The Natural Environment

Ojibwa Canoe
 

Preliminary questions:

What is the natural environment of North America like? Most prehistoric people were hunter gatherers in uncomplex socities with little if any agriculture. They were adapting to, not shaping, the natural environment. (Hmmm...really?).

Where did Native American people come from? What is their genetic stock? How did they spread? What new agricultural tools did they develop? What evidence is available from archaeology? What archaeolgical methods are used?

The reconstructions of the past aren't that good. There is a lot of bad evidence so you don't really know that many things for sure.

There are 2 major mountain chains - the Rockies and the Appalachians with a lowland between. In the west there is a high plateau and desert basins and a Pacific mountain chain.

To the North is a penoplain and glacial shield. Erosion forms it. There is also a large subarctic and arctic area.

The Appalachians are half the height of the Rockies.

North America is 7.5 million square miles and Minnesota is 80,000 square miles. England, Scotland, and Wales together by way of comparison is 88,000 square miles.

Europeans first arrived with the Irish monks and the Norse.

The climate zones of North America are fairly similar to the archaeological zones in extent. There are very few people in the High Arctic and Guy Gibbon thinks that Minnesota at the time of contact may have had as few as 7-10,000 people. Alabama and the southern States were much denser. In the Northwest Coast area there were sufficient food resources from fish, etc. that stratified socities could develop. People were fairly scare in the Great Basin. Other areas include the Eastern Woodlands, and the Great Plains, the Southwest, the subarctic and arctic.

There were a variety of of environments and a variety of culture areas. There were however interconnections especially in the Great Plains. The Dakota for example traveled to Louisiana and the St. Lawrence River and so they knew geography.

Villages were often formed for protection and so food acquisition had to intensify. During the Hipsothermal (sp?) - a dry periodthe prairie went into NE Minnesota so you find bison in Pine City, MN. The subarctic also extended southward during some time periods in the past. The glacial ice sheets went as far south as Central Iowa.

Probably most archaeologists think that there is evidence that the first Native Americans entered the continent 15 to 25 thousand years ago via the Bering Strait. Today Russia and the US are only 50 miles apart. Then there was no water to cross. We know from the peopling of Australia earlier (which had never had a land bridge) that people got across water in the past.

There are 5 sources of information that people came across the Bering Straits by land or water.

1. Archaeological remains

2. Genetic evidence from DNA studies

3. Human skeletal evidence

4. Dental morphology (Native Americans for example have differently shaped incisors from Europeans or Australians)

5. Languages which are related to Asian languages.

The classic Mongoloid (like modern Chinese) had not yet developed yet. Native Americans are generalized mongoloids. The Inuit are like later Asian populations and arrive later.

The evidence from 18 thousand years ago is contentious. The evidence from 12 kya (thousand years ago) is much clearer.

North America is a relative newcomer to the peopling of the world.

Minnesota 11 to 12 kya was like Ontario is today. The megafauna were quite different in North America. There were camels, horses, mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, giant beaver and giant bison.

There is a lot of good archaeological evidence from 11 kya.

The major trends over time are:

1. Paleo-Indians (The Big Game Hunters)

2. The Archaic

3. Woodland

4. Mississippian

About 4000 years ago in a few areas of the southern Midwest there was an intensification of the exploitation of the sunflower and amaranth. About 900 AD in Minnesota there was more complex agriculture in Minnesota and Winnepeg.

There were chiefdoms butost archaeologists think there never was a state level of organization north of Mexico.

Clovis points are associated with spearheads for hunting Mammoths and Mastodons.

Louis Leakey caused a stir by identifying 2 my old stone tools in Africa. He spent a year in California. Many NA's (Native Americans) used bone tools and may have used somthing that looked like an Oldowan tool.

The Woodland people made mounds like the Serpent Mound in Ohio about 2000 years ago. Platform mounds were made at Cahokia, Illinois and had the 3rd largest city, including Mexico. At Mound 72 there were retainer sacrifices.

The final period is referred to as Historic Archaeology.

 

Go To The Index Page

1