7.8 America: 1000 to 700 b.c.

America

Back to America: 1500 to 1000 B.C.

North america

The far north and canada

The Arctic Small Tool tradition continued in the far north. Centered at the Fraser River delta about 1,000 B.C. and extending from southern Alaska down to northern California, was the Northwest Coast Tradition. Eskimo and Old Cordilleran traditions may have contributed to this society which included hunting and gathering of multiple river and marine foods - mollusks, salmon, halibut, whale, seal and sea otter. Out of wood the people made canoes, plank houses, carved household items and wooden slat armor that may have been derived directly from Asia. (Ref. 45 )

The united states

In the United States area, the Burial Mound I period of the Woodland tradition was typified by the Adena Culture of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Similar areas could be found, however, from Canada through Minnesota and down to the Louisiana-Texas border. The characteristic traits were woodland pottery, burial mounds, some as high as 66 feet, and the beginnings of agriculture. Indians lived in small, scattered villages with round houses, using wattle for walls and thatch for roofs. (Ref. 45 , 215 ) In southeast United States an Archaic type of culture extended throughout the period under review. Studies of remains have been made in the St. John River of Florida and the Savannah River culture of the river valley by the same name. The major weapon was a short heavy spear propelled by a throwing stick while bone fish-hooks, stone net weights and stone axes have been found. Fiber tempered pottery had been in use in this area for a long time. (Ref. 258 )

And now we must mention the recent and very controversial work of one Barry Fell. Professor Fell is a teacher of marine biology at Harvard University, but he also claims an extensive education in ancient Celtic languages at Edinburgh University and thus professes to be one of the few who can read ancient scripts in Celtic and other ancient tongues, including Egyptian, Phoenician and Libyan. It is his assertion that in various parts of the United States he has found stone inscriptions in those ancient tongues, seeming to prove that those people visited or even colonized parts of America in this early period. Of special note, in the time bracket of this chapter, is his claim of Phoenician inscriptions, written in the Celtic alphabet, at a site called Mystery Hill, New Hampshire, dated to 800 to 600 B.C. He feels that Goedelic Celts from Spain and Portugal explored and settled multiple areas in New England during the first millennium B.C. and that the Punic phase just mentioned undoubtedly followed an original Celtic occupation. In addition, he has allegedly translated the so-called Pontotoc stele of Oklahoma as an extract from the "Hymn to Aton", a chant of the pharaoh Akhnaton, dating from the 13th century B.C., although Fell says the Oklahoma version can scarcely be older than about 800 B.C., believing it was the work of an early Iberian colonist writing in the script from the Cachao-da-Rapa region of northern Portugal. Similarly he writes that the Davenport stele of Iowa has three separate scripts,- Egyptian hieroglyphics alongside Iberian and Libyan scripts. Previously these stelae had been considered as fakes. Fell's interesting hypotheses have not yet been generally accepted and seem to have been more or less ignored by the professional archeologists. (Ref. 122 )