Magnon man, a human species of tropical origin. Actually, this Cro-Magnon man (we!) could cope with the cold, but it was the absence of wild game on the ice plains that was impossible to overcome. We can assume that there was some human presence in Britain 15000 years ago, but the numbers must have been negligible and seasonal. With the start of the Younger-Dryas came the first stage of ice melting and much of Europe became far more accessible for humans, although the climate was still cold. The second, final stage would happen when the Younger Dryas (9000 - 8200 BC) ended and the Holocene period began (since 8000 BC).

According to Dr. Oppenheimer, it was at the beginning of the Younger Dryas period that Europe was colonized from Ice Age refuges. He called people in the northern Spain refuge Ruisko. Ruisko colonized mainly the regions next to the Atlantic coast.The refuges in Croatia (called Ivan) and in southern Russia (called Rostov) colonized most of the Continent itself. All genes became eventually unevenly mixed. E.g. Britain is more Ruisko, Germany is more Ivan and Rostov.

The first wave of humans who came from Ice Age refuges Ivan and Rostov spoke a language which was the earliest form of PIE [2]. To give it a name: we call it Maglemosian. The location of the origin of the PIE language on the map is deceiving: the language was spoken by a tribe that lived on the coasts of the Black Sea. Dr. Oppenheimer found typical Ivan-genes in Serbia and typical Rostov-genes in southern Russia, but that does not mean that these genes were originally from there. What we know is that the genes remained more concentrated there.

Language evolution

Maglemosian was carried by people who genetically resembled people from the Ivan or Rostov refuges respectively in Serbia and in south Russia. In the west and northwest a different language was spoken: Azelian, which might be a parent of Basque. Both Azelian and Maglemosian were the most important languages in western Europe. Not in numbers of native speakers, but in surface. The languages evolved and unified regionally because of the annual migrations and the winter gatherings for maybe 4000 years.

At the beginning of the Holocene, the last big warming up of about 8000 BC, the opposite happened: migrations stopped and the languages diversified, more strong dialects appeared. Three major groups had emerged in western Europe: (1) Azilian in west Britain, France and Spain (Atlantic coast), (2) Maglemosian in Germany and Scandinavia, (3) Various non-PIE languages settled probably in northern Italy and southeast France at first. Only Maglemosian had connections with PIE.

Azilian is a name given by archaeologists to an industry of the Epipaleolithic in northern Spain and southern France. It probably dates to the period of the Allerød Oscillation around 10,000 years ago (10,000 BC uncalibrated) and followed the Magdalenian culture. Archaeologists think the Azilian represents the tail end of the Magdalenian as the warming climate brought about changes in human behaviour in the area. The effects of melting ice sheets would have diminished the food supply and probably impoverished the previously well-fed Magdalenian manufacturers. As a result, Azilian tools and art were cruder and less expansive than their Ice Age predecessors - or simply different. (Wikipedia)
Maglemosian (ca. 9500 BC–6000 BC) is the name given to a culture of the early Epipaleolithic period in Northern Europe. In Scandinavia, the culture is succeeded by the Kongemose culture.

Seasonal migrations

Our story takes place circa 11 000 years ago (Younger Dryas - see picture above). It is winter and very cold. Look at the map hereunder. There is an ice cap over most of Scandinavia. Europe is covered with a forest-steppe (in pink), which is a mixture of patches of trees (a few birch and pine) and a lot of grassland. The more to the north, the less trees there are (tundra-steppe). The yellow area represents a dry steppe, mostly void of trees. Purple represents woodland. The sea level is much lower than today. Britain is a part of the continent. The first deciduous trees appear only in the far south of France and in Spain.

Seasonal migrations of the Azelian and Maglemosian tribes. Maglemosian could be related to a precursor of the Proto-Indo-European language. Azelian, Basque (possible original spread) and Etruscan are non-Proto-Indo-European languages.

[Please note that the ProtoIndoEuropean territory did actually include parts of Greece. I do identiify them astthe "Athenians" of Plato-DD]
Big animals need a lot of grass. A steppe is covered with grass. The conditions are ideal for big migrating herds of European wisent (=bison), deer, etc. This meant enough food for the humans, and a subsequent growth of their population.

The Maglemosianshad their winter quarter in (modern) Bavaria, the south of Germany, where the wild herds sheltered. These herds were blocked there on their way south because of the ice cap over the Alps and the Rhine in the west. Estimated human population: 50 000-60 000. They spoke an ancestor of PIE called Maglemosian. From time to time, new proto-PIE speaking people migrated from the shores of the Black Sea to south Germany.

The Azilians stayed in (modern) southwest France for similar reasons. Their origins must be searched in the north of Spain and south of France. Estimated population: 80 000-90 000 souls. In the north, close to the ice-cap, were some 5000-6000 proto-Scandinavians. Their lifestyle resembled that of the modern Inuit (Eskimos).

Azelian is the supposed language of the people practising the Azilian culture (actually : pottery style). I use Azelian for the language in analogy to the changed vowels in France and French. The Azilian period does not correspond perfectly with the period we discuss here. The supposed Azelian language period stretches from 8000 to 4000 BC, much longer than the cultural period. But I found it a nice name. This remark is also valid for Maglemosian.

[Note: populations fell generally at the onset of the Younger Dryas, in some places by at least half the population lost. The Western European seaboard, by contrast, seems to have swollen half again or double the population due to the influx of refugee populations spreading inland through Spain-DD]
Spring came late to the barren land. In May the herds began to travel north. Herds travel much faster than humans can follow (on foot). The humans prepared themselves to go to their summer quarters, also in the north. They were organized in small clans, on average some 25-35 people; 4 up to 7 adult men, some elderly people and the rest were women, children and babies. Each clan had a well-known summer territory, inherited for many generations.

A fixed summer territory had many advantages.
(1) Mankind is very territorial. The reason is simple: it's all about food. The size of such a territory had to be just big enough (= enough game). It was determined by experience. Too big meant too much competition with other clans.
(2) It avoided yearly disputes and the occasional casualties.
(3) Each clan knew exactly where to go, was able to prepare for the voyage, knew what dangers lay ahead, how to overcome obstacles, etc.
(4) It allowed more investment in the local huts or shelters. In some places mammoth tusks were collected to build those huts. Mammoth tusks are very heavy. Sometimes they had to be carried by at least 2 men over kilometres. Not something you would do for just one summer. Wood was scarce in the steppe and needed for fuel. Such huts have been found.
(5) Efficient hunting depends upon a good knowledge of the territory. This knowledge was acquired over the years.

Some clans would have to travel for one month. As the good season lasts only 5 months, including one month to go and one month to come back, thus remain 3 months to stay. Not much. Going further north would narrow the season too much. The summer is normally a time of plenty, and fattening up for the next winter is what you would do. So, some time is needed. In spring the Azelians spread all over France from the south. Some clans reached their northern limit : Belgium, at the maximum reasonable distance from South-France, some 750 km. That meant an average of 25 km a day on foot during a month. Arduous, especially for elder or very young people. The proto-Germans did the same and some ended up near the border of Denmark, a very similar distance. Of course, there were no roads. However, there was another way to reach the North. By boat.Technology around 10 000 BC was comparable with that of Canadian Indians just before the white man came. People could make boats, large canoes probably made of hide, would be available. Those boat types are still made by the Eskimos, and are surprisingly strong in icy conditions. The Welsh word for such boats is currach. The English version of the word is coracle. Today, coracles are (very) small and often completely round while currachs are elongated and much bigger, but they are both really the same word. With those currachs the Azelian peoples could travel north by sea. This way of voyaging is much more comfortable and quicker than walking. They followed the coast to the north, and colonized the complete west of the British Isles. 

The Maglemosian people had a similar technology, and used the Rhine, but also the Weser and Elbe. They followed the rivers to the north and colonized the riverbanks. That's how Alsace became German.

Where the Rhine merged with other rivers in what would become the North Sea, Maglemosian people found the place already occupied by Azelian speaking tribes.

The Taking Of South America In Atlantean Times

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.gr/search/label/Amazonian%20Adaptation

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012

The Taking Of South America In Atlantean Times

["Paleoindian" Skull from Texas]

Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the  Americas

 And the study of the origins of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas
Archaeologists believe humans had entered and occupied much of the Americas by the end of the Pleistocene epoch, but the date of their original entry into the Americas is unresolved. The term “Paleo-Indians” is generally used to refer to early Native Americans up through the end of the Ice Age (c.8000 B.C.). Most authorities believe they entered North America from Siberia as small bands of migratory big-game hunters. Such a journey could have been made by means of a land bridge, known as Beringia, which emerged several times during the Pleistocene.

The Asian derivation of the Native Americans is supported by the physical similarity of the native populations of East Asia and the Americas; studies indicate that the DNA patterns of modern Native Americans are very similar to those of Asian populations. All human skeletal remains from the Americas, including the very oldest, have been found in geologically recent contexts and belong to anatomically modern human beings. While recent analyses of the early skeletal material from the Americas indicate these populations exhibited considerable variability, and had dental and cranial characteristics rather different from those of modern Native American populations, such differences probably resulted from a process of gradual physical evolution after one or more Asian-derived groups had reached the Americas.

The best known Paleo-Indian culture is that of the fluted-point hunters (see Clovis culture and Folsom culture), found throughout much of North America and dating to c.9300–8000 B.C.; they were specialized big-game hunters adapted to an open, temperate, terrestrial environment. For many years, most authorities believed the fluted-point hunters were the oldest Paleo-Indians in the Americas. The Paleo-Indians had reached the southern tip of South America by 9000–8500 B.C.

During the Pleistocene, glaciers covered much of North America, and the growth and contraction of these giant ice sheets may have played a crucial role in the timing of human migration into the Americas. During the height of the Wisconsin Glaciation (c.17,000–13,000 B.C.)—and perhaps several thousand years before and afterward as well—the ice formed a continuous sheet across N North America, preventing any overland migration from Alaska into the Great Plains of North America. For much of the 20th century, most Americanists held that the first Paleo-Indians entered lower North America only after the height of the Wisconsin Glaciation, when an ice-free corridor had emerged between the continental ice sheets in Canada. This development may have taken place as recently as 10,000 B.C. Then, according to this theory, the first Paleo-Indians moved rapidly southwards into North and South America, the speed of their migration being conditioned by the great abundance of game animals and the absence of human competitors in this virgin territory. These first inhabitants of North America were identified as the Clovis and Folsom fluted-point hunters.

A minority of archaeologists always opposed this theory and argued for the existence of an earlier, pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas. The presence of humans at the southern tip of South America by 9000—8500 B.C. suggested to some investigators that the fluted-point hunters were not the first migrants into the Americas, as this would have necessitated a very rapid rate of migration by these hunters. However, the absence of clearly convincing pre-Clovis sites frustrated the development of alternative models for the original human migration into the Americas. Some supposedly pre-Clovis sites contained very crude stone artifacts that had almost certainly been produced by natural processes. Other sites, such as the Meadowcroft Rock shelter near Pittsburgh and Wilson Butte Cave in Idaho, are more convincing, but many archaeologists remain skeptical and believe these and other early sites to have been misdated.

Two early South American sites have now won broad acceptance among archaeologists, giving impetus to the proponents of the pre-Clovis hypothesis. Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in S Chile (c.10,500 B.C.), is a remarkable pre-Clovis site in a moist peat bog with preserved perishable wooden and bone material. A large variety of plant remains were recovered at the site, along with mastodon meat, indicating its inhabitants practiced a hunting-and-gathering economy in a cool temperate rain forest. Pedra Pintada, near Monte Alegre in the lower Amazon (c.9,000–8,200 B.C.), is essentially contemporary with Clovis and represents a previously unknown Paleo-Indian subsistence pattern based on fishing, foraging, and limited hunting in the tropical rain forest. These early sites have shattered the archaeological consensus that the fluted-point hunters were the first Native Americans. While still earlier radiocarbon dates have been reported from some South American sites, including Monte Verde—reaching back to 30,000 B.C.—dates earlier than 12,000 B.C. are currently regarded as unproven by most Americanists.

Given the presence of the great North American glaciers throughout most of the late Pleistocene, the presence of humans in South America in the pre-Clovis era represents a puzzle. No new consensus on the problem of the antiquity of humans in the Americas has yet emerged. One possibility is that the original southward migration into the Americas occurred along the Pacific coast by groups who possessed boats. There is currently no direct evidence for such a migration along the Pacific Coast of North America, and this is not surprising, as rising sea levels during the Holocene would have concealed or destroyed early coastal settlements there. Recently, two pre-Clovis coastal sites, Quebrada Jaguay and Quebrada Tacahuay, have been reported in S Peru. They both date to c.10,000 B.C. and, along with Monte Verde, provide possible evidence for such a coastal migration. Another possibility is that the first Paleo-Indians migrated into lower North America over land prior to the formation of the continental ice sheet across Canada. Many experts believe the continental ice sheets presented an insurmountable barrier to terrestrial migrations after c.20,000 B.C.

At c.8000 B.C. the Pleistocene ended. Changing environmental conditions and the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna forced human groups to diversify their economic strategies and become more reliant on foraging and capturing small game. Known collectively as Archaic adaptations, these new subsistence strategies were highly specialized responses to local environmental conditions and actually emerged in different times in different places. In some regions, such as the Great Plains of North America, human reliance on big-game hunting continued until historic times. In contrast, the early South American sites described above indicate that a subsistence strategy based on plant foraging, the hunting of small game, and fishing actually emerged during the Pleistocene, thereby permitting an early colonization of a diversity of environments. In some areas of the New World, most notably the Andean region, the Amazon basin, Mesoamerica, the SW United States, and the Mississippi Basin and Eastern Woodlands, Archaic Native Americans evolved into sedentary agricultural societies, generally beginning about 2000B.C., although recent radiocarbon dating of Caral, in Peru's Supe valley, indicates that a city of several thousand arose there c.2600 B.C.

See also Natives, North American, Natives, Middle American, and Natives, South American.

See J. D. Jennings, Prehistory of North America (3d ed. 1989); S. J. Fiedel, Prehistory of the Americas (2d ed. 1992); C. C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2005).    ( Columbia Encyclopedia Online, 2007.)

Below, chart of projectile points in North America and some maps for Clovis and successor cultures. The best evidence is that Clovis started in the Southeast/Mississippi delta and move up inland until they filled the area up to the glacial margin. Clovis was preceeded by an earlier more Solutrean-like precourser culture.

At Right, some Early Archaic points from Florida with side-notching which come from the end of the Ice Age and seem to bear some affinity for the South American types of points. The South American points (and the ones from the Gulf Coast) seem to have some drivation from Clovis: there are also Clovis-like points in Mexico and one was found in Cuba.But for the most part the South American points are somewhat different and they resemble contemporary types of stone points from the Capsian culture of North Africa instead. Below are the Fell Point types which seem to derive from an even older type of Saharan thick-stemmed Aterian point. The Aterian is older than the Solutrean but thought to be associated with it. I shall post some more photos on the Capsian points in a later Blog entry I am already preparing. It will be good to refer back to the chart below then.

It seems these early "Archaic" sites (Mesolithic, experimenting with marine resources and incipient cultivation) started in around the Northern parts of South America, worked their way all around the rim of the continent abnd then started moving inland. The much later Arawaks continued much the same lifestyle, only in later years they received better crops developed by their neighbours. In South America you find that sebveral of the domesticated crops such as cassava (tapioca) are toxic in the natural state and underwnt a protracted proceedure of selective breeding to make them edible. Hence several of these crops (mostly root-crops) had to have been started by 8000-9000 BC.

Basically it seems that at 12500 BC (at least) there is an establishment of the East-Asian types of points (spearheads) at the Early Upper Pleistocene. But then about 11000 years ago (9000 BC)

you start getting these North African point types (as I interpret them) in the middle to late Upper Pleistocene. And this is asociated with the theory that most of South America was colonised quite suddenly by "Paleoindians" ("Paleoamerinds"), practically all in the space of 11000 to 9000 years ago (9000 to 7000 BC) as shown in the charts below (the older populations at the tip of South America are also the ones thought to be Australoids, and they were there already at the start of this process)These dates are highly significant in that they also correspond to the dates of the Atlantis empire and its fall, the start of plant-crop breeding and to the period of oldest mining in the Andes.

Below, a modified chart from National Geographic indicating both the CircumPacific and TransAtlantic routes into America, and the different stone tool types either way. As noted at the top, the ones coming out of Europe are thin and flat in cross-section and the Asiatic points are thicker

SOUTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY | Nancy White

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ARCHAIC/PRECERAMIC (6000-2000 B.C.): 

EMERGENCE OF SEDENTISM, EARLY CERAMICS

Lesson objectives: understand post-Pleistocene diversity of adaptations and emergence of sedentary life. 

How do we characterize the immediately post-Pleistocene human adaptations in South America? On the different time charts in your texts there is a confusing number of terms for the succession of time periods depending upon the region and the archaeologist who set them up. In this section of the course we will examine how people adapted to the changes in climate and resources available after the end of the Ice Age, and the general transitions into food production. The continent's environmental extremes may have fostered early economic specialization. The Initial Period is defined based on the appearance of ceramics, so important to archaeologists but perhaps not a major revolution in the lives of people who began to make them. We will see how monumental architecture begins before the emergence of both ceramics and food production. 
What species after Pleistocene extinctions remained to be hunted? There were still all the camelid forms though a larger camel died out, and there were deer and smaller game such as peccaries and tapirs (show pictures in Lynch 1999:241). In the high Andes have been found several hunting sites ( Rick 1980 ). In the altiplano , Moseley discusses the beginnings oftranshumance as early as Late Paleo-Indian times. Remember there is good evidence for late Paleo-Indian specialization of coastal fishing and shellfishing. In many parts of South America some of these diverse foraging lifestyles continued until very recent history. What are shell middens? Coastal and riverine accumulations of shellfish garbage, including bones of other species better preserved because of the alkaline shell matrix, are common all over the world, including along all the Florida shoreline. Such sites are present as early as 10000 years ago from the Santa Elena peninsula of Ecuador (find on your map) to northern Chile, and also along the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts too fairly early. On the south Chilean dry coast permanent occupation by fishing peoples appears as early as 7000 B.P. 

What are the famous Chinchorro mummies ? Up to over 7000 years old, they may be the oldest mummies known in the world. Apparently these coastal fishers in the Atacama desert buried their dead in ways that resulted in natural mummification, and through time elaborated on the process. It is sometimes said that the beloved dead, eviscerated, dried, stuffed, coated in colorful clays, masks, textiles, and wigs, look more like modern art than mummified human burials (Pringle 1998). There are great pictures in your texts and in other sources shown in class (Allison 1985, Arriaza 1995). Chinchorro culture is called "sophisticated" because we have so many artifacts resulting from complex craftwork that is usually not preserved elsewhere (but probably existed in equally sophisticated forms all over the continent). Simply everything is preserved because it dries out. Some of these items are elaborate fishing nets woven of reeds (chinchorro means gill netters), hooks, composite harpoons of cactus and bone, ropes and cords, textiles, and wooden items from spear throwers (atlatls) and mortars and pestles to figurines. Some 1500 mummies are now known, many up to 3000 years earlier than Egyptian mummies. Mummification depended on natural processes involving the total absence of water combined with windblown sand, nitrates and other salts in the soil. They were buried sitting up, covered with cloth and reed mats. They were originally investigated and named by Max Uhle, and now we see some of the oldest ones involved complex preparation and great knowledge of anatomy. Preparation of the dead was done by cutting open the body, taking out the insides, cutting away skin and hair, possibly with a pelican beak tool, taking out the big muscles and brain, filling the body with hot coals to dry it, soaking the skin and hair in saltwater, then driving a sharp stick up the spine and legs to make the corpse rigid. The dry body was then filled with wool, feathers, grass, shells, and soil, and the head wedged back on with poles, then molded clay was put over it all to make the limbs look lifelike and sculpt a face mask. Bunches of hair were tied on and all was painted in red and black and covered with reed mats. With children, some of the earliest mummies, the skin was cut in strips and wrapped around the body like a bandage. Sometimes skins of other animal were used, pelicans or sea lions. At first they were not buried but placed sitting upright, in communal groups, and kept in good repair until some later occasion when they were buried in (family?) groups. 

What is the evidence of Chinchorro subsistence and society ? From midden soils, even some stuffed into mummies, we see great use of seabirds, fish, shellfish, sea mammals, whalebone, rhea (large bird) skin, llama wool, and no food production except possibly cultivation of reeds for weaving. We can learn a lot from paleopathology studies of the bodies. Up to 1/4 of the men had bony growths in their ears that are common in swimmers. Perhaps this shows a division of labor by gender if they were the ones diving for shellfish (except that among competition swimmers today such a "swimmer's ear" is less common among women than among men). Women did have squatting facets on the ankle/shin joint and arthritis of the neck vertebrae, probably from carrying heavy loads, and 2/3 of them had osteoporosis (today only about 30% of women under 40 have this lessening of bone density). A division of labor is not indicated in burial goods, which are hunting and fishing gear buried with both sexes. They had healthier teeth than agricultural peoples did, and ate a very healthy fish diet, but recent studies of parasites in their bodies (Pringle 1998) show many had anemia from tapeworms, possibly picked up from seafood. The general picture is one of a very egalitarian society, with somewhat different treatment of mummies possibly relating to different social positions in families, or designation of shamans.

 
What are ethical concerns about studying human remains such as mummies to determine prehistoric health, diet, and demographics? There is no equivalent in South America of the North American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which protects unmarked human remains on federal lands, the state laws such as Florida's unmarked human burials law, or the general ethical concerns of U.S. archaeologists who, even for human skeletons on private land, need to find any descendant peoples and consult with them about proper treatment of the remains. (for marked human graves, with headstones, which are of course usually non-aboriginal peoples, there are many laws against disturbing them). The absence of such laws makes it easier to study Chinchorro mummies or any other South American indigenous human remains, which is why in many cases they are deliberately chosen for this (Pringle 1998). But the ethical concerns of archaeologists should be the same anywhere ø try to find the related living people and have some dialog with them about what might constitute disrespect and what might be permitted or viewed as respectful treatment. 
What other sites and regions have evidence of early coastal sedentism ? On the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador, theVegas cultural complex dates between 8000-4700 B.C., representing the earliest people in the area, who stayed there till apparent climatic change that left estuarine ecosystems more barren and dry. We will often see major culture change or abandonment associated with climatic change in South America, and we must determine if environmental explanations are adequate and sufficient (not to mention correct!). Vegas sites on the Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador (find on may) produce both aquatic and terrestrial species remains, including molluscs from mangrove areas, and evidence of round wattle and daub houses 2 meters in diameter, gourds, squash, and some maize remains (a problem is determining if these are gathered or cultivated), and simple chert tools for woodworking. Bruhns shows (p.69) a picture of a burial of a woman and an adolescent, a double burial with the child apparently wrapped up in a bundle. Was this younger person processed earlier and held until the later burial of the adult woman? Moseley makes the case for burial in the tropical forest as being usually secondary, in other words, the body is processed earlier, because it is the hot tropics and you have to take care of it right away. This is in contrast with the Andes, he says, where burial is primary, just put the dead body right in. How does this contrast with the Chinchorro mummies? 
Describe the archaeology at the Peruvian north coast site of Nanchoc. Located in the Zana River valley, and dating from as early as 7000-5500 B.C., the site has a pair of flat-topped, oblong earthen mounds, 1.5 meters high, 3 tiers faced with basalt and limestone boulders, built in increments. So early in the post-Pleistocene record we see already the construction of earthworks, and we will be exploring the relationship between monumental architecture (which begins to occur in great amounts as early as 3000 B.C. in late preceramic times) and social complexity. This region, on the west slope of the Andes, was thought to be too dry for habitation but is actually rich with resources associated with the rivers, the remnant montane forest and lower thorn forest and steppe that was probably more forested in the prehistoric past. Along with evidence from 51 other residential sites found nearby, the site documents apparently a very specialized adaptation: the processing of calcium rocks obtained from nearby quebradas (ravines with springs) by burning and grinding. This may have been for making mineral supplements for the grain and tuber meals, but was more likely to make cakes of powdered lime (cal) to use with coca. A pinch of cal releases the biologically active alkaloid in the leaves as they are chewed. A few sites yielded preserved coca leaves (show pictures of these artifacts and ecofacts from Dillehay et al. 1997). 
How did the people live at Nanchoc? They were hunter-gatherers, eating mostly plants and possibly experimenting with horticulture (gardening). Biotic remains included small mammals, rodents, birds, squash, peanuts, quinoa, manioc. There is scant domestic refuse at the main site, a few hearths and metates, but there are exotics that could have been exchanged for the coca and/or the cal: malachite, quartz crystal, cut seashells, stingray spines, a Paijan point, cut marine shells and stingray spines (the coast is 75 km away). The residential sites in the valley have ditches that may have been for irrigating garden plots near springs, and there is some evidence of cotton. Burials show lots of processing, cut marks on longbones showing defleshing (possibly cannibalism), and teeth with heavy wear (along with bright polish on stone tools, this indicates heavy reliance on vegetable matter). Only 2 of the 50,000 stone tools are bifacial; the unifacial tools were for plant and wood processing. The general impression is of a generalized economy with a very specialized non-domestic site that shows industrial production for coca use, and probably communal pooling of labor at the mounds for both production and ritual. The mounds show long-term use and repair; perhaps the fact that there are 2 indicates a moiety system (dual division of society) that we see later in South America. But there is no evidence of population pressure or environmental change leading to increasing complexity, and indeed neither earthworks nor communal manufacturing need a hierarchical sociopolitical system to get done. Here we can see however a long transition to sedentary life and interaction over a wide geographical area involved in production of important resources (in this case coca). We also see that the earliest cultivated crops are apparently not foods but utilitarian cotton and (possibly) ritual coca; there is the manioc evidence, which also suggests early domestication of this lowland forest crop and movement of it into this highland area. 

What other sites are important along the Peruvian coast? Bruhns mentions later sites in the Ancon area , the Encanto phase, dating to 5600 B.P., associated with shellfish, manos and metates, circular houses, probably with perishable walls and thatched roofs (see picture p. 70), with remains of domestic bottle gourd, squash, and grasses and reeds (were they domesticated? they are floodplain plants needing little care). On the central coast Jeffrey Quilter (1989) dug at La Paloma site, a fishing village that began as a seasonal occupation around 6500 B.P. and continued to show more sedentary habitation up to 5000 B.P. Similar houses contained burials wrapped in mats, the adult male in the center and the rest along the walls and filling in the house floors. Some were left on floors and the house destroyed around them. Some of the corpses were salted for preservation. So this is an early example of keeping the beloved dead with you in the house. The greatest number of burials are infants and children, indicating a 30% child mortality rate. Both your books say the majority of these are female, suggesting infanticide, but it is very hard to tell the sex of an infant skeleton. The large number of adult women buried suggests death in childbirth, which in prehistoric and even recent historic times was a frequent occurrence. The women seem to be in their 30s, which suggests delayed reproduction ø intriguing because, what might be the reason for this? What else can kill 30-something women? What if they were the warriors?! The careful study of these burials showed pathologies such as TB, broken bones, arthritis, more of the bony growths of swimmer's ear, even a guy dead of a shark bite. One burial of a man in his 40s with another in his 20s has been interpreted (Bruhns p. 72) as a pair of lovers and/or shamanic, since there was also a calcite crystal and a staff (but what about son and dad, if this is such a family place?). Both the large number of nets and fish hooks, and the abundant remains of shells, fish, and birds and mammals of the sea indicate a marine adaptation. Very important were the small fish, the anchovies or anchoveta, which are abundant all the time except when there is the warm El Niño current. Moseley sees gender inequality in the earliest remains, in which bone chemistry shows men ingesting more protein than women, and in later times the levels became more equal as the childhood anemia also decreased and adult stature increased. Coprolites and stomach contents of burials showed high protein levels but also seeds of wild grasses. Items from afar were obsidian from the mountains, a rainforest monkey, and the bright pink Spondylus or spiny oyster shell that had to have been obtained from the warm waters off the coast of Ecuador. We will see this shell gain in importance throughout prehistory, and it is a good marker of interaction over long distances [it is often used as money or as trade currency-DD]. 

What characterizes highland adaptation in Peru? We have already mentioned Guitarrero Cave; it also has later Archaic period or preceramic occupation from 8000-5000 B.C. with the oldest cultivated plants yet found in the New World (see Moseley p. 104-5): domesticated beans ( Phaseolus ), and tubers such as oca and ulluco which may or may not be domesticated, various fruits, and chili pepper. Most of the well preserved plant remains were from an extensive fiber industry, however, that included mats, clothes, containers, cordage, textiles, netting, and some wooden artifacts. Again, we see the emphasis of industrial over food plants. The site showed an initial phase of hunting deer and then changing to camelids (maybe intensification leading to domestication of them?). At many sites we can see shifts from wide-spectrum gathering and hunting to more narrow adaptations toward fewer species, then toward domestication. 
Describe adaptations from this period on the coast of Chile. Las Conchas cultural adaptation here, as early as 8500 B.C., produced shell middens with abalone, limpet, sea lion, fish, guanaco, and bird remains, as well as small mortars. Bruhns (p.73) says there was little plant food to grind, and seeds recovered contained an alkaloid that is known in ayahuasca, a jungle hallucinogen. Seeds may have been ground to make snuff, a manner of ingestion known for later peoples. At other sites such drugs are associated with tubes and trays for different manners of administration, and their use continues today in many parts of the continent. Different south coast cultures of this time period have differing fishing technology, hooks of shell, then cactus spines, then composite bone hooks. There is more evidence through time of deep sea fish and sophisticated maritime technology, including use of inflated sea lion skins and reed boats. 
What is happening on the east side of the continent? There are shell middens in Patagonia and along the Brazilian coast the beginnings of huge shell mounds called sambaquis . See picture in Bruhns p. 78; just like in Florida, shell mounds are mined for road fill and other uses, but these are so big that a lot remains. Rock shelter sites have produced brushes, palettes, and shells for painting red, along with foods such as palm nuts and fruits. By 3000 B.C. there is possibly some maize, shells of a giant snail that yields 100 g of meat, deer and other forest animals. There are flexed burials with raised arms suggesting they were wrapped in nets or hammocks. Society appears egalitarian except for possible divisions of labor by age and sex: men are buried with stone tools and women and kids with wooden and plant remains. Open-air sites have evidence of semi-subterranean houses typical of later cultures. 

What about an Amazonian adaptation at this time? Not even mentioned in your books is the work of Roosevelt (1999) and Brazilian and other colleagues (Roosevelt et al. 1991) near Santarem in the lower Amazon at the Taperinha shell midden. They got 48 strata of shells, charcoal, bone, flake tools, grinding stones, hammers, bone awls, shell and turtle shell scrapers, even a tool of aquatic mammal bone. Faunal remains of shellfish, turtles, and fish indicate a successful fishing adaptation and fairly permanent settlement. The most fascinating aspect of the work is that they also recovered what would have to be the earliest ceramics in the New World, along with a group of dates on various materials that range from 8000-7100 B.C. The pottery is at least 1000 years earlier than any other in South America, 2000 years older than the earliest in the southeastern U.S., and 3000 years earlier than the earliest in Mesoamerica. We will return to this early ceramic discussion shortly. First we go back to Peru for a famous late preceramic site. 
How can you describe the remains excavated at Huaca Prieta on the north coast of Peru? The site is in the Chicama valley (find on map). It was dug by Junius Bird (Bird and John Hyslop1985) in the 40s but not published until 1985, after his death, when it was clear the site was far older than it had been thought to be given that it was a huge mounded midden. The name means dark mound, from the soil darker than the surrounding earth because of organic enrichment by human activity and garbage. Preservation in this shell midden was so great that a wealth of textiles was available for systematic study, and Bird and others pioneered in this field, deriving from these artifacts information on plant and animal domestication, chemical knowledge of dyes, mathematics from calculations for construction of woven designs, iconography, and even individual personalities of weavers (Willey 1988). We can see in the geometric designs necessarily dictated by the medium of woven textiles the rectilinear patterns later used to decorate pottery (where you do not have to have geometric figures but this has become tradition!). Archaeologists could plot woven strands on graph paper and see the changing through time from twining to weaving, the step up in cloth production with the introduction of the loom. Bird himself learned to weave and taught and inspired others in all this study.
For your reference, here are pictures of the basics of cordage and textiles. Very clear pictures (Sutton and Arkush 1996:152) of Z-twist and S-twist (in the direction of the letters), both 2-ply (2 twisted strands) and 4-ply (4-strands, so it becomes rope, beyond cordage). To see using the cords to make textiles, see this drawing (Sutton and Arkush 1996:151) of the difference between twining (wrapping the weft around the warp), tight coiling around the warp using the weft, and simple plaiting (weaving in and out, both directions). See textile motifs in Moseley (p. 108, 116) from Huaca Prieta including multi-headed eels, condor, other marine motifs with the symmetry you would expect in woven craft. Also on p. 116 you see the similar symmetrical, geometric motifs pyro-engraved on gourd containers found at the site. The excellent preservation included evidence of cane and adobe houses in the earliest levels then semi-subterranean houses lined with cobbles. There were no ceramics, little evidence of hunting (the stone tools were relatively simple), but lots of fishing and gathering of fruits and bulbs, some beans and peppers and also snuff trays and sniffing tubes (which of course could have been for any number of things). Remains of cotton were in different colors (now very much in style in fancy catalogs that advertize natural undyed colored cottons in color terms such as "celery"), and of early domesticated variety that has a great resemblance to wild cotton (the boll gets bigger through time). Bruhns (p.80) says apparently watercraft were lacking, but more likely they were kept on the beach, not at home, and were just not preserved. The social system at the site appeared very egalitarian. One burial of an older woman was very interesting, however, at this site where few had any offerings at all. She had in her mouth chewed plant remains including a flower still used for soothing toothaches. She had one pouch of cattail fiber containing a gourd bottle, stem and seeds, willow leaves, more flowers, and reed tuber food, and another pouch with two engraved gourd lids. She may have come from elsewhere and/or been important for her age or healing talents (Bruhns and Stothert 1999:74). This burial shows special treatment for an elderly woman, something we seldom see in our own society! 

What are early sites on the north continental coast ? Very famous for early ceramics is Puerto Hormiga on an old channel of the Magdalena River (find on map) in an estuarine locale, a U-shaped shell midden site. It looks like as early as 3300-3100 B.C. this site has pottery with lots of aquatic species, though no evidence of agriculture. The pottery is fiber-tempered, and when found, decades ago, was quickly tied in with fiber-tempered pottery of the southeastern U.S., which is slightly later. The model constructed then had pottery being invented here and diffusing to the U.S. SE. The finding of Amazonian pottery several thousand years earlier seems to invalidate this model. But the Taperinha pottery is grit-tempered, even a small amount with shell tempering, and a small percentage has incised rim decorations. Could the concept of fired clay vessels be invented independently in two different times and places? Remember, the concept of firing clay was invented some 20,000 years ago with Paleolithic figurines in Europe, but then apparently lost until the earliest ceramic vessels appeared in Japan about 10,000 years ago. 

What is the importance of the Valdivia site? Contemporaneous with the late preceramic in Peru, this site and complex on the Ecuadorian coast has early pottery, agriculture, economic specialization and different kinds of architecture dependent upon function by about 3100-3000 B.C. It is a huge shell midden representing a fishing village north of the Santa Elena peninsula, dug by Meggers, Evans, and Estrada (1965) in an estuarine setting. It began as a small village of cane houses, and the well-made pottery included female figurines (see Bruhns p. 118) and decorated bowls with rocker stamping and motifs similar to those on the Huaca Prieta gourds. The ceramics are sophisticated and not what you would expect from the earliest stages of a new industry. Domesticated crops were cotton, beans, and maize, and there is evidence of hunting. There is also clear evidence of contact or interaction with people down the coast for the exchange of Spondylus shells, but the archaeologists interpreted the site as demonstrating even longer distance contact Ñ with Japan. According to Meggers, the pottery looked very much like the early Jomon wares of Japanese Neolithic fishers, who must have traveled across the Pacific and landed in Ecuador and brought it to South America. 
Here we have another of the many colorful controversies and debates in this field, and Meggers and a few others are still holding out for trans-Pacific contact even in the face of now mounting evidence of the evolution in place of ceramic technology. Yes, adventurer (and sometime archaeologist) Thor Heyerdahl did build reed boats and make it across the Pacific, proving you can do it. He did not prove anyone in prehistory did do it. What might we need to support the model of Japanese contact? More than just artifacts that resemble one another, we would need a whole complex of cultural behaviors. As for transoceanic contact , there is greater likelihood of it across the Atlantic, where we find similarities in both African and Brazilian indigenous technologies such as bark cloth and fish poisons. Remember that diffusion was not only a powerful explanatory force in the archaeology of the early 20 th century, but also it is coming back, especially it seems in postprocessual arguments. This is interesting, because some of this diffusionary thinking is very ethnocentric and racist. The ultimate example we will see later on the Nazca Plains, where the patterned lines manufactured in the earth were said to be products of ancient astronauts who landed there. This is as racist as you can get ø seeing the natives as too dumb and simple to think up complex technologies! 
It is much more interesting to debate various interpretations of the female figurines from Valdivia, which are usually found in trash areas but possibly it is ceremonial trash. They have been considered representations of deities, perhaps for use in female puberty rites, cult objects perhaps related to household welfare, and many other things (Bruhns and Stothert 1999:192-95). There are pregnant figurines, two-headed ones, bisexual ones, and some with cut or shaved hair . While such figurines continue to be made through time, more male ones appear later. What meaning might this have? Remember that it is far easier to reconstruct subsistence and technology than social systems, and hardest of all is ideological systems, which must be represented by these figurines (unless they are just toys, prehistoric Barbies). Do the numerous representations of women mean they had honored positions or were more important than men? We can look at Catholicism, in which there are representations of the Virgin Mary all over the place but the ideology is greatly male-dominated. 

An important Valdivia phase site is Real Alto , south of the Santa Elena peninsula, a large village with large houses having mud-plastered walls, possibly for extended families, and a rectangular plaza on which are two larger buildings. Are these communal party houses with maize or manioc beer served in the bowls? There are animal bones from delicacies such as crabs, clams, lobster, and turtle. A charnel house dating from about 2800-2600 B.C. has burials including a 35-year-old woman in a central tomb lined with grinding stones, a defleshed man with 7 chert knives, and several other secondary burials. Could this be a matrilineal family? Offerings to the woman? Could the woman be a sacrificial offering for initiating the structure? Doing gender in prehistory is VERY difficult because there are so many interpretations. There seem to be guardian burials at every structure, and many skeletons showed evidence of interpersonal violence. Increasing sedentism and horticulture affected health in ways such as dental cavities and other problems (Bruhns and Stothert 1999: 99-100).

What characterizes Late Preceramic in the Sierra ? The earliest evidence of cultivation appears at the lower elevations. A very important site is Kotosh , in the Huallaga River drainage (find it on map) at about 2000 meters high, in an environment with some forest and thorn trees. This site has 2 large platform mounds and other structures on the river terrace (again, the idea of duality of social organization). Mounds are 100 m in diameter, 8 m high, and show 10 construction phases. There were single rooms with hearths, plastered floors, maybe evidence of ritually burned food. One great platform had chambers built of cobbles in mud mortar, one 9 m square, with plastered walls and ornamental niches, 2 of which are accompanied by crossed arms of clay depicted on the walls. In the preceramic Mito phase at Kotosh there were recovered seeds, guinea pig, deer, camelids (either hunted or herded) and leaf-shaped stone points. There was no evidence of cultivated plants but they probably had them. It is important to note that many stone axes recovered here look Amazonian, and when succeeding phases do come to have pottery, it also looks derived from the Amazon. 

What are other highland sites with platforms and monumental architecture during the Preceramic? At La Galgada, to the northwest, by 2200 B.C. we have beans, squash, fruit, chili peppers, gourd, cotton, irrigation canals, marine shell beads (80 km from coast), Amazonian feathers (80 km from the tropical forest). So there is clear evidence of goods moving east and west over the Andes. La Galgada is one of the best-preserved of the early sierra ceremonial centers (Grieder et al. 1988). As Moseley remarks (p. 121), burnt offerings of chilis would certainly have brought tears to the eyes of ritual participants! It has 2 mounds with chambers similar to those at Kotosh, oval platform with circular sunken court, oval chambers of stones in mud mortar plastered and painted white, with niches, and clay-capped log roofs. The chambers became tombs in later construction phases ø were these ancestral shrines? In the final phases here we have the introduction of the loom and ceramics between 1700-1200 B.C. This site shows early evidence of important traditions of hereditary elites, shown by differential grave goods, and veneration of ancestors. 

What is the Supe Tradition? The largest preceramic huacas were on the central coast of Peru, and Moseley's discussion names many sites in the Supe Valley, coastal and inland. The flat-topped mounds are for ritual display in front of large audiences, in contrast to what was going on in the Kotosh Tradition of interior, small chambers for more private ceremony. These mound centers may have been built by people who lived elsewhere in small settlements and came together for communal ceremonies, or they may be pilgrimage centers. There are usually dark middens with lots of charcoal near the platforms built of stone and earth. One important site is Huaca de los Sacrificios , where an adult and child burial in the summit were interpreted as offerings. The child had hundreds of beads of shell and clay and the other body was wrapped in cotton cloth with cane matting and wads of cotton all under a tetrapodal stone grinding basin with red pigment inside. Another mound site, Huaca de los Idolos had a complex maze of rooms with benches, niches, a cache of baskets, mats, plants and animal fur preserved. There were also many clay figurines (los idolos; see Moseley p. 125-6), mostly of women, some pregnant, in skirts, red bead necklaces. We have already seen how figurines are more common in the tropical north. 

How could such monumental constructions be done by people who may not yet have had agriculture or ceramics ? It took a while for archaeologists to understand this was possible. Gordon Willey (1989) said it was even difficult to realize they were constructed features and not natural hills in the landscape. An interesting site lately debated in this context is Caral , an inland complex which Moseley (p.119) discusses in terms of the Plaza Hundida (sunken courtyard) tradition. Recent work at Caral by a Peruvian-U.S. archaeology team (Pringle 2001, Shady Solis et al. 2001) has produced dates of 4090-3640 B.P. (calibrated to 2627-1977 B.C.) for irrigation agriculture and a monumental center some are calling a true city. The site is 23 km inland from the coast in the Peruvian desert, and covers 65 hectares (150 acres). It had 8 sectors of smaller homes of poles and mud, grand residences with stone walls, 2 circular plazas, and 6 immense platform mounds built of quarried stone and river cobbles. The stones were hauled in by the builders in reed bags, called shicras, many of which are preserved. Outer walls were covered with multiple layers of colored plaster. The largest platform mound, the Piramide Mayor, is 160 x 150 m and 18 m high. Squash, beans, guava and cotton were grown (but no corn), but also fish bones and mollusk shells and coprolites with anchovy and sardine bones. There were also fragments of achiote (a rainforest plant) and coca plants that had to have come from afar. Peruvian soldiers helped excavate, and among artifacts recovered are cute carved bone flutes (pictures in Ross 2002). Today the site is a bunch of rubble-covered, windblown hills in the desert, mainly disguised from looter until now. 
Caral, the Aspero site, and 16 others in the Supe Valley alone suggest early sociopolitical complexity that involved moving beyond the immediate floodplain of the rivers to desert areas that can be easily irrigated, and organization in large communal, centralized groups to direct establishment of such enormous sites. Since the people were getting seafood regularly, one interpretation is that they grew and traded cotton for nets with coastal people, and that such an industry allowed emergence of urbanism. 

What is the maritime hypothesis or "maritime foundations of Andean civilization" (MFAC) idea? Here we discuss some of the big questions of archaeology: the origins of sedentism, food production, and civilization. Since students have already discussed these issues in introductory archaeology classes (or go over an intro text such as Ashmore and Sharer 2000), you know that there are many and competing arguments for various processes behind these fundamental and huge cultural shifts. The maritime hypothesis was put forth by Moseley (1975) based on all the evidence we have reviewed of settled life and huge huacas, great sites on the Peruvian coast, but without agriculture or ceramics (two things that are thought to emerge only after people settled down, or somehow be instrumental in getting people to settle in one place year-round). The idea is that maritime resources, the staple anchoveta and so many others, are so dependable that a fishing lifestyle can allow people to live in one place year-round. This sedentism is a "pre-adaptation" for agriculture and development of complexity; in other words, when those processes do come in, they come early because they are easy to fit in since you are already there year-round. At some coastal sites with early agriculture, we see cotton and gourds (for bottles and floats and bowls), industrial crops needed for this fishing life, grown earliest, and not food production. Moseley has later modified the maritime hypothesis to include some cultivated but also some wild food plants, as more evidence has become available over the years. One argument against the maritime hypothesis has been that this adaptation cannot be sustained in the face of the many El Niño or ENSO episodes that would have wiped out the anchoveta with a warm current. But some studies show that in those years, other seafood resources become abundant. A study this year showed there are cycles (apparently apart from ENSOs) in which anchovies are abundant for about 25 years, then sardines take their place (Associated Press 2003). Though a crash in sardines led to California canneries closing and hard times shown in John Steinbeck's book Cannery Row , for prehistoric fisherfolk out there netting anything that swam around, it would not be as much of a crisis. 
The new work producing such early dates at Caral, however, suggests the preceramic monumental sites are earlier inland in the river valleys where complex hierarchical society could produce large irrigation systems and great community centers, and after this the coastal sites became more settled and important. And of course there was some food agriculture at Caral also. In letters to Science after the Caral findings came out last year, Sandweiss and Moseley (2001) pointed out that there are earlier sites with monumental architecture and early agriculture on the coast. One is Aspero , with many mounds begun centuries earlier, and Huaca Prieta may be also, and many are contemporaneous with Caral. La Galgada, 74 km inland and 1100 m above sea level is contemporaneous with Caral and also has monumental architecture, domesticated plants, and probably irrigation. Since at all these sites the main protein is still coming from seafood, the maritime hypothesis is confirmed by the Caral findings, which show a seafood foundation for cultural complexity to originate. But in a response letter (Haas and Creamer 2001) the Caral archaeologists say that the Caral site and its mounds are still far larger than at any of these other sites, and furthermore large-scale agriculture there to produce cotton for nets would have been needed, thus demonstrating that complex society in the Andes, as elsewhere in the world, needed both an agricultural foundation and extensive economic interaction between regions. So again we see these fascinating debates, which center around the oldest and the biggest, especially in the popular renditions such as in Smithsonian magazine (Ross 2002). We will continue examining these issues, including urbanism, in the next lessons.