6.8 America: 1500 to 1000 b.c.  (Page 4/4)

Whether or not the Olmec civilization was imported or local in origin, there is no doubt but what this was the mother of all later true civilizations in Central America, including the Mayan. Probable extensions of the Olmec into more central Mexico are indicated by recent excavations at Chalcatzingo in the state of Morelos, about 85 miles southeast of Mexico City. Radio-carbon datings are from 1,170 B.C. on, and the findings include bas-relief carvings, platform complexes, etc., all typical of the Olmec style. It has been postulated that it was a center for controlling the trade of highland raw materials (obsidian, jade, iron ore and possibly cotton) and channeling these on to the Gulf coast centers. Contacts with nearby Oaxaca seem to have stimulated cultural growth there, as well (or was it vice-versa, as suggested by Grove?). At any rate, within a few centuries, Oaxaca, with its vastly greater resources and richer agricultural possibilities, with irrigation, actually began to be the dominant partner. (Ref. 81 , 45 )

Still another, separate culture is suggested by fairly recent excavations at La Victoria, Guatemala, where Micheal Coe (Ref. 36 ) has uncovered iridescent ceramic pottery as a unique technological feature dating from 1,500 to 800 B.C. This same unusual pottery has been found also in Peru, and it seems possible that the technology may have gone from Guatemala to Peru where the earliest dating by radio-carbon is 714 B.C. (+ 200 years). If this diffusion did occur, it was probably by boat for that is only a 1,300 mile sea trip and has been shown possible by Heyerdahl's raft voyage and the presence of ancient sherds on Galapagos Islands, which lie 650 miles off the Ecuador coast. Other pottery of Middle America was highly developed but had no local ancestry and Coe suggests that it possibly migrated down from the Woodland Culture of North America.

South america

Several of the immediately preceding paragraphs, particularly those concerning the possible cultural derivations from pre-Columbian European migration were applicable to parts of South America as well. We should now make some observations peculiar to the latter, however. For one thing, the South Americans did not have writing and why this did not arrive with other Mid-American cultural features, if there was indeed early contact, remains an enigma. As far as the illiteracy is concerned, however, we shall discover later in this text that illiteracy did not hamper the Scandinavian Vikings or the Mongol Khans. The most spectacular excavation, abandoned between 1,500 and 1,400 B.C. according to carbon-dating, is El Paraiso, near Lima, just three miles east of the ocean on the Chillon River valley. This consists of seven architectural units, of which one has been pretty well restored. The units were enormous buildings made of two rows of heavy quarried and roughly-shaped stone blocks cemented with unfired clay and the gaps filled with rubble. The buildings were of various sizes and shapes, some a thousand feet long; some almost square 165 by 132 feet. There were wide stair cases and various halls and rooms, some of which must have been for storage while others were for festivities and still others living quarters. A single building would reach thirty feet high. A similar building complex has also been found higher up in the valley, thirty-six miles from Lima. Trepanation and deliberate deformation of skulls (see also Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean ) was practiced frequently in this period. In the last chapter we discussed the "bean planters" of Peru. Archeology indicates that El Paraiso and all the bean planters' villages were abandoned at about the same time, apparently around 1,500 to 1,400 B.C.. No explanation has been found for this rather sudden and complete disappearance of this society, and furthermore it appears that the Peruvian coast probably remained deserted for one to three centuries thereafter. Skeletons supplied to physical anthropologists by Frederic Engel from the vicinity of the last of these pre-ceramic, bean eaters show the presence of a different ethnic group with cross-breeding, as evidenced by the presence of brachycephalic and mesocephalic skulls in addition to the older dolichocephalic. One can image that foreign ethnic groups may have brought a plague that killed the bean planters, but one cannot rule out severe climatic change as the cause.

Corn growing had appeared in the central Andes, both in the cordillera and on the coast by 1,500 B.C. Although previously used on the Caribbean coast, pottery does not seem to have been introduced in western Peru until about 1,300 B.C. Engle (Ref. 62 ) had found some in the central Peruvian lower Andes carbon-dated in the 3,300 to 3,500 B.C. range, so perhaps both corn and pottery were brought over from the eastern slopes of the mountains. Near Lake Titicaca and in the Cordillera de la Viuda, northeast of Lima, early types of pottery have been found dating between 1,500 and 1,300 B.C. and this pottery has subsequently been found everywhere in caves and rock shelters in the upper Andes. The corn raisers and pottery makers were apparently a new, migrating people, and did not represent merely a change in culture of the bean planters. Basically by 1,320 B.C. Americans ate corn as the Europeans ate wheat and the Asians rice. Seafood, especially shellfish, however, always played an important part of the Andes peoples' diets, supplying protein that they lacked in the absence of meat. A deep refuse midden on the coast of Peru has revealed a cultivated gourd, used for various artifacts in a fishing culture. These were only later found in Polynesia. By 1,000 B.C. Peruvians had hallucinogens and alcohol and were smoking cigars, although the leaf was not tobacco. (Ref. 62 , 95 )

Forward to America: 1000 to 700 B.C.

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