The Americas before Columbus

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The Americas before Columbus
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Featured Reference

• Mann, Charles C. 2005. 1491 New Revelations
  of the Americas before Columbus

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Who are they?

• Native Americans?
• Or Indians?
• Likely to call themselves Dine, Lakota, Ojibwe,
  Haudenosaunee, etc.
• Point The indigenous peoples of the Americas
  were a diverse mix of societies, cultures,
  languages, and customs

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1491 Critical Thinking

• Reflective Thinking
• Suspend judgment
• Maintain a healthy skepticism
• Exercise an open mind
• John Dewey

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New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

• No other field in American history has grown
  as fast, marveled Joyce Chapman, a Harvard
  historian, in 2003.
• Charles C. Mann,
• 1491 p. 35

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The Traditional View

• American history begins in 1492
• The New World was sparsely populated by small
  bands of nomadic, Stone Age hunters
• America was a pristine wilderness before European
  settlement

Courier Ives
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Scholars used to think of Native American
cultures as relatively static, unchanging for
centuries until encountered and overwhelmed by
European invaders after 1492. Those scholars
assumed that the descriptions of Indian cultures
by early explorers could be read backward to
imagine their predecessors from centuries past....
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With the help of recent archeology and
anthropology, we can now see that the explorers
encountered a complex array of diverse peoples in
the midst of profound change. Far from being an
immutable people, the Indians had a complicated
and dynamic history in America long before 1492.
Alan Taylor, American Colonies p. 4
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Three topics for today

• Origins
• Population
• Level and antiquity of civilization

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Early theories of origins culture

• The Lost Tribes of Israel
• 1650 James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh,
  calculated that the Lost Tribes left Israel in
  721 B.C.
• Not challenged until the 19th century when
  discoveries by amateur archeologists - relic
  hunters - suggested that Indians had been in
  North America since the Pleistocene

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Relic Hunters vs. the Smithsonian

• The Lost Tribes theory was rejected by the
  nations preeminent scholars, such as the
  Smithsonians William Henry Holmes and Ale
  Hrdlicka
• Scholars bitterly resisted suggestions that
  Indians had occupied the Americas for more than a
  few thousand years.

Holmes
Hrdlicka
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Folsom

• 1908 George McJunkin, a ranch foreman and former
  slave, discovers huge bones of extinct mammals
  near Folsom, in northeast New Mexico
• In 1926 1927 , Jesse Figgins of the Colorado
  Museum of Natural History, discovers spear points
  among the bones of bison at the Folsom site

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Clovis

• 1929 19-year-old Ridgeley Whiteman makes a
  similar discovery near Clovis, New Mexico
• Clovis spear points are longer and more
  beautifully crafted than the Folsom point
• But they are older

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The Clovis Culture

• In the 1930s, Edgar B. Howard of Penn began to
  uncover and publicize evidence of a Pleistocene
  Clovis Culture, (much to the disgust of Ale
  Hrdlicka)
• More than 80 North American Clovis sites were
  discovered in later years
• But no means of dating the evidence was
  discovered until the 1950s

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Carbon Dating

• Willard F. Libby, chemist at the University of
  Chicago in the 1950s
• C14 has a half-life of 5,730 years
• When an organism dies, it stops assimilating C14
  from the environment
• Thus, by assessing the proportion of C14, an
  approximate date of preserved tissue, wood, or
  bone may be determined
• Libby won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1960

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Carbon Dating of Clovis Culture

• C. Vance Haynes, University of Arizona
• UAs carbon dating lab established in 1958
• Clovis sites were consistently dated from 13,500
  to 12,900 years ago

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Remarkably similar archeological sites of human
encampments suddenly became common about twelve
thousand to ten thousand years ago in distant
places, from California to Pennsylvania and
Florida.
Alan Taylor, American Colonies p. 5
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The Clovis-First Theory

• Haynes, a geologist, saw a relevant coincidence
• Paleo-Indians (the Clovis Culture) must have
  migrated from Siberia during the last Ice Age
• 13,000-14,000 years ago, the glaciers receded
  forming an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies
• Haynes theory gained popular acceptance after
  publication of a 1964 article in Science

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About fifteen thousand years ago the inhabitants
of Siberia lived in many small bands that ranged
far and wide in pursuit of the roaming and
grazing herds of large and meaty (but dangerous)
mammals, especially mammoths, musk oxen, and
woolly rhinoceroses.  It was a hard, cold, and
generally short life in which hunger alternated
with the episodic binges of a big kill.  Because
the people had to remain on the move (on foot) in
pursuit of the herds, they could not develop
permanent villages and did not accumulate heavy
possessions .

• Alan Taylor, American Colonies pp. 5

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The Mammoth Hunters

• The Clovis-first theory held that the
  Paleo-Indians subsisted by following large game,
  especially the mammoth
• Why else would they venture across Beringia?

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Extinction

• Some believed that Paleo-Indian hunters were
  responsible through overkill, a theory that has
  been discredited

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The Three Migration Theory

• Greenberg et al. 1986. The settlement of the
  Americas A comparison of the linguistic, dental,
  and genetic evidence. Current Anthropology.
• Joseph H. Greenberg, linguist at Stanford
• Christy G. Turner II, physical anthropologist at
  Arizona State
• Stephen L. Zegura, geneticist at Arizona State
• The three linguistic stocks represent separate
  migrations.

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The 2nd 3rd Migrations

• Athabascan language stock
• Ancestors of a number of tribes of the Pacific
  Coast from Alaska to California and the Navajo
  Apache
• 8,000 10,000 years ago
• Perhaps across the Bering strait in small,
  hide-covered, wooden-framed boats
• Aleuts Inuits (Eskimos)
• Approx. 5,000 years ago
• By boat

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Mitochondrial DNA

• Mitochondria are bacteria-like structures in
  cells
• Human eggs contain about 100 mitochondria sperm
  are nearly devoid of mitochondria
• Mitochondrial DNA follows a matriarchal line of
  descent
• 1990 Douglas Wallace discovers that 96.9 of
  Native Americans belong to four haplogroups
• Four groups? But only three migrations?

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The Past Becomes More Distant

• DNA research by Wallace and James Neel published
  in 1994 indicated that Paleo-Indians migrated
  from Siberia 22,000-29,500 years ago
• In 1997, Brazilian geneticists published evidence
  that Paleo-Indians left Asia 33,000-43,000 years
  ago
• The date, number of migrations, origin, and size
  of migrations is hotly debated
• But the Clovis-first theory has lost acceptance

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Monte Verde, Chile

• 1997 archeological digs begun two decades
  earlier reveal human occupancy dating back at
  least 12,800 years
• Evidence suggests that human occupation may date
  back 32,000 years

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The Coastal Migration Theory

• Knut Fladmark, Simon Fraser University - 1970s
• The ice-free corridor may have opened later than
  believed
• Evidence supporting this theory is sparse

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All of this is speculative, to say the least,
and may well be wrong. Next year geologists may
decide the ice-free corridor was passable, after
all. Or more hunting sites may turn up. What
seems unlikely to be undone is the awareness that
Native Americans may have been in the Americas
for twenty thousand or even thirty thousand
years. Given that the Ice Age made Europe north
of the Loire Valley uninhabitable until some
eighteen thousand years ago, the Western
Hemisphere should perhaps no longer be described
as the New World.

• Charles C. Mann, 1491 pp. 172-173

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The Population Debate
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300,000,000
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Early Estimates

• James Mooney, 1910
• Ethnographer, Smithsonian Institution
• North American population 1.15 million
• Based on review of historic documents

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New Estimates

• Henry F. Dobyns, 1966
• Estimating Aboriginal American Population An
  Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric
  Estimate. Current Anthropology
• North American population 18 million

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Low Counters vs. High Counters
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Dobyns Research

• 1950s in Northern Mexico
• Studied records of Jesuit priests
• Noted that more deaths many more deaths than
  births were recorded

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Dobyns Research

• Studied records in Lima Cathedral, Peru
• Smallpox ravaged the Incas in 1525 seven years
  before the Spanish arrived
• Later epidemics of typhus in 1546, smallpox along
  with influenza in 1558, smallpox in 1589,
  diphtheria in 1614, and measles in 1618

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Based on the Spanish records, Dobyns estimated
that approximately 95 percent of the Indian
population of the Americas died in the first 130
years of European contact.
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If correct, Dobyns theories shatter many
preconceptions about the Americas before
Columbus, impacting disciplines as diverse as the
social sciences, ecology, and forestry. As such,
they have been hotly debated to this day. Some
believe Dobyns work is politically motivated.
Others criticize Dobyns baseline assumption of a
95 mortality rate. Others point to lack of
archeological evidence supporting Dobyns
estimates.
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Wellsprings of Human Civilization

• Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Sumer)
• Nile Delta
• Indus Valley
• Huang He River Valley
• Mesoamerica
• Peruvian littoral

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Norte Chico

• Discovered in 21st century
• Coastal Peru
• 2 rainfall per year
• Monumental buildings
• Irrigated fields
• Mummified their dead

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Norte Chico

• A series of 25 known cities built along the
  rivers draining from the Andes into the Pacific
• People depended on a diet of seafood
• Apparently did not grow edible crops
• The river cities supported fields to grow cotton,
  which must have been used to make fishing nets
• 3,200-2,500 years ago, the time of Sumer

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Mesoamerica

• Olmec originated ca. 1,800 B.C.
• Zapotec developed writing ca. 500 B.C.
• Mesoamericans developed a 365 day calendar and
  the concept of the number zero

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The Mound Builders

• Mound builder cultures developed along the
  Mississippi. The oldest known was at Watson
  Brake on the Ouachita River in Louisiana, which
  is about 5,400 years ago older than the
  pyramids. Bonnicksen, p. 122
• Adena (Illinois), Hopewell (Ohio Valley),
  Mississippian (later, widespread culture).

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Cahokia

• Located in Illinois across from St. Louis
• On the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi
  Rivers ideally suited for trade
• Covered 13 square miles and was populated by
  about 20,000 people

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• 120 mounds dot the landscape, the largest -
  Monks Mound -was 10 stories high, and held the
  house of Cahokias ruler
• Surrounded by a 15 ft. high wooden palisade 2
  miles long and with guard towers spaced every 70
  feet.
• Circular solar calendar composed of 48 perfectly
  spaced redcedar posts that archeologist have
  dubbed Woodhenge
• The Cahokia people cleared bottomland forests for
  their fields. Elm pollen dropped abruptly in the
  region in 1,000 AD. Chestnut and other
  mast-producers spread around that time.

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