2.1 America: beginning to 8000 b.c.  (Page 3/3)

In eastern United States, some forty miles south of Pittsburg is the Meadowcroft rock shelter where remains of Ice Age man includes a bifacial projectile point which may be ancestral to the Clovis point. The carbon-14 dating of the hearth is 14,000 B.C. but some doubt if this date is correct. (Ref. 211 , 209 , 210 , 8 , 22 , 64 , 224 , 45 , 21 )

Concerning blood types, most North American Indians are exclusively type O but a few, such as the Sioux, Chippewa and Pueblo have 10 to 15% Group A while the rest are O. These may represent separate and later migration groups over the Bering land bridge, or, as shall be discussed later, possibly mixtures with Europeans or later Asiatics. (Ref. 21 , 155 )

Additional Notes

Mexico, central america, and the caribbean

The National Geographic Society (Ref. 155 ) says that artefacts suggest man's presence at Puebla, Mexico by 20,000 B.C. although such early dates are not universally accepted. The rock shelters near Tehuacan have been continuously occupied since 10,000 B.C. In Central America gourd and squash date to prehistory along with various wild forms of beans, lentils and chickpeas. (Ref. 211 )

South america

The tools of Pleistocene men who hunted camelids, sloths and perhaps horses have been unearthed at the bottom of a rock shelter on the western slope of the Andes cordillera. The presence of humans has been attested 13,000 years ago in Venezuela, Argentina and Peru. During the last phase of the Ice Age (the Wisconsin in North America) the Andean glaciers were as low as 11,000 feet and their melting later may account for the rarity of human sites during that chaotic period of terrific gorge flooding. After that, however, the Andes were certainly inhabited by numerous bands corresponding to the archaic societies of North America. In central Peru, at Chilca, where at 12,000 to 13,000 feet altitude only eight inches of rain fall in a year, caves with as many as fourteen archeological strata have been excavated. Perfectly preserved corpses of several people have been found indicating a stout but tall physique, varying from 65.2 to 69.2 inches in height according to sex, with long heads, protuberant jaws and strong bones. They had clothes made of cactus plant fibers or of reeds. Some had cloaks of vicuna skin, painted and sewn with the help of cactus spines. Weapons were slings and spear throwers with javelin points made from obsidian, basalt or quartz. Hand axes and scrapers were very similar to the European Mousterians', although separated in time by some 20,000 years. At about 13,000 B.C. the waters of the Pacific were some three hundred feet below present level, and at times since then they have been sixteen feet above the present level and have oscillated through the ages. This may have greatly disturbed the lives of the early dwellers by virtue of changes in the fresh water levels of the beaches of arid, western Peru.

Human living sites along with bones of sloths, horses, camelids and mastodons have also been found in the sierra region (the Atlantic Andes) of Columbia and Venezuela. Men may have reached the extreme tip of South America at Falls' Cave by 9,000 B.C. or shortly thereafter, but there may be some disagreement as to their origin. In this area Patagonian caves were inhabited during the high Holocene and immigrants from Australia or Southeast Asia may have entered the continent via Antarctica and the island of Tierra del Fuego. Still later other settlers came from the eastern Andes. On Tierra del Fuego the chief people were Onas - big, handsome men dressed in vicuna skins. They had domesticated dogs and poison arrows and removed their body hair with shells used as pincers.

The Lagoa Santa caves in Brazil show charcoal dating to between 18,000 and 20,000 B.C. and tools along with mastodon bones dating to 9,400 B.C. have been found in central Chile. El Ingo is a pre-ceramic site at an altitude of 9,100 feet in Ecuador, dating back to about 10,000 B.C. showing an obsidian workshop and hunting camp site. The tools show similarity to Folsom and Clovis points of North America. (Ref. 45 , 22 , 62 ) Additional Notes

It has been the belief of authorities in the past that all Central and South American Indians had the blood type 0 exclusively. Very recent ABO blood-group antigen and HL-A white cell studies indicate that this was not true of Peruvian and Chilean coastal peoples even at 3,000 B.C. Both A and B were found in mummies of Paracas, Huari and Ica while AB was found in these areas plus those of the Huacho and Nazca. Only the Inca mummies were 100% 0 and only five of these were studied. Of only four Chile Atacamenas mummies typed, all were type A. We do not know what this means, but it is possible that these studies are compatible with ideas of pre-Columbian diffusion from Europe or Asia, a feature we shall discuss later. (Ref. 3 ) Professor Frederic Andre Engel (Ref. 62 ) who has spent most of his adult life as an archeologist in South America re-emphasizes that although one must accept an Asiatic foundation, evidences of strong foreign influences appear almost everywhere in the Americas, even in pre-Columbian times.

Forward to America: 8000 to 5000 B.C.

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