The Natural Environment
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.