Thursday, January 14, 2021

Claim that Evidence shows 1st Americans came from the Pacific Coast

New Evidence Bolsters Theory That 1st Americans Arrived by the Pacific Coast
Gizmodo.com  by George Dvorsky  8/29/19

Archaeological evidence excavated in western Idaho suggests humans were in the region well over 15,000 years ago—prior to the opening of the massive ice sheets that blocked entrance into North America via the Bering land bridge. It’s further evidence that the continent’s first people arrived by traveling along the Pacific coast.


Prior to the Late Upper Paleolithic, humans had established a presence on every habitable continent on the planet—except North and South America. A gigantic and impenetrable obstruction known as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet blocked entry from Siberia into Alaska, preventing human migration into the New World.


But as the last great Ice Age ended, so too did this colossal barrier. Around 14,800 years ago, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet separated from its neighboring Laurentide Ice Sheet, creating an ice-free corridor that extended from Beringia through to what is now the Dakotas. This dramatic change in the environment has led archaeologists to surmise that the earliest migrants to North America arrived by traversing this corridor, in what’s referred to, appropriately enough, as the Ice-Free Corridor Hypothesis.


Trouble is, emerging archaeological and genetic evidence is increasingly pointing to an arrival date in North America prior to 14,800 years ago, leading to the Coastal Migration Hypothesis. Instead of traveling through the interior, this theory proposes a route in which the first settlers of North America traveled south along the Pacific coast, eventually surpassing the southernmost extent of the ice sheets.


New research published today in Science offers some of the earliest archaeological evidence of humans in North America, further bolstering the Coastal Migration Hypothesis. Working at the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho, a team led by Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University, uncovered stone tools, animal bones, traces of fire pits, and other signs of human occupation dated to between 16,560 and 15,280 years ago—several centuries prior to the appearance of the ice-free corridor.


“This is so cool,” Christiana Scheib, an archaeologist and paleogeneticist from the University of Cambridge, told Gizmodo. “This is a great example of the kind of archaeology we need happening in order to better understand the First Peoples in the Americas,” said Scheib, who wasn’t involved with the new study.


Archaeologist Alia Lesnek from the Department of Geology at the University at Buffalo, also not affiliated with the new study, said the new paper “presents an exciting new dataset that provides convincing evidence of human presence in modern-day Idaho as early as 15,300 years ago,” and that these results “add to a growing body of research suggesting that the First Americans arrived in North America by traveling along the Pacific coast.”


Last year, Lesnek and her colleagues uncovered potential geological evidence of an Alaskan coastal migration route that could have allowed humans to cross over from Eurasia into North America during the Ice Age.


But not everyone is convinced by the new evidence. One archaeologist we spoke to said more work will be required to validate the results presented in the new paper. The study describes findings from one of two excavation sites at Cooper’s Ferry, which has been investigated by archaeologists since the late 1990s.


“The Cooper’s Ferry site is located along the Salmon River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin,” said Davis in a press release. “Early peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they could easily walk and paddle in to North America. Essentially, the Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast migration route.” To which he added: “The timing and position of the Cooper’s Ferry site is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an early Pacific coastal migration.”




Buried within the deepest layers of the site, Loren’s team found hundreds of artifacts, including stone tools, fire-cracked rocks used in hearths, bone fragments from possibly prey, and other evidence of human occupation, such as areas used for processing food. Tooth fragments from an extinct horse were also uncovered, though its connection to the settlement is not entirely clear.


Radiocarbon dating of animal bone fragments and burnt charcoal suggests the site was repeatedly occupied between 16,560 and 15,280 years ago. “Prior to getting these radiocarbon ages, the oldest things we’d found dated mostly in the 13,000-year range, and the earliest evidence of people in the Americas had been dated to just before 14,000 years old in a handful of other sites,” explained Davis. “When I first saw that the lower archaeological layer contained radiocarbon ages older than 14,000 years, I was stunned but skeptical and needed to see those numbers repeated over and over just to be sure they’re right. So we ran more radiocarbon dates, and the lower layer consistently dated between 14,000-16,000 years old.”


The new paper subsequently challenges the longstanding “Clovis First” theory of North American colonization, which proposes that the first migrants to the continent arrived via the interior ice-free route, eventually reaching the Dakotas. What’s more, the authors presented evidence showing that the tools used by the Cooper’s Ferry migrants were of a distinctly non-Clovis-like nature. Specifically, these people employed unfluted and stemmed projectile points, and not the fluted, broad-based points indicative of Clovis culture. Loren and his colleagues also argued that the tools used by the Cooper’s Ferry people bear a striking resemblance to those found in contemporaneous cultures living in northeastern Asia, including Japan. This would seem to suggest that these early migrants retained knowledge of this technology as they settled into North America.


“My perspective is that Cooper’s Ferry is intriguing, but not paradigm-shifting.” Ben Potter, an archaeologist from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, had some issues with the new paper. “My perspective is that Cooper’s Ferry is intriguing, but not paradigm-shifting,” Potter told Gizmodo. “Much more work needs to be done to establish the nature and age of the occupations.”


Potter expressed concerns about the layer itself, which he described as a hodge-podge of “multiple potentially overlapping components over four thousand years.” He also didn’t love the fact that the majority of dates established within the investigated layer were less than 13,800 years old (10 out of the 18 ages reported). There is “no good reason to hypothesize occupation” at more than 16,000 years ago “because of a few widely scattered charcoal fragments not directly linked to cultural feature, and one from a feature with much later ages,” he said. The date presented in the study most closely linked with stemmed points at other sites, around 11,600 years old, or the oldest hearth with a few flakes between 15,000-14,000 years old, he said, do not “preclude passage through the Ice Free Corridor and/or the Pacific coast,” and by “no means do these data refute the [ice-free corridor] hypothesis. Both interior and coastal routes remain viable,” he said.


On a similar note, Lesnek thought it important to point out that the oldest age established for the site, at over 16,500 years old, was not established directly from material that was actually dated. “Rather, that age comes from a statistical modeling program that uses dates from the entire sediment layer to estimate when the event—in this case occupation by humans—began,” Lesnek told Gizmodo. “However, the statistical modeling program the authors employ is robust and widely used in archeology and earth sciences. In addition, even if the authors used the oldest radiocarbon date to determine the age of the site, that would put humans in North America by 15,300 years ago, which precludes that the initial migration to the Americas took place through the ice-free corridor.”


Potter described the comparisons of the stemmed points with Japanese tools as being “superficial and unconvincing,” without “any technological analysis to support the hypothesized connections.” Similarly, Scheib said this connection was “interesting,” but it “doesn’t mean that these people came directly from there,” she told Gizmodo.


Scheib, who studies the DNA of America’s first people, said an early genetic split occurred among North America’s first settlers, and it may have happened around the time of the Cooper’s Ferry settlement. “One group is associated with Clovis tools and related to modern Central and South Americans and the other is related to modern North Americans,” Scheib told Gizmodo. “It would be very interesting to know whether the early people at Cooper’s Ferry are genetically more like one or the other. Or if this is the time when these two groups are actually becoming distinct entities.” Genetic evidence from Cooper’s Ferry—which has yet to be uncovered—could tell us more about how and where these two populations diverged, she said. Finding DNA could be tough but not impossible.


“The cultural material at Cooper’s Ferry was only accessible due to the construction of a road in the 1930s, which removed about 15 feet of sediment,” Lesnek told Gizmodo. “It may very well be that other ancient archeological sites are buried across North America, but we haven’t found them yet.”


Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Did an Agricultural Society become dominant 5,000-10,000 Years Ago


From the Associated Press By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – Monday, March 7, 2011 

WASHINGTON – Thousands of years ago, our ancestors gave up foraging for food and took up farming, one of the most important and debated decisions in history.

Was farming more efficient than foraging? Did the easily hunted animals die out? Did the environment change? A new study by Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico argues that early farming was not more productive than foraging, but people took it up for social and demographic reasons.

In Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bowles analyzed what it would take to farm under primitive conditions. He concluded farming produced only about three-fifths of the food gained from foraging.

But, Bowles notes, farming became the most common way of living between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago because of its contribution to population growth and military power.

Without the need for constant movement, child-rearing would have been easier and safer, leading to a population increase, Bowles said. And since stored grain might be looted, farmer communities could have banded together for defense and would have eventually pushed out neighboring foragers, he suggests.

Brian Fagan, a professor emeritus of archaeology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, called Bowles' ideas "provocative and fascinating." It had been suspected that the earliest farming was not necessarily more productive, said Fagan, who was not part of the research. "What he does is to draw attention to the social and demographic factors that contributed so importantly to the spread of farming," Fagan said. "This is a useful contribution to a debate about agricultural origins that has been under way for generations."

Samuel Bowles Abstract:

Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging
Did foragers become farmers because cultivation of crops was simply a better way to make a living? If so, what is arguably the greatest ever revolution in human livelihoods is readily explained. To answer the question, I estimate the caloric returns per hour of labor devoted to foraging wild species and cultivating the cereals exploited by the first farmers, using data on foragers and land-abundant hand-tool farmers in the ethnographic and historical record, as well as archaeological evidence. A convincing answer must account not only for the work of foraging and cultivation but also for storage, processing, and other indirect labor, and for the costs associated with the delayed nature of agricultural production and the greater exposure to risk of those whose livelihoods depended on a few cultivars rather than a larger number of wild species. Notwithstanding the considerable uncertainty to which these estimates inevitably are subject, the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the productivity of the first farmers exceeded that of early Holocene foragers. Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood.

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 87501; and University of Siena, Siena 53100, Italy
Edited by Henry T. Wright, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, & approved February 2, 2011 (received for review July 26, 2010)

Full article from The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the United States of America.

Monday, January 11, 2021

Ancient DNA retells Story of Caribbean's First People, with a few Plot Twists...

Ancient DNA retells Story of Caribbean's First People

Florida Museum of Natural History 3 Dec 2020

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- "The history of the Caribbean's original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new Nature study that combines decades of archaeological work with advancements in genetic technology.

"An international team led by Harvard Medical School's David Reich analyzed the genomes of 263 individuals in the largest study of ancient human DNA in the Americas to date. The genetics trace two major migratory waves in the Caribbean by two distinct groups, thousands of years apart, revealing an archipelago settled by highly mobile people, with distant relatives often living on different islands.

"Reich's lab also developed a new genetic technique for estimating past population size, showing the number of people living in the Caribbean when Europeans arrived was far smaller than previously thought - likely in the tens of thousands, rather than the million or more reported by Columbus and his successors.

"For archaeologist William Keegan, whose work in the Caribbean spans more than 40 years, ancient DNA offers a powerful new tool to help resolve longstanding debates, confirm hypotheses and spotlight remaining mysteries. "This "moves our understanding of the Caribbean forward dramatically in one fell swoop," said Keegan, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History and co-senior author of the study. "The methods David's team developed helped address questions I didn't even know we could address."

"Archaeologists often rely on the remnants of domestic life - pottery, tools, bone and shell discards - to piece together the past. Now, technological breakthroughs in the study of ancient DNA are shedding new light on the movement of animals and humans, particularly in the Caribbean where each island can be a unique microcosm of life.

"While the heat and humidity of the tropics can quickly break down organic matter, the human body contains a lockbox of genetic material: a small, unusually dense part of the bone protecting the inner ear. Primarily using this structure, researchers extracted and analyzed DNA from 174 people who lived in the Caribbean and Venezuela between 400 and 3,100 years ago, combining the data with 89 previously sequenced individuals.

"The team, which includes Caribbean-based scholars, received permission to carry out the genetic analysis from local governments and cultural institutions that acted as caretakers for the human remains. The authors also engaged representatives of Caribbean Indigenous communities in a discussion of their findings.

"The genetic evidence offers new insights into the peopling of the Caribbean. The islands' first inhabitants, a group of stone tool-users, boated to Cuba about 6,000 years ago, gradually expanding eastward to other islands during the region's Archaic Age. "Where they came from remains unclear - while they are more closely related to Central and South Americans than to North Americans, their genetics do not match any particular Indigenous group. However, similar artifacts found in Belize and Cuba may suggest a Central American origin," Keegan said.

"About 2,500-3,000 years ago, farmers and potters related to the Arawak-speakers of northeast South America established a second pathway into the Caribbean. Using the fingers of South America's Orinoco River Basin like highways, they travelled from the interior to coastal Venezuela and pushed north into the Caribbean Sea, settling Puerto Rico and eventually moving westward. Their arrival ushered in the region's Ceramic Age, marked by agriculture and the widespread production and use of pottery.

"Over time, nearly all genetic traces of Archaic Age people vanished, except for a holdout community in western Cuba that persisted as late as European arrival. Intermarriage between the two groups was rare, with only three individuals in the study showing mixed ancestry.

"Many present-day Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans are the descendants of Ceramic Age people, as well as European immigrants and enslaved Africans. But researchers noted only marginal evidence of Archaic Age ancestry in modern individuals.

"That's a big mystery," Keegan said. "For Cuba, it's especially curious that we don't see more Archaic ancestry."

"During the Ceramic Age, Caribbean pottery underwent at least five marked shifts in style over 2,000 years. Ornate red pottery decorated with white painted designs gave way to simple, buff-colored vessels, while other pots were punctuated with tiny dots and incisions or bore sculpted animal faces that likely doubled as handles. Some archaeologists pointed to these transitions as evidence for new migrations to the islands. But DNA tells a different story, suggesting all of the styles were developed by descendants of the people who arrived in the Caribbean 2,500-3,000 years ago, though they may have interacted with and took inspiration from outsiders.

"That was a question we might not have known to ask had we not had an archaeological expert on our team," said co-first author Kendra Sirak, a postdoctoral fellow in the Reich Lab. "We document this remarkable genetic continuity across changes in ceramic style. We talk about 'pots vs. people,' and to our knowledge, it's just pots."

"Highlighting the region's interconnectivity, a study of male X chromosomes uncovered 19 pairs of "genetic cousins" living on different islands - people who share the same amount of DNA as biological cousins but may be separated by generations. In the most striking example, one man was buried in the Bahamas while his relative was laid to rest about 600 miles away in the Dominican Republic.

"Showing relationships across different islands is really an amazing step forward," said Keegan, who added that shifting winds and currents can make passage between islands difficult. "I was really surprised to see these cousin pairings between islands."

"Uncovering such a high proportion of genetic cousins in a sample of fewer than 100 men is another indicator that the region's total population size was small," said Reich, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard. "When you sample two modern individuals, you don't often find that they're close relatives," he said. "Here, we're finding relatives all over the place."

"A technique developed by study co-author Harald Ringbauer, a postdoctoral fellow in the Reich Lab, used shared segments of DNA to estimate past population size, a method that could also be applied to future studies of ancient people. Ringbauer's technique showed about 10,000 to 50,000 people were living on two of the Caribbean's largest islands, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, shortly before European arrival. "This falls far short of the million inhabitants Columbus described to his patrons, likely to impress them," Keegan said.

"Later, 16th-century historian Bartolomé de las Casas claimed the region had been home to 3 million people before being decimated by European enslavement and disease. While this, too, was an exaggeration, the number of people who died as a result of colonization remains an atrocity," Reich said. "This was a systematic program of cultural erasure. The fact that the number was not 1 million or millions of people, but rather tens of thousands, does not make that erasure any less significant," he said.

"For Keegan, collaborating with geneticists gave him the ability to prove some hypotheses he had argued for years - while upending others. "At this point, I don't care if I'm wrong or right," he said. "It's just exciting to have a firmer basis for reevaluating how we look at the past in the Caribbean. One of the most significant outcomes of this study is that it demonstrates just how important culture is in understanding human societies. Genes may be discrete, measurable units, but the human genome is culturally created."

Daniel Fernandes of the University of Vienna and the University of Coimbra in Portugal was also co-first author of the study. Other co-senior authors are Alfredo Coppa of the Sapienza University of Rome, Mark Lipson of HMS and Harvard and Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna.

An earlier article from June 2020

Illustration of one of the early settlers in the Caribbean. Image credit: Tom Björklund.

Humans Colonized Caribbean Islands in Three Waves: Study

Jun 5, 2020 Sci News

An international team of researchers has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of 93 ancient Caribbean islanders and found evidence of at least three separate population dispersals into the region: two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean, one of which seems connected to earlier population dispersals in North America; and a third, more recent wave from South America.

The Caribbean Islands were one of the last regions in the Americas to be settled by humans.

The earliest archeological evidence suggests that the Caribbean’s first residents arrived roughly 8,000 years ago, and by 5,000 years ago, were widely dispersed.

However, how, when and from where the region’s first colonists came to the islands of the Antilles isn’t well understood.

Much of the Caribbean’s settlement history has heavily relied on interpretations from archaeological findings, such as the stylistic comparison of artifact collections between Caribbean sites and those from the surrounding mainland.

While these approaches have illuminated broad-scale population movements, many of the more nuanced aspects of Caribbean population history remain unknown.

To fill these gaps, Kathrin Nägele from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and colleagues analyzed genome-wide data from 93 ancient Caribbean islanders who lived between 400 and 3,200 years ago using bone fragments excavated from 16 different archaeological sites across the Caribbean.

The analysis provided new genetic evidence of at least three separate colonization events, including two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean – one of which was previously unknown and may have been connected to radiation events in North America that predate the diversification of Central and South American populations.

Afterward, a later expansion of groups from South America arrived and brought new technologies, including pottery, supporting previous archaeological interpretations.

“The new data give us a fascinating glimpse of the early migration history of the Caribbean,” said senior co-author Dr. Hannes Schroeder, a researcher in the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen. “We find evidence that the islands were settled and resettled several times from different parts of the American mainland.”

“Big bodies of water are traditionally considered barriers for humans and ancient fisher-hunter-gatherer communities are usually not perceived as great seafarers,” Nägele said. “Our results continue to challenge that view, as they suggest that there was repeated interaction between the islands and the mainland.”

“The new data support our previous observations that the early settlers of the Caribbean were biologically and culturally diverse, adding resolution to this ancient period of our history,” said co-author Dr. Yadira Chinique de Armas, a researcher at the University of Winnipeg.

The team’s results also revealed distinct genetic differences between the ancestors of the region’s earliest settlers and the newcomers from South America.

Despite coexisting for centuries, the scientists found almost no evidence of admixture, raising intriguing new questions about their interactions.

“Although different groups were present in the Caribbean at the same time, we found surprisingly little evidence of admixture between them,” said co-author Dr. Cosimo Posth, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

“The results of this study provide yet another layer of data that highlights the diverse and complex nature of pre-Columbian Caribbean societies and their connections to the American mainland prior to the colonial invasion,” said co-author Professor Corinne Hofman, a scientist at Leiden University.

The findings were published in the journal Science. Kathrin Nägele et al. Genomic insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean. Science, published online June 4, 2020

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Idaho Researchers look for Links between Clovis People & large Mammals on the Snake River Plain

By IDAHO STATE UNIVERSITY  Nov 28, 2019  

About 13,000 years ago on the banks of the Pleistocene American Falls Lake on the Snake River Plain, large “megafauna” mammals now extinct — such as mammoths, mastodons, camels, short-faced bears, dire wolves & saber-toothed tigers — lived alongside the Clovis people.

However, Clovis artifacts have never been recovered side-by-side with fossil remains of these extinct megafauna mammals, even though they’ve been found near each other.

Charles Speer, an Idaho State University anthropology assistant professor, along with colleagues at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, other universities & soon with ISU students, is engaged in research to document the link between the artifacts of the Clovis people & these extinct animals that populated the area during the same time period.
Charles Speer holds part of a mammoth fossil recovered at the 2018 ISU Archaeology Field School site in the Magic Valley near Kimberly. Next summer, Speer & the school will be working closer to home near American Falls Reservoir.

In a recently published paper on Clovis technology from American Falls on the Eastern Snake River Plain in the journal “North American Archaeologist,” Speer & colleagues detailed the potential for making new scientific findings that can shed light on this period of history in eastern Idaho. This potential includes discovering new information on the area’s climate, animals & people; all of which provides the rationale for thoroughly excavating a site in the area.

“We don’t have a connection in the Snake River Plain between Clovis stone tools, some of the earliest in North America, & the megafauna we have at the time,” Speer said. “We haven’t found any kill, butchering, or scavenging sites where we have the stone tools & animals in the same place. At the American Falls (reservoir) site, it is highly likely that we will find this connection. This next summer during the ISU archaeology field school in June, that is exactly what we are going to be looking for.”

The ISU researchers will be excavating a site down 8 to 10 feet below the surface. “The primary reason we are excavating is that the whole area is in danger of eroding away,” Speer said, noting the group has been tasked by the Bureau of Reclamation to recover as much as they can.

Speer explained that the climate on this portion of the Snake River Plain was likely colder & wetter 13,000 years ago. The climate was affected by the large glaciers to the north extending down from Canada only a few hundred kilometers away. Though the climate was cooler, this area was a magnet for the animals mentioned above, as well as familiar species still making the region home like mule deer, antelope, bison & elk.

“People camped out there, made their tools & hunted the animals. We really just want to make that connection showing they were exploiting these extinct animals because that is a big missing piece,” Speer said.

Studying the climate at the time & potential kill sites can help answer a host of questions about this area’s history.  “We are interested in the animals that died off right when this Clovis culture was at its peak,” Speer said. “We ask questions like ‘did these people kill all these animals, was it climate change or was it both?’ In North America alone, 90 genera of animals over 100 pounds died off during the Clovis period at the close of the Pleistocene 11,700 years ago,” Speer said. This included horses, that flourished when re-introduced 500 years ago by Europeans.

The researchers also are interested in how human beings reacted to climate change during this period, which was right at the end of the Pleistocene period, after which the climate warmed & dried considerably.

In addition, the researchers will be looking for evidence of a culture older than the Clovis living in eastern Idaho.  “Clovis for the longest time was thought to be the oldest culture in North America but know we know it is not,” Speer said. “Researchers in western Idaho have been excavating the Cooper’s Ferry site that is associated with a projectile point style called ‘Western Stemmed’ that is both contemporaneous & potentially older than Clovis. Additionally, they have recovered artifacts several thousands years older which we hope to also discover & fill in the missing pieces with here.”

“We are hoping to see an overlap & connection between the two,” Speer continued, “because we are right on this boundary where to the east you have Clovis in abundance & to the west we have Western Stemmed in abundance, but we don’t have any sites where the two are mixed up. We are also hoping to see the site stretch back in time to 17,000 or 18,000 years ago.”

The researchers will turn over any artifacts found at the site to the Idaho Museum of Natural History, which already has more than 10,000 specimens of megafauna that lived in the area & a collection of Clovis artifacts from the American Falls area.

Friday, January 8, 2021

Terms associated with Researching Peoples in the Prehistoric Americas


As a historian of North America during the period when Europeans began to colonize the area now the USA, I am intrigued with, almost obsessed with, when mankind 1st appeared in The Americas, in North America, & especially in the Atlantic coast area later settled by European colonists. 

How did these early peoples try to gain some control over the weather patterns & geography? Did they create physical spaces to meet their basic needs for shelter, food, family, health, & safety. How did they organize their society & culture? Did they migrate on foot or water to these sites? Did they create myths & religions? 

Mankind has a history of constant migration, confrontation, & adaptation for hundreds of thousands of years. And, of course, different populations around the planet adapted to different conditions in different ways. If we are trying to trace early inhabitants of the Americas, we need to become familiar with the terms used to describe the period before written history. BWS

Arable: Land favorable to the cultivation of crops or land upon which crops are grown.

Archaic: The Archaic cultural period (7500 B.C. to 1000 B.C) is divided into subperiods
Early Archaic (7500 B.C. - 6000 B.C.),
Middle Archaic (6000 B.C. – 3500 B.C.) and
Late Archaic (3500 B.C. – 1000 B.C.) sub periods.

Archaeobotany: Or Paleoethnobotany is the study of archaeologically-recovered plant artifacts to
interpret how people in the past used and interacted with plants.

Clovis: A distinct Paleoindian group originally named for a distinctively shaped fluted stone spearpoint used to hunt megafauna. The Clovis people are generally regarded as the earliest human inhabitants of the New World.

Cultivation: The act of growing plants.

Dichotomous Key: Is a tool that allows the user to determine the taxomonic identity of items in the natural world, such as plants and animals. The key is a written device constructed from a series of organized statements which represent mutually exclusive choices. Identification is made by selecting choices based on the user’s comparisons with unknown specimen until a conclusion is reached.

Domestication: The process through which a plant (or animal) is adapted to life in close association with and to the benefit of humans.

Eastern Woodlands: The temperate forests zones of eastern North America stretching from the
Mississippi River east to the Atlantic ocean, and excluding the tropical forests of the south.

Extinct: A plant or animal species which no longer exists.

Extirpated: A local extinction, where a species ceases to exist in one area, but still exists elsewhere.

Flotation: A process to separate organic remains from archaeological soils.

Holocene: Is a geological epoch which began approximately 10,000 years ago and continues into the
present.

Horticulture: The art and science of growing plants.

Husbandry: The act of caring for or managing plants and animals for human benefit.

Little Ice Age: A modest cooling of the northern hemisphere following a warmer era (the Medieval
Warm Period) and spanning from the 1500’s through the mid 19th century.

Ice Age: A geologic period of long-term reduction in the Earth’s temperature which results in an
expansion of the continental and polar ice sheets.

Light Microscope: Or optical microscope is a type of microscope which uses visible light and a system of lenses to magnify images of small specimens.

Mantle: A thick layer of molten rock on which the earth’s crust floats.

Megafauna: Specifically, the Pleistocene Megafauna, the giant land animals of the last ice age like
mammoth, mastodon and giant bear which are now extinct.

Morphology: The form (structure, shape, color, pattern) of an organism or of a part of an organism.

Non-Indigenous: A plant or animal species that is introduced to a geographical area. Not native, an alien or exotic species.

Paleoethnobotany: Or Archeobotany is the study of archaeologically-recovered plant artifacts to
interpret how people in the past used and interacted with plants.

Paleoindian: The Paleoindian cultural period (10000 B.C. to 7500 B.C.) was a time of radical climatic change at the transition of the Pleistocene to the Holocene at the end of the last ice age.

Palynology: Is the science that studies fossil pollen and other palynomorphs (tiny organic-walled
micro-fossils).

Phytolith: Or plant opal silica bodies are rigid microscopic structures that occur in many plants. Silica Phytoliths vary in size and shape based on the plant taxon and plant part (root, stem, seed) from which they derive.

Radiocarbon Dating: A method of radiometric dating that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbon-rich itens. Raw (or uncalibrated) radiocarbon ages are reported in radiocarbon years Before Present (BP) (1950). Raw ages can be calibrated to give calendar dates in years A.D. (Anno Domini) or B.C. (Before Christ).

Reference Collection - Botanical: A collection of botanical specimens arranged and maintained in a herbarium for comparative purposes to aid in the identification of archeobotanical artifacts. Materials in an Archeobotanical Reference Collection are often treated to simulate archaeological conditions such as carbonization or water-logging.

Scanning Electron Microscope: A type of microscope that uses electrons to illuminate a specimen and create an enlarged image. Electron Microscopes can obtain much higher magnifications than light microscopes.

Starch Grain Analysis: A methodology that uses microscopic starch residues preserved on artifacts (and in soils) to understand past plant use.

Tidewater: Applies to all geographic areas of Maryland where waterways are affected by tidal influence.

Wisconsin Glaciation: The most recent glacial period which began about 110,000 years ago, reached its maximum extent between 18,000 and 20,000 years ago, and ended between 10,000 and 15, 000 years ago.

Woodland: The Woodland cultural period (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1600) is divided into subperiods
Early Woodland (1000 B.C. – A.D. 200),
Middle Woodland (A.D. 200 – A.D. 900)
Late Woodland (A.D. 900 – A.D. 1650)

Thanks to Maryland's Jefferson-Patterson Park & Museum for their assistance.

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Flight into Egypt - by Boat!!

1600, attributed to Ludovico Carracci, Flight into Egypt
Luca Giordano (Italian artist, 1634–1705) The Flight into Egypt
Maarten de Vos (Flemish painter, 1532-1603) Return from the Flight into Egypt

Flight into Egypt - Paintings

 Guido da Siena, (1225-1280) Flight into Egypt
 Guido da Siena, (1225-1280) Flight into Egypt
 1308 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Flight into Egypt
 1398 Melchior Broederlam (fl. 1381–1409) Flight into Egypt
1423 Toppling of the Pagan Idols (Bedford Master). 
 1432 Flight into Egypt, altarpiece from Verdu, 1432-34, by Jaume Ferrer II known as The Younger (active between 1430 and 1460-1470)
 1450 Fra Angelico (1395–1455) Flight into Egypt
 1465 Vittore Carpaccio (Italian painter, c 1465–1526) Flight into Egypt
1494 Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) Flight into Egypt
 1500 Fra Bartolomeo or Fra Bartolommeo (di Pagholo) (1472–1517), The Rest on The Flight into Egypt
 1501 Jörg Breu the Elder (1475–1537) Flight into Egypt
 1515 Antonio da Correggio (1490–1534) Flight into Egypt
 1515 Master of the Mansi Magdalen (Netherlandish, active 1510-1525) Rest on the Flight into Egypt c 1515
1516 Hans Baldung (1485–1545) Flight into Egypt
 1520 The Rest on The Flight into Egypt by Anonymous, Northern Italy
 1525 Wolf Huber (1480–1553) Flight into Egypt
 1530 Master AB German School Flight into Egypt
 1530 Paris Bordone (Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1500-1571) Rest on the Flight into Egypt with St Catherine and Angels
 1545 Jacopo Bassano (Italian painter, 1510-1592) Flight into Egypt
 Francesco Bassano the Younger (1563-1570) Flight into Egypt
Francesco Bassano the Younger (1563-1570) Flight into Egypt
 1563 Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (Italian artist, 1563–1639) Madonna and Child The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
1596 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio 1571-1610 Flight into Egypt
 1598 Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish painter, 1598–1664) Flight into Egypt
 1600s Russian icon of the Flight into Egypt; the bottom section shows the idols of Egypt miraculously crumbling down before Jesus
 1616 Jacob Jordaens Return of the Holy Family from Egypt
 1700 Mancini, Francesco (1679 - 1758) Flight into Egypt
 1720 Giovanni Odazzi (Italian, 1663-1731) Rest on the Flight to Egypt
1828 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794–1872) Flight into Egypt

1480 Hans Memling (circa 1433–1494) Flight into Egypt

Through the Countryside - Flight into Egypt - Illuminated Manuscripts

The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  Harley 2877 f. 62v British Library

The flight into Egypt is related in the Christian Bible in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13-23). Joseph fled to Egypt with his wife Mary & infant son Jesus after a visit by Magi; when they learned that King Herod intended to kill the infants of that area.  When the Magi traveled search of the newly born Jesus, they had visited Herod in Jerusalem to ask where to find the newborn "King of the Jews." Herod reportedly became worried that the child would threaten his throne.  Herod decided that he needed to kill the newborn Jesus, (Matthew 2:1-8). Herod ordered the death of all infant males (Matthew 2:16-18).
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  Book of Hours

An angel warned Joseph to take Jesus & his mother into Egypt (Matthew 2:13).  “‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Hosea 11:1), ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’” (Matthew 2:13-15).  Egypt was outside the rule of King Herod.  Egypt & Palestine were part of the Roman Empire, linked by a coastal road known as "the way of the sea", making travel between them easy & relatively safe.  Church scholars and historians speculate, that the Holy Family spent a period of about four years in Egypt. After the death of King Herod, Joseph returned to Nazareth with Mary and Jesus (Luke 2:39 & Matthew 2:19-23).
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside Bibliothèque Stanislas MS 305

We are not told by Matthew exactly how long the Holy Family remained in Egypt, nor are we given any geographic information about their journey. The Nile River is not mentioned by Matthew. Although the expanded tradition is largely based on written accounts, physical sites that have been popularly associated with the Holy Family also play an important role in supplying further details. Sites made sacred because they are believed to have been touched by the Holy Family often feature unusual physical features. Some of these include miraculous hand or foot prints of the Christ child, unusually shaped trees thought to have sheltered the Virgin, or healing springs where the family quenched their thirst.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  1400s HM 1163 Book of Hours of Paris manuscript at Huntington Library at Berkeley online at Digital Scriptorium.

These sacred sites are scattered across the Nile Delta, & are found along the Nile as far south as Asyut.  Churches or monastic settlements mark most sites associated with the Holy Family in Egypt. The rich heritage of Coptic paintings, in particular icons & murals, is also an integral part of the network of belief & ritual practice shaped by the Coptic tradition of the Holy Family's journey in Egypt. The Coptic pictorial tradition is very conservative in nature. The iconographic image of the Flight has remained largely unchanged for the last 1500 years. It usually shows the Virgin holding the infant Christ, riding a donkey, & Joseph on foot.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  

In addition to the few depictions of the Flight that have survived from this long period, a much wider range of sacred images that do not at first appear to be closely tied to the journey of the Holy Family should actually be understood to be making a reference to their stay in Egypt. Just about any Coptic depiction of the Virgin & the Christ Child can be seen as having points of connection with the Holy Family's trip, & with the transformation of Egypt into a 2nd holy land.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside   Paris  Bibliothèque nationale de France Latin1156a

The Holy Family, according to Coptic traditions, seems to have spent most of their time traveling. Sometimes they are depicted in a boat on the Nile, but more often the Virgin & Jesus ride a donkey. It is possible to chart the Holy Family's journey through Egypt by combining written sources with sacred geographical sites.  The Coptic Church divides stages of the Holy Family's journey into 4 geographic groups, consisting of the coastal road linking Palestine to Egypt, the Nile Delta, the vicinity of greater Cairo & the Nile Valley.


During their travels, written Coptic accounts indicate that they received charity from pious strangers, but often they were without shelter, food or water. Most of the sites associated with the Flight of the Holy Family reflect some tribulation overcome by the Holy Family. For example, walking in the heat of the day, they find shade under a tree, which is blessed. When they are hungry, a palm tree bows down, offering its dates. Their thirst is quenched by local wells, or in more dire circumstances, by springs brought forth by the infant Jesus. When chased by thieves, a tree opens up to hide them. If there is no room in an inn, they sleep in a conveniently located nearby cave.

After each encounter, the tree, well, spring, or cave was thereafter endowed with miraculous healing power. In time, each became a place of pilgrimage that was marked by a church, monastery or convent, typically dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Hence, the Copts have a long tradition of venerating the Virgin (al-'Adhra). Indeed, such churches are found throughout Egypt. Though most are not actually associated with the Flight, their sheer number indicates the central position held by Mary in the devotion of the Copts. Six of the 15 largest Christian mulids (pilgrimage festivals) in Egypt are dedicated to the Virgin, & all but one are held at Holy Family sites.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside
  
Today, in Egypt are many of the world's oldest Christian Churches, not to mention the very foundations of monastic orders. Its traditions related to the Christian religion are deep & fundamental, expanding forward from the Flight to the early days of persecution, the legalization of Christianity, & it is central to the internal strife that eventually broke the religion into various segments.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  

A French tradition states that Saint Aphrodisius, an Egyptian saint who was venerated as the first bishop of Béziers, was the man who sheltered the Holy Family when they fled into Egypt.  It is also held that the Holy family visited many areas in Egypt including Farama, Tel Basta, Wadi El Natrun, Samanoud, Bilbais, Samalout, Maadi, Al-Maṭariyyah & Asiut among others.  It is also tradition that the Holy Family visited Coptic Cairo & stayed at the site of Saints Sergius & Bacchus Church (Abu Serga) & the place where the Church of the Holy Virgin (Babylon El-Darag) stands now.  At Al-Maṭariyyah, then in Heliopolis & now part of Cairo, there is a sycamore tree (& adjacent chapel) that is a 1672 planting replacing an earlier tree under which Mary was said to have rested, or in some versions hidden from pursuers in the hollow truck, while pious spiders covered the entrance with dense webs.
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside   Egerton 2781 f. 14 British Library

The word Copt is derived from the Greek word Aigyptos, which was, in turn, derived from "Hikaptah", one of the names for Memphis, the first capital of Ancient Egypt. The modern use of the term "Coptic" describes Egyptian Christians, as well as the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language script. Also, it describes the distinctive art & architecture that developed as an early expression of the new faith.
Gondarine sensul, The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside, Walters Manuscript 36.10, fol. 3v

The Coptic Church is based on the teachings of Saint Mark who brought Christianity to Egypt during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero in the first century, a dozen of years after the Lord's ascension. He was one of the 4 evangelists & the one who wrote the oldest canonical gospel. Christianity spread throughout Egypt within half a century of Saint Mark's arrival in Alexandria as is clear from the New Testament writings found in Bahnasa, in Middle Egypt, which date around the year 200 A.D., & a fragment of the Gospel of Saint John, written using the Coptic language, which was found in Upper Egypt & can be dated to the first half of the 2nd century. The Coptic Church, which is now more than 1900 centuries old, was the subject of many prophecies in the Old Testament. Isaiah the prophet, in Chapter 19, Verse 19 says "In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, & a pillar to the LORD at its border."
The Flight into Egypt through the Countryside  Paris BA 640

Although fully integrated into the body of the modern Egyptian nation, the Copts have survived as a strong religious entity who pride themselves on their contribution to the Christian world. The Coptic church regards itself as a strong defendant of Christian faith. The Nicene Creed, which is recited in all churches throughout the world, has been authored by one of its favorite sons, Saint Athanasius, the Pope of Alexandria for 46 years, from 327 A.D. to 373 A.D.