10.8 America: 500 to 401 b.c.

America

Back to America: 600 to 501 B.C.

North america

The far northern Eskimo Culture, the midwestern Woodland Adena Cultures and the southwestern Cochise traditions continued as before. In southern Utah's Barrier Canyon (now Horseshoe Canyon) on the Colorado River just before it goes into Arizona, rock paintings and figurines dating back at least to 500 B.C. have been found. They may date much earlier. Barry Fell (Ref. 65 ) has further astounding hypotheses dating to this century.

For example, he has identified a stone temple at South Woodstock, Vermont, to be of Celtic construction, dated after 433 B.C. and like others, oriented with its long axis at compass bearing 123 degrees, which is the horizon azimuth of the rising sun on the December 22 winter solstice, important in the Celtic religion. He says that many monoliths characteristic of any Celtic landscape are found in New England. And still more - Fell states that the Zuni tongue in Arizona is basically Libyan, taken from the limited, racy and colloquial vocabulary of Libyan navy men sailing in this century from ships of Tarshish or Carthage. He insists that the basic Zuni language of today is similar to Coptic, with borrowed elements from Spanish and English. One of the problems involved in accepting this is that most authorities do not think the Zuni existed as a definite people at this early time, and that they developed from the Mogollon Culture much later. (Ref. 195 , 65 )

Mexico and central america

The middle America "ball-game", a curious, violent cross between soccer, volley-ball and pelota seemed to have some religious significance and appears to have been developed by the Olmecs, although it became popular all over middle America by 400 B.C.

Costa Rica, on the narrow isthmus leading to Panama and South America has a long prehistory, but available artifacts date chiefly from 500 B.C. onwards. In a new chronology for Central America proposed by a seminar in 1980, the time from 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 500 in the Costa Rican story would be Period IV. At about 500 B.C. the Guanacaste-Nicoya and some of the Central Highlands-Watershed region were influenced by Mesoamerican culture, with production of the same red-on-buff pottery and a tendency for all settlements to prefer level, fertile land suitable for agriculture. (Ref. 265 )