Earliest Known American Settlers Harvested Seaweed

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

May 8, 2008

People living in the earliest known settlement in the Americas harvested seaweed and other marine plants from a coastline more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, new research shows.

Scientists discovered several species of seaweed and marine algae dating back more than 14,000 years at the Monte Verde archaeological site in south-central Chile.

The findings suggest that these early Americans were beachcombers with a tradition of using coastal resources, says study lead author Tom Dillehay.

"At least some first Americans had a broad spectrum diet, because we're seeing that they exploited a wide range of resources from multiple environmental zones—terrestrial, coastal, and so forth," said Dillehay, an anthropologist at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University.

The results, which will appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, also support the theory that the first Americans spread through the New World along a coastal route after walking across a land bridge from Asia to Alaska at least 15,000 years ago.

(See an interactive map of ancient human migration.)

Rising Sea Levels

The discovery of a human settlement at Monte Verde in the mid-1970s provided the first evidence that people had inhabited the Americas before the spread of the so-called Clovis culture around 13,000 years ago.

Scientists were long mystified how people could have reached the southern tip of South America without leaving much evidence along the way.

But many now believe the first Americans spread down the coast where they could exploit the sea for food.

Read the full story here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080508-first-americans.html

Recently Excavated Headless Skeleton Expands Understanding Of Ancient Andean Rituals

Loading Image...

The head jar dates to Nasca 5 and contains the image of a head with a tree growing out of the top and branches extending around the vessel. The tree has eyes, and tassels hang from its branches. The nose is placed high on the forehead, and when the vessel is turned upside down a different face is represented with the nose in the correct anatomical position. The jar has repair holes along a crack in the back and small chips indicating that it was used before being placed in the tomb. It also has holes that are not along a crack or area of stress, suggesting that they were not used for keeping the vessel together with cord. (Credit: Christina A. Conlee)

Images of disembodied heads are widespread in the art of Nasca, a culture based on the southern coast of Peru from AD 1 to AD 750. But despite this evidence and large numbers of trophy heads in the region's archaeological record, only eight headless bodies have been recovered with evidence of decapitation, explains Christina A. Conlee (Texas State University). Conlee's analysis of a newly excavated headless body from the site of La Tiza provides important new data on decapitation and its relationship to ancient ideas of death and regeneration.

As Conlee outlines in the June issue of Current Anthropology, the third vertebrae of the La Tiza skeleton has dark cut marks, rounded edges, and no evidence of flaking or breakage, indicating decapitation occurred at or very soon after the time of death. A ceramic jar decorated with an image of a head was placed next to the body. The head has a tree with eyes growing out of it, the branches encircling the vessel.

"Ritual battles often take place just before plowing for potato planting, and trees and unripened fruit figure in these rituals, in which the shedding of blood is necessary to nourish the earth to produce a good harvest," Conlee writes. "The presence of scalp cuts on Nasca trophy heads suggests the letting of blood was an important part of the ritual that resulted in decapitation."

Read the full story here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070529101025.htm