"Officials with the US National Park Service say a panel of prehistoric stone artworks, thought to be between 4,000 and 8,500 years old, have been 'irreparably damaged' by vandals at Big Bend National Park in Texas." Source: KWTX-TV.
"The ancient petroglyphs were defaced by visitors who scratched their names and a date into the rock, which is positioned in the Indian Head area of the archaeological site, the park service said in a press release..
"The names Norma, Adrian, Isaac and Ariel and the date 12/26/21 are visible in images of the defaced rock."
Petroglyphs on the Indian Head trail can be seen starting around 3:05. I think this was the same rock art that was defaced by these idiots.
Comment:The vandals in this case weren't too bright, to say the least. They signed their names and the date they were there, so hopefully the park service or somebody can track them down eventually and stake them out in the sun for their stupidity.
Spread out across the Midwest, Eastern and Southeastern United States, the Mississippian Culture (app. 800 - 1600 AD) was a sprawling collection of "urban settlements and satellite villages (suburbs) linked together by loose trading networks." (Wikipedia). "The largest city was Cahokia, believed to be a major religious center located in what is present-day southern Illinois."
I'm not sure if the Mississippian Culture qualifies as a "civilization" as such, but the people living in its scattered settlements and villages did share a common culture in many regards. They were all mound builders, for instance. They were maize agriculturalists, made shell-tempered pottery, created hierarchical chiefdoms with centralized political and religious control, and developed systems of "institutionalized social inequality," according to Wikipedia.
The Angel Mounds village covered around 103 acres, according to the Indiana State Museum. An "important religious, political and trade center for people living within a 75-mile radius," the village is thought to have been home to around 1000 people at its height. The site had "six large platform mounds (Mounds A through F), five smaller mounds (Mounds H through L), and at least one large plaza." Cahokia, by contrast, was much larger. "At its apex around 1100 CE, the city [Cahokia] covered about 6 square miles ... and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. At the apex of its population, Cahokia may have briefly exceeded contemporaneous London, which at that time was approximately 14,000–18,000." (Wikipedia)
There isn't much left of the Angel Mounds village except for its mounds, but the site has been a rich source of artifacts. "From 1939 to 1942, the Works Progress Administration employed more than 250 workers to excavate 120,000 square feet ... of the site, which resulted in the recording and processing of 2.3 million archaeological items." Though small compared to Cahokia, the Angel Mounds settlement was an important site connected to what appears to have been a very large and active culturally-interrelated complex that extended at various times from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
"Mississippian culture was not a single 'tribe,' but many societies sharing a similar way of life or tradition." (Encyclopedia of Alabama) Whatever you call it, though, it definitely wasn't a unified civilization of egalitarian traders and farmers living together in peace and harmony. Fortifications were common in Mississippian settlements. The remains of a stockade and defensive palisade at Angel Mounds, for instance, provide clear evidence that the people there had reason to be worried about attacks. Warfare was fairly common in the southeast during this time:
According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, "Significant warfare first began to develop among Georgia Indians in the Mississippian Period (A.D. 800-1600), a time when relatively large societies called chiefdoms evolved throughout southeastern North America. During this period defensive fortifications were first built around some towns.
"These included log palisades that completely encircled large towns such as the one at the Etowah Mounds in north Georgia. Palisades were often plastered with clay to keep them from being ignited by burning arrows. Sometimes they incorporated defensive towers (bastions) that allowed archers to shoot at enemies who got close to the wall. Ditches similar to moats were also dug around some palisades and were part of the fortifications of both the Etowah site and the Ocmulgee site at Macon."
"The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century." Source: Live Science.
Note: The theory here is that advancing glaciers during the so-called Little Ice Age (16th - 19th centuries AD, maybe) and "the increased gravitational attraction between the expanding ice sheet and large masses of sea ice" led to coastal flooding in the area of the Viking settlements in Greenland. Other factors such as social unrest, resource depletion and increased storm activity may have contributed as well, leading the Vikings to abandon their settlement rather than moving it farther inland. Scenarios like this aren't exactly new, however. The next video, for example, is from 2011 (closed captions helpful).
Missouri has a deep history. According to Wikipedia, "Archaeological excavations along river valleys have shown continuous habitation since about 9000 BCE. Beginning before 1000 CE, the people of the Mississippian culture created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois [next video]. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences. Still, they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast and the upper river."
"Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorousflightless birds that were the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal range covers from 62 to 1.8 million years ago." Source: Wikipedia.
Terror birds spread into North America around 2.7 million years ago after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama connected the two continents, leading to a cross-migration of flora and fauna known as the Great American Interchange.
It's possible that early humans coexisted with descendants of these monsters in South America. According to Wikipedia, "...reports from Uruguay of new findings of relatively small forms [of terror birds] dating to 18,000 and 96,000 years ago would imply that phorusrhacids survived there until very recently (i.e., until the late Pleistocene); the initial report of such a recent date has been questioned."
"Just before going into a hallucinogenic trance, Indigenous Californians who had gathered in a cave likely looked up toward the rocky ceiling, where a pinwheel and big-eyed moth were painted in red." Source: Live Science (2020).
"This mysterious 'pinwheel,' is likely a depiction of the delicate, white flower of Datura wrightii, a powerful hallucinogen that the Chumash people took not only for ceremonial purposes but also for medicinal and supernatural ones, according to a new study. The moth is likely a species of hawk moth, known for its 'loopy' intoxicated flight after slurping up Datura's nectar, the researchers said.
"Chewed globs that humans stuck to the cave's ceiling provided more evidence of these ancient trips; these up to 400-year-old lumps, known as quids, contained the mind-altering drugs scopolamine and atropine, which are found in Datura, the researchers said."
Described as an anticholinergic deliriant, sacred datura is extremely toxic. Deliriants are a class of hallucinogens which get their name from the fact that they induce a delirium rather than "the more lucid states produced by such other hallucinogens as are represented by psychedelics [LSD, for instance] and dissociatives [ketamine and others]."
According to Wikipedia, "The delirium produced, particularly by anticholinergics is characterized by stupor, agitation, confusion, confabulation, dysphoria, akathisia, realistic visual hallucinations or illusions (as opposed to the pseudohallucinations experienced on other classes of hallucinogens) and regression to 'phantom' behaviors such as disrobing and plucking. Other commonly reported behaviors include holding full conversations with imagined people, finishing a complex, multi-stage action (such as getting dressed) and then suddenly discovering one had not even begun yet, and being unable to recognize one's own reflection in a mirror."
Sounds like quite a trip if you're into this kind of thing.
Video from 2012.
The girl in the video above looks like a typical drug tourist, but she clearly recognizes the dangers involved in taking datura. For instance, she mentions at one point that the plant is sometimes used to murder people in Peru. That didn't stop her from trying it, though. Apparently, the trick to surviving the experience is to only deal with shamans who are presumably more trustworthy than your standard South American drug dealer.
Speaking of shamans, Carlos Castenada, well-known to old dopers, wrote a paper about datura (referred to as "devil's weed" by his supposed Yaqui shaman teacher, Don Juan) when he was an undergrad at UCLA in the Sixties:
"According to Castaneda's ex-wife Margaret Runyan (1921-2011), in her book A Magical Journey (1996) ... Castaneda's paper included references to datura's four heads, their different purposes, the significance of the roots, the cooking process and the ritual of preparation, all information that Castaneda supposedly learns later from Don Juan on visits between August 23 and Sept. 10, 1961, as described in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968)." Source: The Wanderling.
Datura is so dangerous I'm amazed that anyone would use it for recreational purposes. I'm even more amazed that the Indians would use it as a rite of passage for their children:
"Datura wrightii is sacred to some Native Americans and has been used in ceremonies and rites of passage by Chumash, Tongva, and others. Among the Chumash, when a boy was 8 years old, his mother gave him a preparation of momoy[a tea made from datura] to drink. This was supposed to be a spiritual challenge to the boy to help him develop the spiritual well being required to become a man. Not all of the boys survived." [Emphasis added]
"From hallucinogenic mushrooms and cacti to alcohol-infused enemas and psychoactive dried toad skins, the array of consciousness-altering substances that people in the early Americas used was wider than thought, a new report suggests." Source: Live Science.(2014)
Note: "At least 54 hallucinogenic mushrooms in the genus Psilocybe were used by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, and those mushroom species can still be found today in Mexico, according to the report. Psilocybin is the hallucinogenic compound in these mushrooms that produces mind-altering effects."
I've had some limited experience with magic mushrooms, but I always thought that the stuff about psychedelic toad skins was just a myth. It's for real, however, and the practice of licking toad skins (or taking the active ingredient in powdered form) to get high -- extremely high it sounds like -- has apparently become a fad in the United States:
"Comparable to the likes of ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, and mescaline, a new mind-altering drug is hitting the US psychedelic scene – toad venom. The drug comes from a rare species of toad native to the Sonoran Desert, Bufo Alvarius, which produces a venom known as 5-MeO-DMT: an extremely potent natural psychedelic. 5-MeO-DMT is about four to six times more powerful [!] than its better-known cousin DMT (dimethyltryptamine)." Source: Addiction Center (2019). Don't ask me why the Addiction Center has articles on non-addictive psychedelics.
"New research reveals ancestral puebloans in ancient Chaco Canyon interacted with local ecosystem to thrive for more than a millennium, but unsustainable deforestation practices likely contributed to destabilizing environmental impact prior to their final exodus." Source: Science Daily.
"...Chaco Canyon, a 34,000-acre center of social complexity located in the southwestern region of the U.S., flourished during the height of the Chaco culture between (800 to 1140 A.D.), a period [referred to] as the Bonito phase.
"During the cultural flourishment [sic], the hierarchical society was known for elaborate ceremonial activities, the maintenance of long-distance trade routes and impressive architectural complexes, including more than a dozen immense structures that ... archaeologists refer to as 'great houses.' One of the houses, known today as 'Pueblo Bonito,' may have had over 600 rooms, including crypts that housed more than 100 burials."
I'm posting this because I think it's interesting, not because I'm endorsing its views (or disputing them, for that matter). I'm not sure what the current state of research is, but the subject of Anasazi cannibalism has been in dispute for some time now:
"Archaeologists argue bitterly over whether the ancient Anasazi, the ancestors of today's Pueblo Indians, routinely killed and ate each other. From one point of view, the evidence seems overwhelming: piles of butchered human bones, some of which were apparently roasted or boiled. In one instance, ancient human feces even seem to contain traces of digested human tissue." -- quote from a now defunct National Geographic article.
"But from another standpoint, Anasazi cannibalism doesn't make sense. Eating people obviously isn't part of modern Pueblo culture, and local tribes are deeply offended by the suggestion that their Anasazi ancestors may have been cannibals. Many researchers argue that the marks attributed to flesh-eating could instead be created during slightly less gruesome activities, such as the public execution of suspected witches."
Comment: I have no idea whether the dispute has been settled one way or another. I only had time to do a cursory search, but the whole subject seems to have dropped off the radar. Whatever the case, the fact that these modern tribes don't eat people and are offended by the idea that their ancestors might have eaten people doesn't constitute evidence for or against Anasazi cannibalism. Those piles of butchered bones have to be explained somehow and I'm not sure that blaming them on "the public execution of suspected witches" does much to restore the Anasazis' image.
European sailors at the time of Columbus may have been aware of this New World.
The Vikings discovered North America around 1000 AD and one Italian scholar believes that the news of their discovery had already spread into Italy by the time Columbus made his historic first voyage almost 500 years later:
"New analysis of ancient writings suggests that sailors from the Italian hometown of Christopher Columbus knew of America 150 years before its renowned ‘discovery’." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Transcribing and detailing a circa 1345 document by a Milanese friar, Galvaneus Flamma, Medieval Latin literature expert Professor Paolo Chiesa has made an 'astonishing' discovery of an 'exceptional' passage referring to an area we know today as North America.
"According to Chiesa, the ancient essay – first discovered in 2013 – suggests that sailors from Genoa were already aware of this land, recognizable as ‘Markland’/ ‘Marckalada’ – mentioned by some Icelandic sources and identified by scholars as part of the Atlantic coast of North America (usually assumed to be Labrador or Newfoundland)."
Note: According to Wikipedia, "Markland is the name given to one of three lands on North America's Atlantic shore discovered by Leif Eriksson around 1000 AD. It was located south of Helluland and north of Vinland." Eriksson's voyage and a subsequent Norse settlement in the New World is described in the Saga of the Greenlanders.
The basic story of the discovery of Vinland.
Comment: The conventional story is that nobody in mainland Europe knew about the New World when Columbus set sail on Aug. 3, 1492, hoping to find a new passage to the Far East. If Professor Chiesa is correct, however, Italian sailors were already aware that a previously unknown continent lay to the northwest somewhere. They may have heard rumors from other sailors. Who knows? One way or another, the stories must have originated with the Sagas. I don't know where else the knowledge could have come from.
The question is how quickly the news of the Vikings' discovery spread through Europe and how many Europeans knew about it.
Lief Eriksson discovered North America around 1000 AD. The story of his voyages first appeared in the Saga of the Greenlanders, thought to have been written sometime during the 13th century. Then, sometime between 1339 and 1345, the Italian friar Galvaneus Flamma wrote a book called Cronica Universalis which apparently has a passage describing Iceland, Greenland and Markland. According to Professor Chiesa, this is "the first reference to the American continent, albeit in an embryonic form, in the Mediterranean area."
Galvaneus Flamma was just one scholar, though. The book he was writing, Chronica Universalis, a universal history, was apparently unfinished and it's hard to say where he picked up his knowledge about the New World. It's possible he was just reporting vague rumors he had heard:
"In translating and analysing the document, Professor Chiesa demonstrates how Genoa would have been a 'gateway' for news, and how Galvaneus appears to hear, informally, of seafarers’ rumours about lands to the extreme north-west for eventual commercial benefit – as well as information about Greenland, which he details accurately (for knowledge of the time)."
One way or another, the stories about this mysterious new land to the northwest that Galvaneus Flamma was writing about were "too vague to find consistency in cartographic or scholarly representations." It's very doubtful if these stories were common knowledge at the time. If Columbus had even heard these rumors, he probably didn't pay any attention to them.
I've read some of the log book entries, letters and dispatches from Columbus's four voyages and it's clear that he and his men thought they had discovered a new passage to the Far East. Later on they may have become aware that this wasn't the case, but it's hard to believe that any of them knew that the Americas were a new world when they planned and carried out their first journeys of exploration. Modern historians are still arguing over whether Columbus ever realized that he hadn't discovered India.