Archaeologists dig up 1,400-year-old Native American canal in Alabama
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
I wonder why the latter are not as well known.
This researcher and a small team re-created a method to make Nazca lines in the 70's with the same tech that the Nazca civilization had. People make very complex crop circles all by themselves, too. It's simply a matter of a bit of math and careful planning and practice.
That lines up with what I suppose above. A few people, careful planning and a bit of basic math/surveying to make the Nazca figures.
But the Blythe Intaglios figures are much smaller, at 50 meters across I think I could probably make a figure like those by kicking around gravel for a day or two. No planning or math needed, I'd just eyeball it.
My findings include artifacts that are carved from stone and shell along with relics fired from clay with items that date back 10,000+ years per sources. Off topic and therefore not previously stated I only mentioned pre modern man artifacts given the discussion however I have located so much more. I live in the Eastern coastal mid Atlantic region of the United States of America which has a very long and documented history of human occupation, aka people losing things.
For those reading this that have wanted to find such an artifact I can assure that such things are everywhere however one just needs to invest the time to look and comprehend one's surroundings. Just as the article concludes "There’s more out there to be found, but they have to be looked for".
Thank you so much for the update and for saving my miserable life!
No life is miserable if one is motivated and capable of positivity but it is 2022 which is presenting more and more challenges to be that positive.
Stay Healthy!
but whenever I hear that sentiment I am usually reminded of this quote from Judge Holden in Blood Meridian:
"What is true of one man, said the judge, is true of many. The people who once lived here are called the Anasazi. The old ones. They quit these parts, routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders, quit these parts ages since and of them there is no memory. They are rumors and ghosts in this land and they are much revered. The tools, the art, the building — these things stand in judgement on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter. In their crude huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us."
For what it's worth, I live in the four corners area of the US and regularly see stone buildings that are hundreds of years old out in the desert, and the structure I live in is made of wood.
You probably know this as well, but for those that don't, the Anasazi are typically called "Ancestral puebloans" in modern literature because it's been well established that they didn't actually go anywhere, they're pretty direct ancestors of the modern puebloan nations (among others).
That said, I am a little up the hill where it's wetter (and will hopefully remain so). If we stopped upkeep on the place I live, I am not confident that obvious traces of it would outlast the cliff dwellings at, say, Mesa Verde.
My son was sent home with homework a couple years ago that spoke about the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe etc) all in past tense grammar. Meanwhile we have close family friends who are Ojibwe.
In Canada at least there has been a bit of a reversal in this trend, with more recognition of the present day nations. And in fact there's actually demographic growth among many first nations here, while the broader European settler derived society is in a demographic decline (solved only by immigration).
I still remember a unit in US history, in which we were asked to write an essay expounding on the evolving nature of woman's role in American society from the antebellum period through reconstruction (1820s-1890s).
I think just about everybody in the class interpreted the question as being one about "white" women, and wrote their essays accordingly.
The next lecture opened with this meta-fact, and rather than shame us about it, she used it as a wedge to open a discussion on how the overwhelming majority of writing on American history is authored from a male, generally Western European lens.
Most of our essays told of monotonically expanding rights and freedom (Seneca Falls was in 1848, the various feminist movements were gaining steam at the state level around property rights and suffrage). But this time period saw Indigenous women undergo the Trail of Tears and the institutionalization of reservations and forced relocation. It also saw enslaved women experience Emancipation only to be followed with the failure of reconstruction and the installment of Jim Crow.
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This was over 10 years ago, and I still remember the lesson in so much detail! And find it useful when reading history today. Every time we uncover a blind spot and cure some ignorance, we're making progress.
That's what really would be best, you know, if those whites would get off that stolen land and give it back to the Natives, you know?
I mean, there's just a connection between the historical homeland of a certain People and their blood that just shouldn't be violated, right? Demographically justice will be done when America is inhabited primarily by those who are Indigenous and have a right to the land. Descendents of Colonials should be removed and sent back to their historical homeland to make room for the Natives.
Or... purchased? Is there reason to believe in one vs. the other?
South America was more populated but also the European tactic was of conquest of the natives, not total eradication & displacement (although they did an effective job at those as well).
I went to a US public school in the South and also went to a private school. We spent most semesters of history learning about Native American civilizations, construction, and at one point had to build small-scale physical replicas of their cities.
That's to say, I don't really buy your explanation for the broader US. Maybe specific pockets. What I do think is more likely is that people believe that warring kingdoms were still normal back then and view Native American tribes as just that - kingdoms that were conquered. That much I can live with, but the constant lying and taking back promises we made to the Native Americans is absolute trash and should be rectified.
Wikipedia says:
"The loss of the population [due to disease] was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness". By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
Of course the Colonists knew that Native Americans existed. They interacted with them constantly.
Europe had some of the nastiest religious wars of conquest they've seen. Christians were fighting each other. Christians and Muslims were fighting each other. Christians and Muslims were enslaving White slavics. African kingdoms were fighting and enslaving each other. African Kingdoms were just starting to export slaves to Europe. It was a nasty time for most of the world, and the treatment that the Native Americans got was no exception. However, they were in a specially poor position to defend themselves.
Many of the Great North American civilizations had just collapsed due to climate change, and shortly thereafter they were ravaged by new diseases that they had no immunity to.
Neither side really understood what was happening.
The smallpox blanket warfare has very little historical evidence. It's also a far fetched thing to do centuries before germ theory.
México is not the US grassland, different geography, different groups, and therefore different consequences as the populations were wiped out by disease, infighting and war
Not to mention, simply because there still are a non trivial amount of indigenous groups, that doesn't mean that there didn't used to be even more variety that is now extinct
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics#/media/Fi...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30...
I am highly skeptical of these types of sentiments. They are simply projections of modern sensibilities to the period of European settlement.
At the time, might by right was the default in Europe, with near constant wars of conquest. outside of Europe, entire islands in the Caribbean were enslaved and depopulated.
Given this context, I don't think information about Native American towns was suppressed to protect the delicate sensibilities of the settlers.
We still do it today to different societies despite the fact that they can build rocket ships and nuclear reactors.
Humans have a inclination too think that their in group is superior to others
Well yes they have. That doesn't answer my question about the need or motivation for doing this.
> We still do it today to different societies
That's true, but disagrees with the original comment's claim: "They are simply projections of modern sensibilities to the period of European settlement."
> Humans have a inclination too think that their in group is superior to others
Yes, that's the dictionary definition of racism. The result of which is often justification to oppress the "inferior" group.
Many North American cities were built on top of or near where native settlements were. It was in the best interests of colonials and moderns to suppress or diminish findings.
That and North Americans were engaged in a long running cultural genocide based on a mission of Christianizing a 'primitive' people, which would have been undermined by recognizing this area as previously occupied by a settled agricultural societies.
https://www.amazon.ca/Cahokia-Ancient-Americas-Great-Mississ... is a great book on this topic written by an archaeologist who spent much of his life working around Cahokia. And he gets into this issue at length.
There were both. The effect of European filth and disease - both intentional (smallpox blankets) and not - preceding a policy of cultural genocide.
(Also, it was built so one of the easiest things to see from it was the cafeteria of the Costco next door.)
Heck, much of medieval Rome was built from salvaged masonry from ancient Rome. This is just pragmatism, not evil intent.
People remember great centralized empires. They remember societies with extensive written records. Cultures that impressed their conquerors. Areas with contiguity of centralized civilization. Monuments that are noteworthy on the global scale. When those things are missing, past societies fade into obscurity.
Even in Europe, ancient cultures are mostly remembered from their interactions with Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern societies. European history effectively begins with the spread of Greco-Roman influence, which in many cases was well into the middle ages. Whatever there was before is now mostly forgotten.
For any non-locals coming across this, the large canal going east-west through Mobile and Oyster bay is a recent, man-made canal [0]. Linking Bon-Secour river all the way down to Little Lagoon at that time would have been a significant improvement in ease of access to more abundant fishing grounds.
I bet the canal would spend a pretty long time in an intermediary state - not deep enough for canoes, but not dry enough to use as a footpath. But maybe there was a footpath beside the canal, as there are for more modern canals (towpaths)?
It’s much easier to float a canoe while walking next to it than it is to carry it.
Canoes make acceptable sleds in some situations.
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/us-coastline-to-see-up-to-...
Of course, during the Last Glacial Maximum, sea levels were 125 meters lower (~25,000 - 20,000 years ago), and there's a lot of evidence that the Americas were inhabitated by at least small human populations by then (although many of their settlements are likely now buried by marine sediments).
Makes me think it was used to float heavier stuff, like goods, wood, maybe even stone. Or for irrigation.
To demonstrate to everyone you don't understand what 'dredging' means?
Allow me to google it for you:
Dredging is the removal of sediments and debris from the bottom of lakes, rivers, harbors, and other water bodies. It is a routine necessity in waterways around the world because sedimentation—the natural process of sand and silt washing downstream—gradually fills channels and harbors.
what does dredging have to do with the article?
These archaeologists are doing great work, and so my remark was kind of a cheap shot and an over-simplification.
But the point still stands.