Some North American history from 4000-2000BC

Clovis flint spear heads

This is a post about North American history from 4000-2000BC. The reason I am covering two millennia rather than one is that the history of this area, while still interesting, has comparatively less happening than in Africa or Europe for example. I am not an expert on this time period at all and there is much that is still unknown and being discovered by archaeologists but the broad outlines of what I will describe here will hopefully be mostly correct. The dates presented here will be very broad estimates and may well be wildly off. This is a time before writing in this part of the world so the main sources will be entirely archaeological but I may make some references to the beliefs of later cultures.

For the purposes of this blog, North America will comprise of Alaska, Canada, the continental USA, Mexico, all the Central American countries as far as Panama, the Caribbean Islands and, for good measure and because there was nowhere else to really put it, Greenland.

Prior to the year 4000BC the majority of North America was inhabited. Certain areas of the extreme north in Canada and Greenland were not yet fully populated due to the extreme conditions but nearly everywhere else was populated. Even the islands of the Caribbean were inhabited by a hunter-gatherer population known to archaeologists as the creators of Casimiroid tools.

The exact date for the arrival of humans in the Americas is a mystery, but most agree that there was an arrival around 10,000BC where the most recent glacial maximum had lowered the sea levels to allow a land bridge to emerge in the Bering Strait. This connected North America and Asia and allowed for small groups of foragers to cross. There may have been earlier settlements, but it is unclear. The group that arrived around 10,000BC was referred to as the Clovis culture (named after their flint weapons that were first found in the city of Clovis in the state of New Mexico). Within around a millennia humanity had spread all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The large mammals that had lived in North America disappeared, possibly because the humans hunted them but possibly due to the pressure of climate change, combined with food competition from humans.

Teosinte, a related plant to the wild maize that was
domesticated in Mexico

The original inhabitants of the Americas were hunter-gatherers, but as the populations expanded and the larger animals disappeared it would seem that the dwellers in the warmer climates began to rely more on gathering food. These gatherers began to manage and maintain the squash plants that they were reliant on, gradually segueing into agriculture as they added maize and beans to their array of domesticated plants. The plants were originally much smaller than their modern counterparts. The importance of these foods, particularly maize, was that they could be dried and stored for later consumption.

The domestication of these plants happened mostly in what is now Mexico. Other plants were being domesticated in South America as well however. Chili plants were used, but were less important for calories. A number of other plants that are familiar to us today were eventually domesticated by the inhabitants of Mexico, such as tomatoes, vanilla and chocolate. But these would come later.

So, Mesoamerica had begun to move into an agricultural phase, but was still lacking ceramics. Instead of using pottery the inhabitants were able to use dried gourds, such as the bottle gourd, as water carriers. If heated stones were dropped into the gourds they could even be used to cook soups.

The first cultivation of crops seems to have come, not just from Mexico, but from a specific region in Mexico; the highlands of the Pacific coast, near Soconusco and Oaxaca. In particular, the cave of Guilá Naquitz and the Chantuto Archaeological Site seem to show a society that was beginning to transition from hunter-gathering to a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. A small site that may shed light on the period is Gheo-Shih, which seems to have been a meeting place for small groups. The site contains a great many stone artefacts and possibly some dwelling places. Most tantalisingly of all, there is the remains of what might be a marked off area for dancing/playing/doing ceremonies. It is possible that this might be a ball court and might point to an early origin of the Mesoamerican ball game, which would prove so popular in later Mesoamerican civilisations.

So this gives a picture of North America around 4000BC, at the outset of the time period. Nearly the entire region is inhabited by hunter-gatherers. But the beginnings of an agricultural system is flourishing on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico and these techniques would soon spread outwards.

Map showing Watson Brake archaeological site

Despite having talked so much about the developments in Mexico, the next milestone that must be mentioned is further north, in the US state of Louisiana. Around 3500BC work began on the Watson Brake earthworks. These were a circular series of earthworks with a number of large mounds around the edges of the circle. They were built by a hunter-gatherer society and the site was a ceremonial space rather than a living space. In some ways it reminds me of the site of Gobekli Tepe. It was a work of considerable size and sophistication, but done before the advent of agriculture. The nearby river bank and swamps provided a fertile area to hunt and fish in and the middens show that the diet of the builders was mainly fish and shellfish. The area had been inhabited by people for centuries before. but it was only around this period that they began to build.

It’s not clear why mounds were built here. The river nearby currently does not flood the land much and there is no evidence of defensive earthworks. Perhaps they were platforms for religious ceremonies, with different platforms for different deities. But this is speculation. Later cultures building along the Mississippi would build spectacular mounds, so perhaps the inhabitants of Watson Brake created a cultural trend.

A much later stela showing
Mayan symbols for the
Long Count Calendar

We move now from the mysterious mound-builders of the Lower Mississippi to consider a date that may have no significance at all. On the 11th of August in the year 3114BC, the Long Count calendar used by Mesoamerican peoples, most particularly the Mayans, began. It was believed by the later Mayan peoples that the world had been created on this day. But it is hard to know exactly why. The first clear uses of the Long Count calendar are much later, nearly three millennia later. The Mayan civilisation used two other calendars in addition to the Long Count (Haab’ and Tzolk’in). All three calendars were extensively used by the Mayans but were probably not invented by them. Thus the true significance of why the Long Count date was chosen may never be known.

Around the year 3000BC the Paleo-Eskimo settlement of the Arctic regions began. Not that there is anything special about the year 3000. I’m sure communities were on the move during that year, but I’m also sure that the communities were moving into the frozen Canadian tundra in 3001/3002/3003 etc. It’s just that historians have a tendency to round things they’re not very sure of into neat round numbers: The greater the uncertainty, the rounder the number. The settlement of the tundra and the arctic lands beyond it are one of the great achievements of humanity. It ranks with the exploration of the Pacific islands or the climbing of Everest. The hunting bands who learned to catch seals and walruses and to carve ivory in lands where there was no more wood or stone for spears have pushed forward the boundaries of the human species.

Around 2800BC the hunter-gatherer earthworks at Watson Brake were abandoned. Perhaps the region could no longer support the population or perhaps the people migrated to new lands. Perhaps disease broke out among the people or they had a political or religious revolution. Whatever the cause, the first known mound building civilisation in North America, contemporary with ancient cities such as Uruk in Mesopotamia or Memphis in Egypt, were abandoned to the embrace of nature and the trowels of future archaeologists.

Around 2500 culture changes could be seen in the far north. In Alaska, near the Bering Strait, the Arctic Small Tool tradition developed. This is a blanket term for a number of cultures that spread across the north of the western hemisphere using bows and arrows. They would have capitalised on the developments made by the Paleo-Eskimo cultures and most of the people using the Arctic Small Tool tradition would have been from those Paleo-Eskimo cultures. Using this new technology the arctic hunters spread across the land and sea reaching Greenland. In the south of Greenland the Saqqaq culture began, while in the north the Independence I culture began shortly thereafter.

Clay objects from Poverty Point Culture that were
used for cooking

Around 2200 the Poverty Point culture begins in what is now Louisiana, not far from now empty site of Watson Brake. This was a culture that predated the adoption of mass agriculture. The people of this culture traded all along the Mississippi Valley and as far away as the Ozarks and the Ohio and Tennessee River regions. They were probably able to use the vast fisheries of the river and the swamps to sustain a permanent population in the region. They began to use ceramics and made some small pots but they were more interested in making small clay objects that could be heated up and used to cook food in non-pottery vessels. Later they would make spectacular mounds, but at this point their culture was only beginning.

Around 2000BC many archaeologists refer to the Mesoamerican Archaic Period ending and to the Pre-Classic period beginning. This is more a matter of definition than of any real change. Nothing really changed for the inhabitants of the region. But it is an acknowledgement that in Mesoamerica all of the major crops had been domesticated and that villages were now forming that would eventually grow into cities.

Greenland

To the far north, in Greenland, a young man died. His body was discovered four thousand years later and his genome sequenced. He is known now as Inuk, from the current Greenlandic language word for “man”. The cold climate and the fortunate preservation of some of his hair allowed for the DNA sequencing to take place and points to Inuk being closely related to the current tribes on the Russian side of the Bering Strait.

So, the period that we are looking at comes to an end. The two millennia examined saw the continuous development of the Mesoamerican agricultural communities, the expansion of humans across the frozen northlands and the development of the first monumental architecture in the Mississippi floodplains. While North America in this period still does not have any culture that can be unequivocally called a civilisation it nevertheless has all the ingredients for several to develop.

Related Blog Posts:
Some North American history from 4000-2000BC
Some North American history from 2000-1000BC
Some North American history from 1000-500BC