Confusion about the "New World"
Incredible evidence is being uncovered further attesting to the will of humans to survive and prosper in any ambient we may encounter. The veil of confusion about the new World is slowly being lifted to recognize the incredible accomplishments of forest stewardship and ecosystem management by the Native Americans.
Ancient agricultural societies thrived in the Americas long before the first westerner placed a foot on its fertile ground.
In South America. the evidence is overwhelming and is dispersed from the Pacific Andean coast all the way to the mouth of the Amazon on the Marajo island. The civilizations uncovered on the pacific littoral zone have stifled naysayers with ancient terracing and irrigation systems that rival modern day agricultural systems. The most incredible part is that each ancient city uncovered specialized in a certain crop or service and used this as their currency. Cotton would be traded for corn, shellfish, sardines or viceversa . Discoveries of these artifacts that came from other sides of the continent demonstrate the extensive commerce that existed in its time.
Of course the most obvious . Cuzco, the city of the Incas although relatively modern compared to other ancient cultures discovered, Is phenomenally constructed with unions of several ton finely shaped boulders. So perfectly molded that even today's masons would have a hard time reconstructing without years of man/hours or heavy machinery. The Incan empire spread over thousands of kilometers with each settlement that provided something different for the whole empire. Each colony acting as an appendage of the whole.
These people must have come from somewhere. The very fact that mountain dwellers have skeletal differences that aid them to life In high altitude is a testament to the amount of time that the people have been residing there. This complex culture did not just rise out of the dust in one hundred years but was the climax of thousands of years of civilization quite different from what we know.
So why is it so hard to believe that the Amazon River Basin was populated by agricultural societies? The harsh nature of the tropical rain forest itself is not conductive to large settlements. Or is it? The unknown always strikes fear, with fear comes excuses and reasons why it cant be done.
Recent research has shown ancient geoglyphs that are remnants of urban centers that only left behind the raised land and deep cut channels that were causeways or irrigation ditches . The formations in Acre Brazil span over quite a distance that would indicate large populations. Acre is not alone, even more information comes out about the department of Beni in Bolivia were tremendous mounds were built in lowland to hold houses and managed forests. Some middens (garbage dumps) have an archaeological strata that extends over 11,000 years of age, filled with shellfish remains and other common refuse like broken pottery.
Geoglyphs on google earth in Brazil http://www.jqjacobs.net/archaeology/geoglyph.htmlThe rich black agricultural earth known as terra preta can be found all throughout the Americas. This terra preta is not a natural occurrence , the matrix consists of a very high organic content mixed with charcoal and pottery. The charcoal and pottery shards give the organic material somewhere to cling onto, otherwise it would be washed away in the rains. Ancient communities formed these parcels for the extensive agricultural production of its time. It is thought that the microbes in this soil are so specialized, that they are used to make terra preta in undesirable soil. Some parcels are miles long that would have been able to produce food for thousands if not hundreds of thousands individuals. From NY to Rondonia Brazil, the terra preta is real, and still growing.Terra preta or black dirt
Speaking of agriculture, lets consider some of the plants from the Americas that seem too good to be true. For example, maize, tomatoes, yucca, pineapple, sweet peppers, potatoes, soursops, papayas,peach palms and many more.
These plants are the experiments from the worlds oldest agronomists which resided in central and South America ten thousand years ago. To this day, we still cannot reproduce the experiment which gave humans maize. Maize has one wild relative which barely resembles its modern cousin. How on earth did they do it? All of these plants must be planted by humans. You cannot find a papaya tree in the middle of the forest nor can you find pineapple or maize outside of cultivation. ( by the way maize is what English speakers know as "corn". Corn was a term used in old England for any grains in storage)
Oaxaca Mexico is claimed to be the home of the domestication of Maize. There are farmers still to this date that grow corn that can only be found in Oaxaca. In Oaxaca, you can find over thirty different varieties that each have their purpose. One is for flour, another is for chicha another's for special tortillas , another for tamales etc.
Strangely enough, yucca was the replacement for Maize in Amazonia. Also curiously enough there are over twenty varieties of yucca that can be planted and each has their specific use, one for boiling, another for making yucca starch, another for making masato beer and so on.
Why so much agricultural diversity for hunter/gatherers? What would a hunter gatherer gain from having several varieties of yucca to choose from. After all hunter gatherers are nomadic and don't live in urban complexes right?
The horrible truth is that the hunter gatherer Native American that we know of is the product of disease introduced by European settlers. and livestock (pigs in general) . The abundance of animals noted in the 1800s by European explorers is a direct result of removing a keystone species from its environment. The keystone species being the Native peoples that managed their property to suit their needs.
Definition KEYSTONE SPECIES : a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically.
Huge examples of species affected by the loss of Natives : Buffalo, passenger pigeon and elk, all had exponential population growths after 95% of the native population had dissapeared.
North ,Central and South America was teeming with human life long before we ever thought. These civilizations shaped and molded the land they lived in to suit them. The Beni in Bolivia, prairies and grasslands of the west, pitch pine forests of the east are all fire dependent communities due the constant burning by Native induced fires. The indigenous people intentionally burned the land around them to suit their agricultural and land management needs. The prairies were the largest game farm in the world! Burned to suit the prairie grass which in return feeds the enormous herds of bison and pronghorn.
The eastern woodlands as described by early settlers seemed like open parks with big trees but no undergrowth to it. Strangely the trees would all be charred at the base but alive and well. Back in those days, the range of the bison was extended tremendously. They ranged from the Rocky Mountains to New York State hence the name of the town in the west "Buffalo". The practice of burning by natives is not new. All this and more can be found in early accounts of European settlers.
Does all this sound like something created by thoughtless, cannibalistic savages? Absolutely not. Ethically and morally it is less evil to replace animals instead of humans. For these reasons, the intricate history of Native Americans has been mangled and dismantled through religion and politics. Belittling the indigenous as sub human, justified the atrocious acts that followed colonization. ( Even to this day this attitude persists in Peru and Brazil to voluntary isolated tribes or de tribalized descendants )
The sad truth is that the natives of the Americas were living in a paradise of abundance before contact with westerners. The Spanish when conquering the Aztecs, were in awe of the ornately designed temples, straight clean roads and the absence of feces in the streets! Yes, that is right the natives did not poop in the streets like their civilized cousins across the Atlantic.
Think about it, if an infectious disease suddenly showed up in your town and there is no idea of quarantine. The people would start dropping like flies and survivors would have to disperse or perish along with their neighbors. All it takes is one infected person to walk into a town where the disease does not exist to spread it around. Soon living in urban areas becomes a danger and survivors disperse. It has been shown that there is basically no immunity to smallpox for Native Americans. Their immune systems do not have the tools to recognize the disease so they are destined to succumb to the introduced pathogen. ( Not to be mistaken with genetic inferiority )
The survivors would be the individuals that got out of urban complexes and started living in the hunter gatherer mode that we know of today . This is why there are so many variations of dialects of indigenous languages. This is why we today believe that Native Americans lived like"savages " as early European explorers described them.
There is much more evidence such as knowledge of plants for medicine, construction or the intensive weaving performed by many cultures. Another solid example is the hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca. It is a two part recipe. Either plant taken alone does absolutely nothing, when combined, they give the drinker a "3rd eye, kundalini, out of body " experience. This was reserved for the shamans of the communities , how out of tens of thousands of plants did they come up with that brew, by chance, by trial and error of tens of thousands of years?
Little by little the understanding of our history as humans is revealing how complex that it is and not as we were taught years ago. With DNA sequencing and better extraction techniques we learn more everyday. For example, aboriginal DNA was found in natives in the southern most part of Chile and some tribes of Amazonia. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dna-search-first-americans-links-amazon-indigenous-australians-180955976/
Is it possible the Natives that colonized South America didn't come across ice bridges of the Bering sea? Is it that hard to believe that groups of nomadic sailors looking for something better crossed from Oceania? I personally do not think it was impossible. Look at what overpopulation in Europe did for the first European explorers. Do not underestimate the intelligence of Indigenous persons, they do what they can with what they have. They have encyclopedic knowledge of their surroundings and are ever more observant than an individual who has severed their existence with the natural world.
What I would like you to understand after reading this is that the existence of savage cannibalizing natives came after contact and destruction of the very fabric of their complex agricultural society. Steeping them into a Lord of the flies syndrome-complex that will span ten generations or more until modern day.
Quite possibly more people lived in North and South America 5000 years ago than there is today.
The people we know as indigenous Americans are victims of unintended biological warfare.
If the Natives were the savages they are painted to be, do you really think the first explores would have made it back to Europe...I think not.
Would we have a story about the pilgrims being helped by Natives?
NO! they would have been seasoned and cooked faster than one could say....Mayflower...
Things we can do to help indigenous peoples that still suffer from this type of colonial takeover:
Divest in Gold
Divest in fossil fuels
Divest in exotic lumber trades
Hold big companies and governments responsible for acts of corruption
Find sustainable alternatives to all of the above
Indigenous peoples are still suffering here in the Amazon as the grown pressure of the modern world encroaches on their territories. Just recently illegal miners in Brazil Murdered Native that were protecting their legal land given to them by the Brazilian govenrment. Just this year the Brazilian government cut 1.5 million dollars from the main Indigenous affairs office. they were left with a mere $500,000 to protect millions of acres of indigenous lands. They basically took away any tool the natives had to prosecute illegal loggers or miners.
Thanks Brazil! you can be sure there will be no justice for those families, without money to bribe, there is no justice for indigenous peoples, same in Peru