“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 “If Ice Age people were sent by anything, it was the push and pull of the climate, the drive of human curiosity, and the tidal movement of other animals within which the people flowed. I doubt they would have considered themselves colonists, or that they had any idea of the scale of emptiness that lay ahead.” ~Craig Childs
During the ice age, Alaska belonged to the Old World. While ice sheets formed a barrier across much of Canada, the Bering Sea was dry. One could walk from Siberia to Alaska, and this is without a doubt the first stop ice age humans took on their way to colonizing all of North and South America. Called Beringia, this vast, conjoined land was a whole subcontinent, and more than just a stopping point on the journey to the New World. It was a destination itself, with thousands of years of prehistory that we have barely begun to study. Despite decades of research, Beringian archaeology remains poorly understood. Small modern populations, very few archaeologists, high costs of conducting research, and low levels of development make this area difficult to work in. Deeply buried sites, often occurring in frozen contexts, and hidden under thick boreal forest and tundra are complicated to discover and reach. For example, I conducted archaeological survey this summer along the Yukon River in Eastern Alaska, which required travel by small plane, two helicopters, and being ferried around by boat. Back in the ice age, the region looked quite different. Like much of Eurasia, which it was connected to, Beringia was dominated by Mammoth-steppe: vast, arid grasslands filled with a menagerie of large mammals, like a subarctic Serengeti. “In the mammoth ecosystem, the collective behavior of millions of competitive herbivores maintained the grasslands. In the winter, the animals ate the grasses that grew the previous summer. All the while they fueled plant productivity by fertilizing the soil with their manure, and they trampled down moss and shrubs, preventing these plants from gaining a foothold.” ~Sergey Zimov This rich, biologically productive, planet-cooling biome took up most of the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere. Dotted with musk-ox, mammoth, bears both modern and extinct, and many other species. The aridity of the Beringian mammoth steppe is clearly visible in the layers of fine pleistocene sands, kicked up by winds, which settled beneath many of the sites of the Alaskan interior. Counterintuitively, southern Alaska was largely glaciated, while the interior may have offered a more livable environment. We have a few sites dating to around 30 kya, and several dozen dating to the very tail end of the ice age- say, 10-14kya. I’d like to introduce you to a few of these, and make a prediction about one way we might discover more sites in the years to come. In Siberia, the Site of Nepa-1 (Goebel & Potter 2016), located along the Nizhnaia Tunguska River, gives us a flicker of human life that dates to at least 30kya. But this site has only yielded a small assemblage of stone artifacts, and the associated remains of a few large mammals. The Yana Rhino Horn Site is a bit more exciting (Pitulko et al. 2004). Locating along the lower Yana River, it contains a well preserved cultural layer, with numerous stone and bone artifacts, including a projectile fore shaft carved from the horn of a wooly rhino. The Yana site has revealed awls made from bone and mammoth ivory, beads, needles, and traces of a long-term settlement. There’s evidence for hunting of bison, mammoth, reindeer, horse, hare, musk-ox, fox, wolverine, brown bear, and many more species. There are reindeer tooth pendants, and jewelry made from carved amber (Pitulko et al. 2012). It’s an amazing site. But the strange thing is, after the first smattering of sites around 30kya we have a huge gap in the archaeological record. Bluefish caves, in Canada’s Yukon Territory might show evidence of human occupation 18-24kya (Cinq-Mars 1979, Bourgeon et al. 2017, Bourgeon 2021) but this is based solely on cut marked bones, and flaked bones found without any other obviously man-made artifacts. Archaeologists still debate whether there could have been natural causes for these patterns (Krazinski and Blong 2020). Some have proposed that as conditions worsened around the last glacial maximum, around 20,000 years ago, people were no longer able to inhabit the area. Others say we just haven’t looked hard enough yet. The next signs of human life in Beringia occur 14.4 kya, at Swan Point. Swan Point is a high promontory along the Tanana River Valley, in the Alaskan interior, where people camped, hunted, and scavenged along a major transportation corridor (Swan Point (Lanöe & Holmes 2016). The Tanana River Valley, and nearby Nenana River Valley are actually a hotspot for early ice age sites. And across Alaska, more than 30 sites date to earlier than 10ky old, with some notable examples including Broken Mammoth, Upward Sun, Lime Hills Cave, and Tuluaq Hill, to name a few. Like the continental US, ice age Alaska appears to have had a fluted point tradition dating to at least ~12kya, based on evidence from Serpentine Hot Springs and Raven Bluff (Goebel et al. 2013). In Siberia, teardrop-shaped points from Berelekh and Ushki layer 7 (Dikov 1977 [2003]) date to as early as 13.5 thousand years ago. Microblades represent an interesting technological departure from what we see south of the ice sheets. At Lime Hills Cave in Southwest Alaska, fragments of grooved antler points dated to 10-12kya were likely inset with with numerous tiny blades, almost like teeth (Goebel & Potter 2016). At Swan Point, microblades occur in deposits dating to 14kya (Gómez Coutouly 2015). In fact, there’s good evidence for the widespread use of this technology across Alaska. Only two burial sites are currently known in the Ice Age Arctic, including one in Siberia, and one in Alaska. The Siberian burials come from a site called Ushki-1 in Kamchatka (Dikov 1977 [2003]). Ushki actually contains several burials. There’s a single adult layed within a rock-lined pit. Filled with ochre, the pit included stone beads and stone tools. There are also two children buried in small pits within separate houses, and a dog burial inside another house. In Alaska, Upward Sun River (Potter et al. 2011, 2014) contains a child, about three years old, cremated and buried in a pit hearth within a house. Below the child was another burial, containing two infants, four antler rods, and two bifacial points. These burials help humanize Beringian peoples, reminding us that they lost loved ones, and laid them carefully to rest, often within their homes. Art can also help add a little human color to an otherwise dry, analytical story, but again, very little has been found. For instance, personal adornments like beads and pendants have not been found in Alaska, though in Siberia they’ve been found at Yana (Pitulko et al. 2012), as well as Ushki (Dikov 1977 [2003]). I’d argue the most likely explanation for this dearth of art is simply the tiny sample of sites we have available. As we find more, I think more art will turn up.This is a pretty dry, sparse story so far. Let me suggest one way I think researchers might find more sites. I know this will be a very hand-waving section of the video, but take it for what it’s worth. Caves provide a disproportionate share of the earliest archaeological sites around the world. This is probably due both to how well they preserve ancient sediments, as well as their ritual and practical value to paleolithic humans. Well, Alaska actually has a good bit of limestone deposits in which caves could have formed, including in sections of the interior which remained unglaciated during the ice age. I made this map to show you what I mean. Blue is Ice, Orange is unglaciated limestone deposits. Most of these areas are likely to be poorly surveyed, or completely unsurveyed. But if there are caves, they would have been accessible to the people of Beringia. Rather than marching through boreal forests and checking the occasional cut-bank or promontory, I suspect surveying for caves may be one of our best-bets for finding traces of Beringia. Let me describe one site- quite ancient, but still early holocene, not late pleistocene. On Your Knees Cave (Kemp et al. 2007), on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska provides one of the most fascinating early sites along the northwest coast. It dates to about 10,000 years old, and contains the remains of a man in his mid-twenties, who’s remains lie scattered among a deep palimpsest of animal bones. The cave also contains stone tools made of obsidian, hinting at the trade connections and mobility of the people who lived along the coastline. We also learned that this individual was a specialist in marine resources, based on isotopic signatures in his teeth - and his DNA shows the earliest occurrence of haplogroup D, found in modern populations along the American west coast. Or, perhaps we need to look underwater. While much of southern Alaska was uninhabitable, many argue for the presence of a habitable kelp-highway (Erlandson et al. 2007, 2015), a belt of productive marine resources that would have allowed ice age people to hug the coastlines, skirting the crushing ice that stared down from the mountains above. Maybe we need to find a site like Cosquer Cave in France (Clottes et al. 1992), where divers found a submerged cave site filled with ice age art, inundated by rising sea levels when the earth warmed up. My hope is that we will find On Your Knees Cave’s big brother. Just a little older, and we’re in the world of the ice age. I’m also certain that another Swan Point or Broken Mammoth is just around the corner. 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We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night telling itself stories." Humans are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee." The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship” The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.” The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor." Sports is to war as pornography is to sex." Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary." Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years." Philip Larkin famously proposed that what will survive of us is love. Wrong. What will survive of us is plastic, swine bones and lead-207, the stable isotope at the end of the uranium-235 decay chain." We are part mineral beings too – our teeth are reefs, our bones are stones – and there is a geology of the body as well as of the land." However many nations live in the world today, however many countless people, they all had but one dawn." ~Anonymous, Popul Vuh Every step you take has already been taken. Every story has already been told. The land is not newly discovered, so old with legends you might mistake them for rocks." ~Craig Childs The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause." ~Henri Bergson Archaeologists may not always see the trees, but we capture the forest with great clarity" ~Robert Kelly The past is never dead; it's not even past." ~William Faulkner No civilization has survived forever. All move toward dissolution, one after the other, like waves of the sea falling upon the shore. None, including ours, is exempt from the universal fate.” ~Douglas Preston If you go into a museum and look at antiquities collected there, you can be sure that the vast bulk of them were found not in buildings but in graves." ~Leonard Woolley Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless earth.” ~Robert Macfarlane We always stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, whether or not we look down to acknowledge them." ~David Anthony That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away." ~Heraclitus Shamanism is not simply a component of society: on the contrary, shamanism, together with its tiered cosmos, can be said to be the overall framework of society." ~David Lewis-Williams Opened are the double doors of the horizon. Unlocked are its bolts." ~Utterance 220 of the Pyramid of Unas If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." ~Rudyard Kipling The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains." ~John Muir The ecological thinker is haunted by the consequences of time." ~Garrett Hardin Through the experience of time, Dasein becomes a ‘being towards death’: without death existence would be care-less, would lack the power that draws us to one another and to the world." ~Iain McGillchrist The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril." ~Niall Ferguson Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are." ~Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared." ~Alfred Russel Wallace Humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable, and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences." ~Sebastian Junger Except in geographical scale, tribal warfare could be and often was total war in every modern sense. Like states and empires, smaller societies can make a desolation and call it peace." ~Lawrence Keeley The first people were aware of the signs and signals of the natural world. Their artifacts were projectiles, blades, and ivory sewing needles, either used on animal products, or made from them, or used to procure them. The world around them was a cycle of animals of all sizes, from voles and falcons to some of the largest mammals seen in human evolution." ~Craig Childs The number of herbivores sets a cap on the number of carnivores that can live in a region. Of course, adding an additional predator of fairly large body size, like a modern human, would produce repercussions that would ripple though all the other predators in the area and their prey." ~Pat Shipman When viewed globally, near-time extinctions took place episodically, in a pattern not correlated with climatic change or any known factor other than the spread of our species." ~Paul S. Martin However splendid our languages and cultures, however rich and subtle our minds, however vast our creative powers, the mental process is the product of a brain shaped by the hammer of natural selection upon the anvil of nature." Behavior is imitated, then abstracted into play, formalized into drama and story, crystallized into myth and codified into religion- and only then criticized in philosophy, and provided, post-hoc, with rational underpinnings." I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow." We are fire creatures from an ice age." ~Stephen Pyne Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified." ~Edward Abbey Men and women, empires and cities, thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and unfathomed seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their day, and all must go." ~H. Rider Haggard One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be- though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain- because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone." ~ Oswald Spengler All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance." In the long paleontological perspective, we humans must be considered invasive in any locale except Africa." ~Pat Shipman Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy." ~Richard Francis Burton Sedentary culture is the goal of civilization. It means the end of its own lifespan and brings about its corruption." ~Ibn Khaldun Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." ~Gustav Mahler As for man, his days are numbered. Whatever he might do, it is but wind." ~The Epic of Gilgamesh There is a cave in the mind." Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come." ~Joseph Campbell I feel again a spark of that ancient flame." ~ Virgil Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it therefore not to be an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning." ~Clifford Geertz In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." ~Carl Jung Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids." ~Arab proverb Few romances can ever surpass that of the granite citadel on top of the beetling precipices of Machu Picchu, the crown of Inca Land." ~Hiram Bingham You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things- to compete. You can just be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals." ~Edmund Hillary Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going into the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity." ~John Muir To speak of truth sounds too grand, too filled with the promise of certainty, and we are rightly suspicious of it. But truth will not go away that easily. The statement that ‘there is no such thing as truth’ is itself a truth statement, and implies that it is truer than its opposite, the statement that ‘truth exists’." ~Lain McGillchrist The Sphinx will always have to be looked after." Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and 30 years I could build a bigger one." Civilizations exist by geological consent, subject to change without notice." When at last we anchored in the harbor, off the white town hung between the blazing sky and its reflection in the mirage which swept and rolled over the wide lagoon, then the heat of Arabia came out like a drawn sword and struck us speechless" The best prophet of the future is the past." An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can get. The older she gets the more interested he is in her." Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been." What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain." I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist." Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. "~Joseph Campbell In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds." Always my soul hungered for less than it had" History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs, and wooden shoes coming up." Back home, I'm always focusing on something happening in the future. On expeditions, time stops, and you become like a stone age man, acting on instincts and knowing you are part of the universe." Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies." ~Robert Sapolsky The Land is not old. It only changes, becoming one thing and the next. We are the ones who ascribe age, the brevity of our lives demanding a beginning, middle, and end." Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books." The only thing that belongs to us is the time." 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 |