Recommended readings:​

Birket-Smith, K., De Laguna, F., American Philosophical Society. Penrose Fund, Kongelige Danske videnskabernes selskab, & Rask-Ørsted fondet. (1938). The eyak indians of the copper river delta, alaska. Levin & Munksgaard, E. Munksgaard.

Cooper, H. K. (2012). Innovation and prestige among northern hunter-gatherers: Late prehistoric native copper use in alaska and yukon. American Antiquity, 77(3), 565-590. https://doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.77.3.565

Cooper, H. K., Duke, M. J. M., Simonetti, A., & Chen, G. (2008). Trace element and pb isotope provenance analyses of native copper in northwestern north america: Results of a recent pilot study using INAA, ICP-MS, and LA-MC-ICP-MS. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35(6), 1732-1747. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.012

Cooper, H. K., Ling, J., & Brenneman, M. (2015). Is that awl? experimental insight into native copper working and innovation. Ethnoarchaeology, 7(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1179/1944289015Z.00000000022

Doering, B. N., Esdale, J. A., Reuther, J. D., & Catenacci, S. D. (2020). A multiscalar consideration of the athabascan migration. American Antiquity, 85(3), 470-491. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2020.34

Ehrhardt, K. L. (2009). Copper working technologies, contexts of use, and social complexity in the eastern woodlands of native north america. Journal of World Prehistory, 22(3), 213-235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-009-9020-8

Jolicoeur, P. C. (2021). Detecting early widespread metal use in the eastern north american arctic around AD 500–1300. American Antiquity, 86(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2020.46

Levine, M. A. (2007). Determining the provenance of native copper artifacts from northeastern north america: Evidence from instrumental neutron activation analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(4), 572-587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2006.06.015

McKinley, J., Kari, J. M., & Alaska Native Language Center. (2010). Ahtna travel narratives: A demonstration of shared geographic knowledge among alaska athabascans. Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Smith, G. M., Holmes, C. E., & Combs, E. (2022). The gift of the middle tanana: Dene pre-colonial history in the alaskan interior. Lexington Books.

“Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else. After all, the earliest forms of representational art reflect hunters and prey”…”To abhor hunting is to hate the place from which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant, abstract way.” ~Steven Rinella

Animals held a hugely important place in the lives of ancient hunter-gatherers. And big-game hunting, the pursuit of megafauna, was one of the most dramatic and dangerous parts of our prehistoric lives. Humans seem to have a fascination for the biggest, most impressive members of the animal kingdom. In fact- environmental activists looking to garner public support have learned to rely on these big, interesting animals as something like mascots, often symbolizing whole ecosystems and restoration projects that go well beyond a single species. The term “charismatic megafauna” emerged to describe this obsession of ours (Berti et al. 2020). This power of megafauna today to bring people together for collective action is, to me, a fascinating echo of their role in our prehistory.
Megafauna are ordinarily considered to be any species that can hit 100kg, making humans a part of that club. Over the last 50ky or so, a wave of megafaunal extinctions has swept the globe, in which most regions outside Africa and South Asia lost dozens of species. Giant beavers, cave bears, cave hyenas, woolly rhinos, mastodons, giant ground sloth, stag moose, sivatherium, and many more. A debate has raged for decades over what role humans might have played in that extinction- but even setting that debate aside, these animals represented huge bags of calories, hides, bones, antlers, and ivory to feed, clothe, and equip Stone Age people. They must have been objects of fear, awe, and opportunity.

Among the oldest myths in the world we know of, the “Cosmic Hunt,” was first noticed by anthropologists comparing mythological tropes in cultures across the Northern hemisphere. They saw that while subtle details varied, many motifs kept recurring. In one variant a group of hunters pursues a big-game animal across the sky, with the box of Ursa Major representing the animal, and the handle representing the pursuing hunters. There are also little details shared cross-culturally, like a dimmer star in the handle representing a cooking pot in cultures as far apart as the Siberian Khanty people, or the Iroquois. For others, including Siberia’s Oroch and the Chinook of the Pacific Northwest, that dimmer star is a hunting dog. Sometimes the constellation is switched- the Pleiades are a popular choice, where the stars represent a group of prey animals, surrounded by hunters and their dogs. This form is particularly common in Central Asia. People have even identified more distant descendant myths, such as the Tuareg story of Ursa Major as a female camel belonging to Noah, pursued by a group of seven noble hunters (d’Huy 2013). Phylogenetic reconstructions of these myths have traced them back to a common origin at least 15kya, before the ancestors of modern Native Americans left Eurasia. Obviously, the details of that common ancestral myth are lost - but I still think it’s amazing to see even faint echoes of paleolithic thought.

Paleoanthropologists have long touted the idea that hunting was one of the key tasks we evolved to perform during the last several million years, with the emergence of stone tools, fire-making, and even our big brains being deeply connected to the benefits of adding protein and fat-rich meat to our diet (Linares Matás & Yravedra 2021).

But if you look beneath the hood you’ll find that hunting big game has always had a complicating risk factor- not just physical risk, of getting trampled by a panicked mammoth or hamstrung by a boars tusk. There’s also another form of risk, the risk of going home empty-handed, or having to give away what you killed.
Imagine you’re a hunter-gatherer. Like anyone, you aren’t successful every day you go out. But today you are returning to camp having killed a wild goat.  When this happens, you are immediately confronted by a collective action problem. You have more food than you can eat right away, so for you the stakes are low. For some of the other members of your band who don’t have so much, the stakes are higher.  Any person who wants a share, then, will be hungry and motivated, and you can’t say no to a mob. For years this problem has bugged anthropologists.
“From the hunter’s perspective, the immediate value of the remaining meat is not worth fighting over but it is from the perspective of someone who is hungry” (Kelly 2013: 146).

There are several explanations for how hunters might deal with this. One is reciprocal altruism, the idea that hunters provide meat to others when they experience a windfall with the expectation that the favor will be returned when they are the ones coming home empty-handed (Gurven et al. 2000). Another explanation, tolerated scrounging, implies that hunters will tolerate theft in order to avoid conflict (Blurton Jones 1984). One might predict frequent confrontations over kills among hunter-gatherers, “but such events are virtually nonexistent” (Kelly 2013: 146). Among the San, the maker of an arrow, not the person who fired it, is sometimes considered the owner of a kill. In this way, a person could intentionally use a friend’s arrow in order to give them a claim to the meat, to develop a relationship, and to avoid provoking jealousy. Researchers have observed of the Hadza of Northern Tanzania that “hunters were not considered owners of the meat from the carcasses they acquired and did not control its distribution” (Hawkes et al. 2014: 607). All of this stuff deals with animals as food. You kill a deer, you get meat. Or your friend eats, and owes you a favor. Your children eat well. Very direct, individual payoffs.

There’s a second line of thinking gaining steam, which emphasizes some more abstract elements of big-game hunting. Most prominent of these is Zahavi’s costly-signaling theory, introduced from evolutionary biology to anthropology by researchers like Kristen Hawkes. Hawkes proposed that men primarily hunt large game as a form of costly signaling, to “show off” to a wide range of companions in order to receive favorable treatment in return (Hawkes 1991, Hawkes and Bird 2002). Like the ridiculous tail of a peacock that they survive in spite of, a costly signal is a way of telegraphing one’s fitness in spite of the signal. Like that big, dangerous animal you killed, or that sports car you drive. Ultimately, the idea is that showing off in this way must have translated into greater reproductive success. Among the Meriam, a Melanesian people of the Torres Strait, “successful turtle hunters signal strength, risk-taking, and (in the case of hunt leaders) a variety of cognitive and leadership abilities to potential allies, mates, and competitors” (Bird et al. 2001: 10).
This is where we start shifting to bigger stories of cooperation and collective action. Maybe some of the most challenging hunts became events - seasonal moments where people gathered to trade, exchange marriage partners, renew their social bonds, and cooperatively hunt large, dangerous animals like mammoths, and big herds of bison and caribou.

There are some interesting arguments that suggest hunting technologies are deeply connected to this issue of communal or individual hunting. “Atlatls require the hunter to make himself known, to move, and hence scare game. Atlatls can be used by individual hunters, but they are also suited to communal hunting, where hunters’ movements are intended to channel game into the path of other hunters”… (Kelly 2013:134) Meanwhile, a bow allows a hunter to remain hidden, and to make little movement while firing. “Bow hunting, therefore, is more conducive to individual hunting from a blind”. (Kelly 2013:134) This does seem to be a pattern among hunter-gatherers, and even in recent ethnographic studies, this emphasis on atlatls for communal hunts persists. “In Zimbabwe, for example, Tyua groups preferred to use the atlatl and dart for such reasons, even while adjacent groups used the bow and arrow; they hunted large game: giraffe, rhinoceros, and elephant. To increase success, they also hunted collectively in groups” (Angelbeck & Cameron 2014:95).

In Wyoming, ice age hunters might have periodically revisited the Colby mammoth site, trapping and dispatching one or a few animals each time and piling the bones as archaeologists later found them. In Alaska, ancient caribou hunters in the Brooks Range built huge systems of cairns and standing stones to funnel herds into valley bottoms, where, mired in alpine lakes, they could be dispatched from boats. In the Arabian desert there are remnants of similar structures called Kites, used for cooperative hunts of gazelles, ostriches, Arabian Oryx, Onagers, and hartebeests (Fradley et al. 2022). Over generations, considerable resources would have been devoted to building and rebuilding the kites, together with hunting and returning slaughtered remains to settlements or camps. This kind of hunting gave people a stake in the landscape. These were big, seasonal events, not just about food but also about cooperation, kinship, and belonging.
Hunting has always been more than just a way to eat. It goes right to the heart of our social and symbolic lives.

Angelbeck, B., & Cameron, I. (2014). The Faustian bargain of technological change: Evaluating the socioeconomic effects of the bow and arrow transition in the coast salish past. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 36, 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.08.003 
​
Berezkin, Y. (2005). Cosmic Hunt: Variants of siberian-north american myth. Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 31, 79–100. https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2005.31.berezkin

Berti, E., Monsarrat, S., Munk, M., Jarvie, S., & Svenning, J.-C. (2020). Body size is a good proxy for vertebrate charisma. Biological Conservation, 251, 108790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108790

Binford, L. R. (1978). Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. Academic Press.

Bird, Rebecca, Eric Smith, and Douglas Bird. “The Hunting Handicap: Costly Signaling in Human Foraging Strategies.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 50, no. 1 (2001): 96–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s002650100375. ​​

Blurton Jones, Nicholas G. “A Selfish Origin for Human Food Sharing: Tolerated Theft.” Ethology and Sociobiology 5, no. 1 (1984): 1–3. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(84)90030-X.

Frison, G. C., & Todd, L. C. (1986). The Colby Mammoth Site: Taphonomy and archaeology of a clovis kill in northern Wyoming. University of New Mexico Press.

Gurven, Michael, Wesley Allan-Arave, Kim Hill, and Magdalena Hurtado. “‘It's a Wonderful Life’: Signaling Generosity among the Ache of Paraguay.” Evolution and Human Behavior 21, no. 4 (2000): 263–82. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(00)00032-5.

Hawkes, Kristen. “Showing off: Tests of an Hypothesis about Men's Foraging Goals.” Ethology and Sociobiology 12, no. 1 (1991): 29–54. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(91)90011-E.

Hawkes, Kristen, and Rebecca Bleige Bird. “Showing off, Handicap Signaling, and the Evolution of Men's Work.” Evolutionary Anthropology 11, no. 2 (2002): 58–67. https://doi.org/ https://doi-org.libproxy.uwyo.edu/10.1002/evan.20005.

Hawkes, Kristen, James F. O’Connell, and Nicholas G. Blurton Jones. “More Lessons from the Hadza about Men’s Work.” Human Nature 25, no. 4 (2014): 596–619. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-014-9212-5. ​

Linares Matás, G. J., & Yravedra, J. (2021). ‘we hunt to share’: Social Dynamics and very large mammal butchery during the oldowan–acheulean transition. World Archaeology, 53(2), 224–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2022.2030793

“In the romance of the world’s history, nothing ever impressed me more forcibly than the spectacle of this once great and lovely city, overturned, desolate, and lost; discovered by accident, overgrown with trees for miles around, and without even a name to distinguish it.” ~John Lloyd Stephens

Between approximately 750-900 AD, many of the great classic period cities of the Maya Lowlands fell into decline. Cities which had dominated the region for centuries saw an end to monumental inscriptions, and the decline of large scale architectural construction. Since their discovery by archaeologists, the ruins of these cities have captured the public conscience, and this has come with some misconceptions. Today I want to explain why this “lost civilization” was never actually lost.

“Much has been published in recent years about the collapse of Maya civilization and its causes. It might be wise to preface this chapter with a simple statement that in my belief no such thing happened.” (Andrews IV 1973: 243).  

During the Maya classic period, the heart of Maya civilization was the southern lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. Great city centers like Tikal, Caracol, Calakmul, and Palenque dominated the region. Population estimates for the lowlands have ballooned in recent years as aerial lidar surveys continue to reveal huge swathes of previously undocumented constructions in wide hinterlands surrounding each city (Canuto et al. 2018). Some scholars have suggested as many as 11 million people belonged to this civilization. Vast systems of roads and causeways, agricultural development, and monumental architecture spiderwebbed out from the cities. In the last couple centuries of the classic period, this growth even seems to have sped up, along with ever increasing elite power and prestige. But by the 900s A.D., construction was grinding to a halt, and whole cities were being abandoned, with temples and elite tombs looted for resources by people who no longer respected these once august authorities. I’d like to share a few theories for why this happened, and talk a little about who survived, right up until the arrival of the Spanish a half-millennium onwards.

Some researchers have argued that elite competition and inter-city military conflict spiraled out of control. According to one archaeologist, “as the period progressed, wall and palisade systems were constructed around major centers, and later a shift even occurred in the rural population to fortified defensible locations such as hilltop fortresses” (Demarest 1997: 220). However, recent studies have shown that scorched-earth warfare was practiced even during the height of classic Maya civilization, without destabilizing the whole thing (Wahl et al. 2019). Moreover, we still have to ask the question: was warfare a cause, or just a consequence of some other problem that rocked the Maya world-system?

In the Maya lowlands, water management was often critically important. Low water tables required people to rely on rainfall, and major cities constructed huge reservoirs and catchment systems. These cities were therefore vulnerable to drought, and many studies have suggested drought as a primary cause of the post-classic collapse. For example, stalagmites from caves in Belize - which can act as records of past climate change - show evidence for a major drought between 700-1135 A.D. (Webster et al. 2007). Studies of sediment core samples have also demonstrated this drought took place (Hodell et al. 1995).

The environment can shape human society, but humans also shape the environment. We know that lowland cities were cutting down trees so rapidly deforestation became a serious issue. This could have caused a cascade of effects, from erosion and soil degradation, to rising temperatures and more drought (Shaw, 2003). More and more intensive agriculture also developed near the end of the Maya classic period which led to “a severe depletion of agricultural resources and largely accounts for a steep drop in population numbers around the year 900” (Roman et al. 2017).

Researchers have also brought up social inequality as a cause- essentially, that competition between Maya elites caused the environmental degradation and violence we’ve already discussed. Maybe it was a perfect storm, with a centuries-long drought layered over violence, layered over mismanaged resources by a ruling class more and more disconnected from life among the common people. “In each region of the Maya world this intensifying inter-elite competition manifested itself in somewhat different ways: wasteful architectural extravagance, ecological over-exploitation, balkanization of political authority, and, in some areas, an intensification of regional warfare” (Demarest 1997: 221)

Of course, civilizations don’t exist in a vacuum, and the Maya lowlands were also being acted on by the other parts of the Maya world. For example, studies have shown that as the classic period drew to a close, obsidian trade networks began shifting towards the Caribbean and gulf coasts (Golitko et al. 2012). In this sense, some of the decline lowland cities faced might have been due to geopolitical or economic shifts outside their control.

The Mayan lowland site of Lamanai (Pendergast 1981) is an interesting case study. It appears that the people of Lamanai somehow managed to bring the patterns of their existence through the time of collapse almost intact, and to carry on with life throughout the Post-Classic while gradually abandoned neighboring centers were falling into decay. Evidence for steady construction on both ceremonial and non-ceremonial structures shows that the elite managed to maintain power. The site’s position on the New River lagoon gave it maritime trade connections with the Northern Yucatan, where other cities were also on the rise. The ceramics at Lamanai also show stylistic similarities with northern Mayan polities, which, again, shows the coastal cultural sphere they belonged to. This ceramic incense burner is a great example, being sculpted in the style of Mayapan, a rising power in the post-classic Maya world. Additionally, evidence for cultivation around Lamanai indicates that the city was able to take advantage of diverse flora and fauna, muting the effects of whatever drought they might have faced during the late classic period.

Lamanai is just one example, but numerous cities persisted or emerged after the classic period. In part, this might have been due better environmental conditions than in the lowlands. For instance, on the Yucatan the water table is shallow enough that it can be accessed via natural wells, called cenotes (Webster et al. 2007). For example, Chichen Itza thrived from 800-1100 (Aimers 2007). There are four cenotes near the city that could have provided plentiful water year round, making the area attractive for settlement. Of these cenotes, the Sacred Cenote (also variously known as the Sacred Well or Well of Sacrifice), is the most famous. Participating in the water-borne circum-peninsular trade route through its port site of Isla Cerritos on the north coast, Chichen Itza was able to obtain locally unavailable resources from distant areas such as obsidian from central Mexico and gold from southern Central America.

Mayapan rose to prominence between 1200-1500, as another important post-classic center of Maya life. Mayapan was both an economic core zone and a seat of political power, with a highly urbanized center and a large population. Mayapan became the primary city in a group of allies that included much of the northern Yucatán. The city was intentionally designed defensively: its exterior wall does not bisect preexisting buildings, and there are gates on all sides of the city. Mayapan supported numerous craft specialists who created a variety of artifacts such as ceramic effigy censers, lithic tools, and metal objects (Paris, 2008).

One last region I wanted to mention is the southeastern highlands of Guatemala, as well as the pacific coastal region beyond. While notable classic Maya cities in the area, like Copan and Quiriguá declined along with the lowland cities, there were also new centers of power that emerged, right up to the arrival of the Spanish. For example, the city of Utatlan had a population as high as 15,000, and remained a regional power until the Spanish burned it in 1524 (Carmack & Weeks 1981).

All of this is to say: the Maya survived the classic period collapse. And anyways, decline is probably a more accurate word. They continued to build cities and produce great cultural achievements. Moreover, there are still Maya people alive today. In fact, there are an estimated 6 Million Mayan speakers, mainly living in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

“Asking ‘Why did the Maya collapse?’ is rather like asking ‘Why did the Maya disappear?’ Answers are difficult because the questions are inappropriate” (Aimers 2007: 351).

Our understanding of this decline is actually quite deep and nuanced, with archaeologists successfully mapping out the effects of a complex mosaic of variables across the whole of the Maya world. Like many events in history, this one is less of a mystery than headlines might make you believe.

Aimers, J. J. (2007). What Maya collapse? Terminal Classic variation in the Maya Lowlands. Journal of Archaeological Research, 15(4), 329–377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-007-9015-x

Andrews IV, E. W. (1973). The development of Maya civilization after the abandonment of the southern cities. In T. P. Culbert (Ed.), The Classic Maya collapse (pp. 243–265). essay, University of New Mexico Press.

Canuto, M. A., Estrada-Belli, F., Garrison, T. G., Houston, S. D., Acuña, M. J., Kováč, M., Marken, D., Nondédéo, P., Auld-Thomas, L., Castanet, C., Chatelain, D., Chiriboga, C. R., Drápela, T., Lieskovský, T., Tokovinine, A., Velasquez, A., Fernández-Díaz, J. C., & Shrestha, R. (2018). Ancient lowland maya complexity as revealed by Airborne Laser Scanning of northern Guatemala. Science, 361(6409). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau0137

Carmack, R. M., & Weeks, J. M. (1981). The archaeology and ethnohistory of utatlan: A Conjunctive approach. American Antiquity, 46(2), 323–341. https://doi.org/10.2307/280211

Demarest, A. A. (1997). The Vanderbilt Petexbatun regional archaeological project 1989–1994: Overview, history, and major results of a multidisciplinary study of the Classic Maya collapse. Ancient Mesoamerica, 8(2), 209–227. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0956536100001693

Golitko, M., Meierhoff, J., Feinman, G. M., & Williams, P. R. (2012). Complexities of collapse: The evidence of Maya obsidian as revealed by Social Network Graphical Analysis. Antiquity, 86(332), 507–523. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00062906

Hodell, D. A., Curtis, J. H., & Brenner, M. (1995). Possible role of climate in the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. Nature, 375(6530), 391–394. https://doi.org/10.1038/375391a0

Milbrath, S., & Peraza Lope, C. (2003). Revisiting mayapan: Mexico's last maya capital. Ancient Mesoamerica, 14(1), 1–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0956536103132178

Paris, E. H. (2008). Metallurgy, Mayapan, and the Postclassic Mesoamerican World System. Ancient Mesoamerica, 19(1), 43–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0956536108000291

Pendergast, D. M. (1981). Lamanai, belize: Summary of excavation results, 1974-1980. Journal of Field Archaeology, 8(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.2307/529781

Roman, S., Palmer, E., & Brede, M. (2018). The dynamics of human–environment interactions in the collapse of the classic maya. Ecological Economics, 146, 312–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.11.007

Shaw, J. M. (2003). Climate change and deforestation: Implications for the maya collapse. Ancient Mesoamerica, 14(1), 157–167. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0956536103132063

Stephens, J. L. (2013). Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Dover Publications.

Wahl, D., Anderson, L., Estrada-Belli, F., & Tokovinine, A. (2019). Palaeoenvironmental, epigraphic and archaeological evidence of total warfare among the Classic maya. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(10), 1049–1054. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0671-x

Webster, J. W., Brook, G. A., Railsback, L. B., Cheng, H., Edwards, R. L., Alexander, C., & Reeder, P. P. (2007). Stalagmite evidence from Belize indicating significant droughts at the time of Preclassic abandonment, the maya hiatus, and the Classic Maya collapse. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 250(1-4), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2007.02.022

Show notes coming soon.