Some North American history from 1000-500BC

Olmec head sculpture from Tres Zapotes

This is a post about North American history from 1000-500BC. 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.

At the start of the period under discussion, the Olmec culture on the Caribbean coast of Mexico was flourishing. The main settlement here was the city now known as San Lorenzo, but there were also other settlements at La Venta and Tres Zapotes. These were the largest settlements in Mesoamerica, although even the great city of San Lorenzo probably had no more than 20,000 people in it at the highest of estimates. San Lorenzo had a large ceremonial site, complete with pyramid and central plaza.

The pyramid of San Lorenzo was matched by the site at Poverty Point, in what is now the state of Louisiana in the United States. This was a large site with massive prehistoric earthworks and a great mound which was the largest structure in North America for millennia afterwards. The culture that built these earthworks is known unimaginatively as the Poverty Point culture, named after the type site of the civilisation. The dwellers of the Mississippi floodplain were clearly quite organised, but they did not systematically use either agriculture or ceramic pots. They did bake clay, but did not create pottery as we know it.

Olmec stone head from La Venta

Around the century of the 1000’s BC the Woodland Period began in what is now the southern part of the continental US. This was a period where the inhabitants built mounds and engaged in trade, in a fashion quite similar to the Watson Brake and Poverty Point cultures, but covering a much larger area and extending much further northwards. The first of these cultures of note would be the Adena culture in what is now the Ohio region, but these would only flourish some time later.

In the century of the 900’s BC the impressive monuments of the Olmec city of San Lorenzo would be destroyed. The city of San Lorenzo falls into deep decline around this time. The city of La Venta would now become the most prominent Olmec city, with Tres Zapotes also becoming important. The destruction of the monument may have been the result of a natural catastrophe that led to the abandonment of the city. It may well have been an internal rebellion or an attack from the inhabitants of La Venta. We will probably never know exactly why San Lorenzo was damaged so badly, but these seem the most likely explanations. The population declined sharply and within a century barely anyone inhabited the city.

Ruins from the early Mayan
 city of Nakbe

The city of La Venta now began to reach its zenith and expanded, building temples and a great pyramid and carving more of the great stone heads for which the Olmec culture is so famed. It is from La Venta that the first representation of the feathered serpent is found in Mesoamerica.

It is around this time that the Cascajal Block, an early example of what may be proto-writing, was created in the Olmec regions. The stone was found by locals and not in a proper archaeological context, so dating is conjectural. It is also not clear if this was a full writing system, if it is writing at all, or if the artefact itself is even genuine. But it certainly raises the possibility that the Olmec civilisation had made the giant leap forward to becoming a literate civilisation.

Around the century of the 700's BC large structures begin to be built at the settlement of Nakbe, in present day Guatemala on the Yucatan peninsula. This is probably the earliest settlement of the Maya culture to reach the level of a city. The monumental architecture that would characterise later Mayan cities was there in Nakbe, including pyramids, palaces, elaborate tombs and causeways.

Also around this time, the Poverty Point culture in the Mississippi Valley seems to have come to an end. The proto-city of Poverty Point itself, with its great mounds and ridges, seems to have been abandoned and the people gathered there no more.

Far to the north in the lands of Greenland, the Dorset culture appears to have emerged from the previous culture, known as the Independence culture. The Dorset culture appears to have become almost too adapted to the frozen north. They had forgotten how to make drills or bows, but they were skilled at hunting animals in and on the ice. The Dorset later had settlements in Canada on the northern lands of what would now be called the province of Nunavut.

Walrus ivory carving of a polar bear

Around the 600’s BC the Tchefuncte culture existed on the Louisiana coasts. They foraged for shellfish and are known primarily through the shell middens that they left behind. After the decline of the Poverty Point culture, the early Woodland Period along the Mississippi and Ohio basins does not show much sign of urbanisation.

Around the century of the 500's BC Tres Zapotes became the most important of the Olmec cities. Once again, colossal heads, probably wearing the headdresses of ballplayers, were carved from stone.

Around this time, the Zapotec civilisation began in the Oaxaca Valley in the southwestern regions of Mexico. The main settlement was Monte Alban, although there was another important early settlement at San Jose Mogote, which may have been in conflict with the city at Monte Alban. Here again, monumental architecture, the Mesoamerican ballgame and the agriculture based around the Three Sisters of Mesoamerican agriculture were prominent.

And thus the period draws to a close. In Mesoamerica, the Olmec civilisation is still thriving at the cities of Tres Zapotes and La Venta, while newer the newer civilisations of the Mayans and Zapotecs have arisen to the south and the west of the Olmec. Further to the north, in what is now the continental United States, the Poverty Point culture has disappeared, leaving behind less-organised cultures in its place. While to the far north the Dorset culture has begun in Greenland. I will continue the tale in later blogs.

Pyramid from the Olmec city of La Venta

Related Blogs:
Some North American history from 4000-2000BC
Some North American history from 2000-1000BC
Mesoamerica: The Olmecs

2012 and the Mayans?

A double-headed jade serpent

"And such was the instruction they gave when all the Under-worlders had been finally defeated. And then the two boys ascended this way, here into the middle of the light, and they ascended straight on into the sky, and the sun belongs to one and the moon to the other. When it became light within the sky on the face of the earth, they were there in the sky. And then the Four Hundred Boys climbed up, the ones who were killed by Zipacna. And so they came to accompany the two of them, they became the sky's own stars."
From the end of the Third Part of the Popol Vuh, describing the destiny of the Hero Twins.

There are theories floating around presently about the end of the world that will supposedly happen in the year 2012, specifically, in or around the 20th of December of 2012. Is there anything to this or is it a misunderstanding? I should firstly say that the scientific community has been fairly sceptical of these claims. However, my vague interest in matters scientific do not qualify me to talk about this from a strong scientific perspective, but if I come across any good online resources I will post links to them. I can however deal briefly with some historical aspects of this prediction.

The Classic Mayan city of Tikal

The prediction is based on the Mayan Long Count Calendar. The Mayans were a people (politically organised in loose groupings of opposing city-states) whose civilisation flourished in Southern Mexico and Guatemala from around 200 AD to 1000 AD. After this date the major cities were abandoned for unknown reasons and new cities emerged. But the new cities were on a smaller scale. From the early 1500's onwards these remaining states were attacked by the newly arrived Spanish conquistadors and the last Mayan city was finally conquered in 1697.

The Mayans did not merely leave monumental architecture, but they also left writings. Many of their books were destroyed in the Spanish conquest, but some Spanish monks and friars preserved the books they could find. From these books we can see that the Mayan literate class were very concerned with the timing of events and had created multiple calendars to mark the passage of events.

One of these calendars (there were several others) involved having a 360-day year that would be counted in cycles of 20. These cycles were then also counted in cycles of 20 (usually 20, but sometimes 18 according to some scholars). This was known as a Bak'tun. When 13 Bak'tun's had passed the cycle would repeat and the calendar would revert back to the first Bak'tun. If there are any astronomers reading they'll be quite angry about the 360-day year, but what the Mayans did was to refer to each day using a number of terms, which would cycle over and allow them to keep track of deviations from the solar calendar until the cycle was complete. It was not the first system I would have devised but it was complex enough to use "zero" as a number (i.e. better than Greek or Roman maths in certain respects) and was of use in the keeping track of constellation movements as well, so it's an impressive enough piece of work.

The reader may wonder what this has to do with the end of the world. The date given in the theory for the day the world ends is simply the date that the 13th Bak'tun ends on. According to most theories the 1st cycle begins on the 11th of August, 3114 BC so we are approaching the date where the calendar rolls over so to speak. So did the Mayans feel that this was the date that the world ended on?

Well, the date picked for the beginning of the cycle appears somewhat arbitrary. It predates their civilisation and there are no known inscriptions for the first three thousand years of the system. It might have been borrowed from an earlier civilisation like the Olmecs, but this is speculative. So, if we have no idea why they chose to start their calendar at one point, it makes understanding the end point difficult. Some scholars believe that there are inscriptions that deal with orders higher than the Bak'tun or even thirteen Baktun's, which, if true, suggests that the Mayans did not view time as being contained within the cycle.

Scholars also speak of Long Calendar dates being spoken of after the turning of the cycle, suggesting that the Mayans didn't believe the world would end in 2012. It should be noted that the Mayans had no telescopes that we know of to predict anything about "galactic shifts" or discover hidden planets or anything. If they had some method of predicting the future it did not help their civilisation. Their civilisation went into chronic decline around 900 AD, suffered definite attacks from the Mexican city of Teotihuacan and a possible invasion from Tula before having their cities taken over completely by the Spanish. If the Mayan priests could really see the future then they were spectacularly bad at acting on their knowledge. This is a bit of a cheap shot at a culture that I greatly respect, but I am sick to death of hearing New-Age stuff about mystical Mayan knowledge.

Having a nice long calendar allowed them to place events in a framework that remained constant for centuries and allowed them to neatly predict both agricultural seasons and astronomical events. There are very few prophecies recorded from Classic Mayan sites.

Mayan culture does become rather prophetic later on, but I believe this to be a result of European influence. The Popol Vuh, the most famous of the Mayan books, was at least partially written after the Spanish had arrived. It gives a Mayan creation account that has a number of incomplete creations, each destroyed before a new creation, with the last destruction being by a great flood.

Now this could be seen as a series of catastrophes marking the completion of a separate Long Count cycle, meaning that the Mayans saw a catastrophe for the year 2012 even if the world didn't end. But by the time the Popol Vuh is written, the Long Count is no longer used and an equally sophisticated but different way of marking time is given. No dates are given for the creations or the catastrophes and, although far from unparalleled in world mythology, the universal flood wiping out an initial creation sounds suspiciously like the Popol Vuh has been influenced by Catholicism.

There are late Mayan texts called the Books of Chilam Balam specifically dedicated to prophecy. These are books ascribed to a legendary sage who prophesies the coming of the Spanish. But they are all written in the Colonial era and back-prophecies if you will, where a community deals with a catastrophe by inventing a text to cope with it and view it as part of a greater plan (see the prophecies of Myrddin Wyllt, even conspiracy theories could be viewed as community attempts to rationalise the irrational).

The idea that the world will end is notably absent even in these most prophetic of all Mayan texts (although there are quite a lot of them and I haven't read them all so I may be wrong on this). So will the world end in 2012? Possibly, as we can never predict the future with total accuracy, but I'm betting that it won't (and giving good odds if anyone's interested). I'm also betting that the Mayans had less than no intention of predicting the end of the world when some of their priests decided to use a particular method of counting that started at an arbitrary date. Roll on 2013!

Edit: I am updating this blog in late 2019 and I can confidently confirm to readers that the world did not in fact end in 2012.