"People in what is now Washington State were smoking Rhus glabra, a plant commonly known as smooth sumac, more than 1,400 years ago. The discovery marks the first-time scientists have identified residue from a non-tobacco plant in an archeological pipe." Source: Science Daily.
Sumac is an edible plant which can be chewed for its moisture or made into a drink similar to lemonade. The plant doesn't appear to have any psychoactive properties, but it is said to cause vivid dreams. Some sources claim that sumac is medicinal. According to Alternate Nature Online Herbal, for instance, "The active constituents in Sumac are being studied for use in many diseases some possible applications are in the treatment of TB, diabetes, and some cancers."
Information like this will be good to know when the economy collapses.
Note: "The discovery [that sumac was smoked in this pipe] was made possible by a new metabolomics-based analysis method that can detect thousands of plant compounds or metabolites in residue collected from pipes, bowls and other archeological artifacts. The compounds can then be used to identify which plants were smoked or consumed." (Science Daily)
"The peopling of the New World is still a controversial debate today. In fact, there is no consensus on whether the first settlers arrived in one or several migration waves. Nevertheless, most recent research based on genetic data supports the view that the New World was peopled across the Bering Strait about 18,000 years before the present (ybp). Some authors propose two routes for a rapid human expansion across the continent, one coastal and the other inland; although other alternative routes have been proposed. The hypothesis for the human colonization of America is largely based on the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which, from the very first studies, has shown that extant Native American populations exhibit six mtDNA different haplogroups (hgs). These can be classified into the following autochthonous hgs: A2, B2, C1, D1, D4h3, and X2a [1]. The fact that these lineages are restricted to a specific geographical area allows us to reconstruct the micro-evolutionary history of Mesoamerica and bordering areas." Source: PLOS ONE (2015).
[1] Most of these haplogroups are thought to have originated in various parts of Asia, though two of them (C and X) apparently come from the Near East and parts of southern or eastern Europe (the Caspian Sea region, for instance). This implies that there was a general eastward movement of peoples from all across the Euro-Asian continent which eventually led to the crossing of the Bering land bridge into the New World. Eastern European and Near Eastern peoples were probably involved in these migrations. Why not? Lots of hunter-gatherers were drifting east back then.
It's also possible that small groups of Polynesians crossed over to South America by boat and I still think it's possible that some Europeans may have reached the extreme northeastern coast of the New World, perhaps by following the north Atlantic ice shelves. The evidence for the latter is sketchy, though; if it exists it's probably buried in the sea off the coast of Newfoundland. If true, these theories would explain the early presence of people in Florida and the southernmost part of South America, but this is still mostly speculation.
"Corn cultivation spread from Mesoamerica to what is now the American Southwest by about 4000 B.C., but how and when the crop made it to other parts of North America is still debated. In a new study, scientists report that corn was not grown in the ancient metropolis of Cahokia until sometime between A.D. 900 and 1000, a relatively late date that corresponds to the start of the city's rapid expansion." Source: Science Daily.
Note: "Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact." (Wikipedia)
Maize (corn) is thought to have been domesticated in southern Mexico around 10,000 years ago. If the dates are correct, it took around 6,000 years for the cultivation of maize to spread to the American southwest and another 3,000 years for the crop to reach Cahokia in the midwest. This very slow spread can be explained, at least partly, by the fact that it took time for maize to adapt to northern climates, but it also suggests that the indigenous peoples of the ancient Americas were fairly static, spending most of their time in their traditional territories.
When maize reached Cahokia it was just a small village, but around a century later (or less) the settlement began to expand dramatically:
"Beginning in about 1050, Cahokia grew from 'a little village of a few hundred people to part of a city with 5,000 to 10,000 people in an archaeological instant' ... The population eventually expanded to at least 40,000. This early experiment in urban living was short-lived, however. By 1350, after a period of drought and civil strife, most of the city's population had dispersed." (Science Daily)
Video from 2010. Much of the evidence presented in this video has apparently been disproven by later research.
The theory that the ancient Polynesians reached South America before Columbus is based, in part, on chickens and sweet potatoes.
"Among the intriguing indications that contact might have been made between Polynesians and the native peoples of South America was the supposed pre-Columbian presence of non-native chickens, allegedly introduced to the continent by seafarers from South Pacific islands. More evidence comes from the ubiquity of the sweet potato, a South American native, in the South Pacific — it was already widespread throughout the islands by the time James Cook sailed into the region in 1770." Source: National Geographic 2014.
Since this National Geographic article was written, DNA research has apparently disproved the idea that the chickens studied in South America provided a link with Polynesia:
"Researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from 22 chicken bones found at Polynesian archaeological sites and 122 feathers from modern chickens living on islands across the South Pacific. They used an enzyme to remove any contamination by modern DNA that may have clouded the results of earlier studies. When the team compared the 'cleaned-up' DNA of Polynesian chickens with that of ancient and modern South American chickens, they found the two groups were genetically distinct." (National Geographic)
As for the sweet-potato connection, it doesn't hold up, either. According to Science Daily (2018), "New evidence shows that sweet potatoes arose before there were any humans around to eat them. The findings also suggest that the sweet potato crossed the ocean from America to Polynesia without any help from people. The discovery raises doubts about the existence of pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia and the American continent."
Video from 2014. Whether they got there before Columbus or not, the Polynesians definitely had the capability to reach South America.
According to a 2014 Science Magazine article, "Polynesians from Easter Island and natives of South America met and mingled long before Europeans voyaged the Pacific, according to a new genetic study of living Easter Islanders."
A later (2017) study, however, found that the people living on Easter Island before Columbus were genetically isolated:
"A study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology found only evidence of Polynesian DNA in human remains on the island that predate European contact in 1722." Source: New York Times (2017). According to the study, "We found no Native American admixture in pre- and post-European-contact individuals."
What's the truth? Who knows? The two DNA studies involving Easter Island directly contradict each other, so it would appear that DNA results aren't as conclusive as we've been led to believe. Whatever the case, though, it still seems highly likely, at least to me, that Polynesians reached the New World a long time ago. Considering their ability to make long sea voyages and spread from island to island across the ocean, I'd be amazed if some of them didn't make it all the way to South America. What kind of impact they had is another question.
Video from 2015. Bronze Age burial site. Southeast England.
There are dozens of different types of ancient burials. During some periods various cultures buried their dead in the ground (inhumation), sometimes reusing old grave sites for the purpose (secondary burials). In other cases, the dead were buried and left to decay, then their bones were dug up, wrapped in bundles and reburied elsewhere. Other cultures sometimes bundled or wrapped their dead for burial before rigor mortis had set in, and the ancient Egyptians famously mummified their dead. It was also very common in some cultures for bodies to be cremated with their ashes interred in urns. And sometimes the intact corpses were buried whole in urns.
Video from 2017.
Some cultures exposed bodies to the elements in platform burials. Platform burials are a form of excarnation or defleshing, a gruesome method for reducing a body to bones by leaving it exposed to the elements or wild animals or by butchering the carcass. Excarnation was apparently common enough that archaeologists have had to develop methods to tell the difference between remains that were defleshed for funerary purposes and those that were butchered by cannibals.
Sky burial, a form of excarnation, is still practiced in "the Chinese provinces and autonomous regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, as well as in Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, and parts of India such as Sikkim and Zanskar."
Burials are usually considered to be a sign of human activity, but evidence has been found in France that the Neanderthals buried their dead:
"A Neanderthal skeleton first unearthed in a cave in southwestern France over a century ago was intentionally buried, according to a new 13-year reanalysis of the site." Source: National Geographic (2013).
"Confirming that careful burials existed among early humans at least 50,000 years ago, the companions of the Neanderthal took great care to dig him a grave and protect his body from scavengers, report the study authors in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." According to this study, the find "serves to establish the existence of intentional Neandertal inhumation in the European Middle Paleolithic."
"The Wendigo is a horrifying creature of Algonquian Native American legends that would devour human flesh to survive a harsh winter. But are they only myth, or are there really cannibalistic humanoids waiting in forests for their next victim?" Source: Ancient Origins.
"The Algonquians are some of the most extensive and numerous of the Native American groups in North America, and they once lived all along the Atlantic Coast and the Great Lakes Region. However, Wendigo-like creatures are also found in the legends of other Native American tribes, including the neighbors of the Algonquians, the Iroquois. Amongst these peoples, a creature known as the Stonecoat bears some similarities to the Wendigo.
Note: "In some traditions, humans overpowered by greed could turn into wendigos; the myth thus served as a method of encouraging cooperation and moderation. Other sources say wendigos were created when a human resorted to cannibalism to survive. Humans could also turn into wendigos by being in contact with them for too long." (Wikipedia)
"It’s common to find, in the blank spaces of 13th and 14th century English texts, sketches and notes from medieval readers. And scattered through this marginalia is an oddly recurring scene: a brave knight in shining armor facing down a snail." Source: Smithsonian Magazine (2013).
"It’s a great unsolved mystery of medieval manuscripts ... Epic snail-on-knight combat showed up as often in medieval manuscripts as Kilroy across Europe. 'But the ubiquity of these depictions doesn’t make them any less strange,' says the British Library, rounding up a number of examples of the slimy battles."
The pygmy mammoth or Channel Islands mammoth .. is an extinct species of dwarf elephant descended from the Columbian mammoth ... of mainland North America. This species became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event in which many megafauna species became extinct due to changing conditions to which the species could not adapt." (Wikipedia)
"Mammoth remains have been known on the northern Channel Islands of California since 1856. They were first reported in scientific literature in 1873." These pygmy mammoths are an example of insular dwarfism, " the process and condition of large animals evolving or having a reduced body size when their population's range is limited to a small environment, primarily islands."
Note: Isolation can also lead to larger body sizes in some species, as shown in the next video.
"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."
"Evidence from the Cooper's Ferry archaeological site in Western Idaho shows that people lived in the Columbia River Basin around 16,000 years ago. That's well before a corridor between ice sheets opened up, clearing an inland route south from the Bering land bridge. That suggests that people migrated south along the Pacific coast. Stone tools from the site suggest a possible connection between these first Americans and Northeast Asian hunter-gatherers from the same period." Source: Ars Technica.
It's pretty clear now that the first Americans arrived by boat. The evidence shows that these prehistoric hunter-gatherers traveled down the western coast, establishing camps and settlements and eventually reaching South America long before the Beringia land route emerged near the end of the last ice age.
Video from 2017.
The Clovis-first theory is effectively dead. According to Ars Technica, "At this point, there's not really much debate about whether people had arrived in the Americas before the rise of the Clovis culture, the collection of tools and weapons once thought to represent the oldest human activity in the Americas. Clovis appears starting around 13,250 years ago, so some groups were clearly present earlier. Most of the debate now is focused on the route these earlier people took to reach the thawed, habitable parts of North America."