20 José de Acosta wrestles with question: Acosta 2002:51–74 (“contradict Holy Writ,” “Europe or Asia,” 61; “must join,” 63; refutation of Lost Tribes theory, 71–72).
21 Candidate ancestors: Wauchope 1962:3. The full list of candidates is even longer, but some pride of place should be given to the Welsh, who have had a widespread following for two hundred years. As Lewis and Clark began their journey across the continent, Thomas Jefferson tried to put them in contact with a man who had come from Wales to search for errant bands of Welsh-speaking white Indians (Letter, Jefferson, T., to Lewis, M., 22 Jan. 1804, available from the Library of Congress at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(
[email protected](je00060). See also, Williams 1949a, 1949b. In an earlier article (Mann 2002c), I incorrectly wrote that Jefferson himself had instructed them to look for Welsh Indians.
22 Most widely accepted answer: Hrdlička 1912 (“the most widespread theory, and one with the remnants of which we meet to this day, was that the American Indians represented the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel,” 3); Kennedy 1994:225–31 (Mormons); Hallowell 1960:4–6 (Penn, Mather). See also, Parfitt 2002.
23 Lost Tribes of Israel: II Kings 17:4–24, 18:9–12 (“So was Israel,” 17:23); II (or IV) Esdras 13:39–51 (“a distant land,” 42–48); Ezekiel 37:15–26 (“take the children,” 21); Jeremiah 13:11, 33:7–8. All quotes except Esdras from King James version; Esdras is from New English Bible, as it is not in the King James version.
24 Ussher’s calculation: Ussher 1658:1 (23 Oct. 4004); 68 (721 B.C.).
25 Ussher’s authority: White 1898: Chap. 6 (“his dates”). One modern history says that although few endorsed “the exact detail” of Ussher’s chronology, its precepts ruled “general thought about man’s past” (Daniel and Renfrew 1986:22).
26 Discovery of European Pleistocene remains: Grayson 1983. I have simplified the story somewhat. In 1858 British geologists, Sir Charles Lyell among them, unearthed tools and Pleistocene fossils in an English cave. Twenty-one years before, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes, a French customs officer and amateur scientist, had made a similar but larger find near Abbéville, in northern France. His announcement was met with ridicule, some of it from Lyell. A year after the British discovery, Lyell and other scientists went to Abbéville, decided that Boucher de Perthes had been right all along, and issued gracious public apologies. From that point on, the scientific consensus was in favor of an early origin of humankind.
27 Abbott’s finds, proselytizing: Abbott 1876 (“driven,” 72); 1872a (“so primitive,” 146); 1872b.
28 Bureau of American Ethnology: Meltzer 1994; 1993: chaps. 3, 5; Judd 1967. The Smithsonian’s brief history of the Bureau of American Ethnology is at anthropology.si.edu/outreach/depthist.html.
29 Holmes critique: Interview, Meltzer; Meltzer 2009:70–74, 1992; Hough 1933.
30 Abbott, McGee, and the Paleolithic Wars: Meltzer 2009: Chap. 3; Abbott 1892a (“The stones are inspected,” 345); 1892b (“scientific men of Washington,” 270); 1883a (“high degree,” 303); 1883b (“more ‘knowing,’ ” 327); 1884 (“neither among,” 253); Meltzer 2003; 1994:11–12; 1993:41–50; Cultural Resource Group 1996.
31 Hrdlička’s life work: Meltzer 1994:12–15; 1993:54 (“respectable antiquity”); Montagu 1944; Loring and Prokopec 1994:26–42.
32 “favorable cave”: Quoted in Deuel 1967:486.
33 Folsom: Meltzer 2009:82–91; Kreck 1999; Roberts 1935:1–5.
34 Brown’s announcement: Anon. 1928; Chamberlin 1928.
35 Whiteman: Anon. 2003; McAlavy 2003; Cotter and Boldurian 1999:1–10.
36 “driving mania”: Eiseley 1975:99.
37 Howard at Clovis: Cotter and Boldurian 1999:11–20 (“EXTENSIVE BONE,” 11; “One greenhorn,” 14; 130°F, 15); Anon. 1932; Howard 1935 (I thank Robert Crease for helping me obtain this article).
38 Discovery of Clovis culture: Cotter 1937; Roberts 1937.
39 “So far”: Hrdlička 1937:104. Other skeptics were less careful. Writing in 1933, Walter Hough, of the U.S. National Museum, flatly claimed that “archaeologists now agree that there are no American paleolithic implements” (Hough 1933:757).
40 Lack of skeletons: Interview, Petersen; Steele and Powell 2002 (ten skeletons); Preston 1997:72 (interview with Owsley).
41 More than eighty Clovis and Folsom sites: Hannah Wormington lists ninety-six sites in the 1957 edition of her well-regarded Ancient Man in North America. But she describes some as small and uncertain, so I have hedged and said “more than eighty” (Wormington 1957). Grayson and Meltzer (2002) tally seventy-six paleo-Indian sites in the continental United States.
42 Cosmic-ray race: Crease and Mann 1996: Chap. 10.
43 Detection of organic C14 and halflife: Anderson et al. 1947a, 1947b; Engelkemeier et al. 1949.
44 First radiocarbon dates: Arnold and Libby 1949 (“seen to be,” 680); Marlowe 1999.
45 “You read books”: Libby 1991:600.
46 UA C14 lab and Haynes’s background: Author’s interview, Haynes; Feldman 1998.
47 Consistency of C14 dates: Haynes 1964.
48 13,500 and 12,900 years ago: I use the calibrations in Stuiver et al. 1998 (online at http://depts.washington.edu/qil/datasets/intcal98_14c.txt.). These calibrations are essentially applied to Clovis and Folsom in Fiedel 1999b:102. They have been attacked as based on unreliable data (Roosevelt, Douglas, and Brown 2002; Roosevelt 1997).
49 Beringia: For a general physical description, see Fiedel 1992:46–47. Although now a little dated, Fiedel’s book remains one of the best expositions of the basic issues.
50 Beringia insects: Elias 2001; Elias et al. 1996; Alfimov and Berman 2001; Colinvaux 1996.
51 Temperature rise: Alley 2000.
52 Ice-free corridor and 1950s investigations: E.g., Elson 1957.
53 “ice-free” and “700 years”: Haynes 1964:1412. The potential relevance of the ice-free corridor was first described in Johnston 1972:22–25, 44–45. I am grateful to Josh d’Aluisio-Guerreri for helping me obtain this book.
54 Pleistocene bestiary: Anderson 1984; Kurtén and Anderson 1980.
55 13,800–11,400 years ago: Faith and Surovell 2009.
56 “zoologically impoverished”: Wallace 1962 (vol. 1):149–50.
57 Martin’s overkill thesis: Martin 1984, 1973 (“thoroughly superior predator,” “swift extermination,” 972), 1967.
58 Other extinctions: Wilson 1992:244–53.
59 “Paradigmatic image”: Fiedel 1992:63–84. The image is summed in Easton 1992 (“stout-hearted,” 31).
60 Northwest Coast salmon wars: Wilkinson 2000. The treaty language at issue (“right of taking”) is in Article 3, http://www.nwifc.wa.gov/tribes/treaties/tmedcreek.asp.
61 Hrdlička in Larsen Bay: Denny’s story can be augmented with the essays in Bray and Killion eds. 1994. Larsen Bay was not an anomaly. In 1902 Hrdlička visited Sonora, Mexico, where Yaqui Indians were fighting the Mexican army. On a battlefield Hrdlička found sixty-four fresh Yaqui corpses—men, women, and children. He lopped off their heads and shipped them to the Smithsonian (Hrdlička 1904:65–66).
62 Fifty shot down: Cited in Meltzer 1995:22. “The shelf-life of pre-Clovis claims seems little more than a decade,” Meltzer wrote (ibid.).
63 “Clovis police,” new Hrdlička: Author’s interviews, Meltzer, Haynes, Thomas Dillehay; Pringle 1999 (police); Alsoszatai-Petheo 1986:18 (new Hrdlička); Meltzer 1989:478–79. Clovis-firsters were attacked as the “Clovis Mafia” (Koppel 2003:147–50). Fiedel (2000:42–43) marshals evidence against the charges.
64 Landmark article: Greenberg, Turner, and Zegura 1986 (“the three,” 479; “we are dealing,” “28 key,” “dental clusters,” 480; “widely held,” 484; “tripartite division,” 487).
65 Languages of California: Mithun 1997 (fifteen families); Kroeber 1903 (five families).
66 180 language families: This rough figure for the linguistic state of the art in 1986 is created by adding together two then-recent tallie
s: Campbell and Mithun 1979 (62 families in North America) and Loukokta 1968 (118 in South and Central America).
67 Critiques of three-migrations paper: Campbell 1986 (“Neither,” “should be,” 488); Morrell 1990b (“zero”). See also, Campbell 1988; Laughlin 1986.
68 Geneticists pursued the question: Reviewed in Merriwether 2002.
69 Mitochondrial DNA indicates multiple migrations: Schurr et al. 1990; Horai et al. 1993.
70 Wallace and Neel timing estimate: Torroni et al. 1994.
71 Haplogroup A study: Bonalto and Bolzano 1997.
72 Size of founding groups: Schurr et al. 1990 (little mtDNA diversity, small group); Ward et al. 1991 (much diversity, big group).
73 Diverse possible origins: Merriwether et al. 1996 (Mongolia); Karafet et al. 1999 (Lake Baikal); Torroni et al. 1993 (east Asia); Lell 2002 (southern middle Siberia and Sea of Okhkotsk, in two major migrations).
74 “only one thing”: Cann 2001:1746.
75 Monte Verde: Meltzer 1997; Dillehay ed. 1989–97 (summary of dig history, vol. 2:1–24). See also Dillehay 2001; Gore 1997; Wilford 1998b, 1997b. 190 Dates: Dillehay ed. 1989–97 (vol. 1):18–19, 133–45, esp. Table 6.1. Dillehay did not use calibrated radiocarbon dates; I use the calibration in Stuiver et al. 1998. Fiedel says the likely occupation date is 13,500–14,100 years ago, if the data are correct (Fiedel 2000:50).
76 Hostility: Interviews, Crawford, Dillehay, Fiedel, Meltzer; Morrell 1990a:1.
77 Site visit to Monte Verde: Meltzer 2009:121–29, 1997; Adovasio and Page 2003: Chap. 9 (according to Meltzer, an accurate account [interview, Meltzer]); Gibbons 1997; Wilford 1997b (“ball game”). See also, Haynes 1999.
78 Fiedel’s critique: Author’s interviews, Fiedel; Fiedel 1999a (“virtually every,” 1); Pringle 1999. See also, in general, Haynes 2003.
79 Haynes’s misgivings: Haynes 1999 (“further testing”).
80 Corridor critics: Levson and Rutter 1996; Burns 1996; Catto 1996; Jackson, Phillips, and Little 1999. 192 Lack of evidence in corridor: Driver 2001.
81 Critique of overkill: Grayson and Meltzer 2003 (“lives on,” 590), 2009:255–65.
82 Clovis-firsters in minority: Roosevelt, Douglas, and Brown 2002 (“[T]he tide of public and scholarly opinion has definitely turned against Clovis as the earliest culture,” 159); Lynch 2001 (“Some of our,” 39; “blow the whistle,” “political correctness,” 41).
83 Additional pre-Clovis evidence: Dillehay et al. 2008; Waters et al. 2011 (Texas). There are also three other well-known pre-Clovis candidates in North America: Meadowcroft Rockshelter, in Pennsylvania, excavated mainly by James Adovasio; Cactus Hill, in Virginia, excavated by Joseph McAvoy; and Topper, in South Carolina, excavated by Allan Goodyear. See Adovasio and Page 2003.
84 Kennewick Man: Chatters 2001; Thomas 2001. The European connection links to Smithsonian archaeologist Dennis Stanford’s idea that the Clovis culture descended from the Solutrean culture in Pleistocene Era France and Spain. Because Solutrean spear points resemble Clovis points, Stanford has speculated that they wandered across a northern arch of ice from Ireland to Greenland to northeast Canada, in an Atlantic version of the passage through Beringia. Stanford’s Solutrean proposal was never published in scholarly journals, though it was adumbrated in Newsweek and the New Yorker. Specialists in Solutrean culture have not greeted these ideas with equal warmth (Stanford and Bradley 2002; Straus 2000; see also, Preston 1997; Begley and Murr 1999).
85 Comet hits Canada: Kerr 2010 (“Flunks Out”); Meltzer 2009:55–58; Paquay et al. 2009; Kennett et al. 2009; Firestone et al. 2007.
86 Fladmark and coastal route: Fladmark 1979 (see references therein to earlier papers); Mason 1894 (early proposal); Easton 1992; Koppel 2003:68–74; Powledge 1999; Hall 1999.
87 “Even primitive”: Quoted in Chandler 2002.
88 Coprolites and underwater skull: Amador 2011 (skull); Dalton 2009 (tool); Gilbert et al. 2008 (coprolites). The validity of the coprolites has been vigorously disputed (see, e.g., the back and forth in Science on 10 July 2009), though they seem generally accepted.
89 (Re)settlement of Europe: Tolan-Smith 1998; Rozoy 1998. Before the Ice Age, northern Europe was populated, but there was no cultural continuity between the earlier and later inhabitants.
6 / Cotton (or Anchovies) and Maize
1 “weft-twining”: My thanks to Nobuko Kajitani and Masa Kinoshita for helping me with textile terminology.
2 Huaricanga dig: Author’s interviews, Haas, Creamer, Ruiz, Gerbert Asencios, Dan Corkill, Luis Huaman, Kit Nelson.
3 Discovery of Norte Chico: The ruins were first written up by Max Uhle (1856–1944), a German researcher who is often called the “father of South American archaeology” (Uhle 1925). For Uhle’s life and work, see Menzel 1977; Rowe 1954.
4 Among the world’s biggest buildings: Huaricanga was built before the Egyptian pyramids, at a time when the only other structures that could be called monumental were in the city-states of Sumer. But at the time even these were smaller than the Huaricanga pyramid, so far as archaeologists can tell. The other main Eurasian culture centers—the Indus Valley, the Nile Delta, and the Shang homeland in China—did not even have cities then. Later the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the pyramids of Egypt surpassed the Peruvian temples in size.
5 McNeill book: McNeill 1967.
6 High-school textbook: Stearns 1987 (“four initial centers,” 16; Indian history, 203–12). It was better than some other histories. A World History, by Mazour and People, gave the Americas just five pages (281–86). R. J. Unstead’s History of the World devoted three and a half pages to Indians: one and a half in the chapter “Other Cultures,” and two pages in the chapter “Europeans in America” (Unstead 1983:58–59, 200–02).
7 Maize as most important crop: The 2001 maize harvest was 609 million metric tons, whereas rice and wheat were 592 million mT and 582 million mT respectively. Statistics from the FAO agricultural database are online at http://apps.fao.org/default.htm.
8 Three-fifths of the crops: Weatherford 1988:204.
9 Olmec as founder of Peruvian societies: This idea was common in the 1920s and 1930s (Wells 1920 [vol. 2]:189–90). Later it fell out of favor, though it continued to be mooted until at least the 1960s (Coe 1962).
10 Sumer as world’s oldest city: Some densely populated settlements were older, notably Çatalhöyük, in central Turkey, and ’Ain Ghazal, in Jordan. But archaeologists believe that these were not true cities, because they show little evidence of public architecture, strong social hierarchy, and division of labor (Balter 1998; Simmons et al. 1988).
11 Eurasian trade in ideas: Examples lifted from Teresi 2002.
12 Pan-American Highway: The roadless gap in Panama and Colombia, once quite large, has shrunk to about fifty miles. Still, the road is so bad that the Lonely Planet guidebook describes the Pan-American Highway as “more of a concept than an actual route.”
13 Atacama as model for Mars: Navallo-González et al. 2003.
14 Pizarro’s pilot’s advice: Quoted in Thomson 2003:139.
15 Possible Paleo-Indian routes to coast: Arriaza 2001.
16 Two Science reports: Sandweiss et al. 1998; Keefer et al. 1998; deFrance et al. 2001. See also, Pringle 1998b; Wilford 1998a.
17 Different early adaptations: A fine summary is provided in Moseley 2001:91–100.
18 First finding of mummies: Max Uhle found the same mummies but didn’t further excavate there (Uhle 1917). I am grateful to the librarians at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú who hunted down this article for me.
19 Chinchorro diet: Aufderheide and Allison 1995. My thanks to Joshua D’Aluisio-Guerreri for helping me obtain this article.
20 Chinchorro mummies: Arriaza 1995 (1983 find, chap. 2); Allison 1985; Pringle 1998a.
21 Anemia in child mummies: Focacci and Chacón 1989.
22 Tapeworm eggs: Reinhard and Urban 2003.
23 Import of Norte Chico: Author’s Interviews, Haas, Creamer, Ruiz, Mike Moseley. Haas
and Creamer 2004 (“The complex of sites,” 36); Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz, 2004.
24 Aspero: Willey and Corbett 1954 (“knolls,” 254); Moseley and Willey 1973 (“excellent, if embarrassing,” “temple-type,” 455); Feldman 1985; 1980:246 (rejecting older dates), cited in Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz, 2004.
25 Caral: Shady Solis, Haas, and Creamer 2001; Shady Solis and Leyva eds. 2003; Shady Solis, pers. comm. See also, Pringle 2001; Sandweiss and Moseley 2001; Fountain 2001; Bower 2001; Ross 2002.
26 Dating of other Norte Chico sites: Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz 2004.
27 Egypt: For dates and sizes I have relied on Algaze 1993 and Spence 2000 (which dates construction on the Great Pyramid of Khufu to begin in 2485–75 B.C.).
28 Invention of government: Author’s interviews, Haas, Petersen; Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz 2004.
29 Cotton domestication: Sauer 1993.
30 Cotton in Europe and the Andes: Braudel 1981–84 (vol. 1):325–27; (vol. 2):178–80 (bans, prostitutes), 312–13; Murra 1964.
31 MFAC hypothesis: Moseley 2005, 1975b. See the critiques in Wilson 1981, Raymond 1981.
32 Work parties and music: Author’s Interviews, Haas, Creamer; Shady Solis 2003a, 2003b.
33 Champ de Mars: Schama 1989:504–09.
34 Early Staff God: Author’s interviews, Creamer; Makowski, pers. comm.; Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz 2003; Spotts 2003; Makowski 2005.
35 Other coastal sites and destruction of culture: Chu et al. 2008; Sandweiss et al. 2010, 2009 (destruction of Caral).
36 Norte Chico as foundation: In the past anthropologists have sometimes tried to describe Peruvian societies in terms of lo Andino, a being whose special characteristics have uniquely defined those societies throughout time. I am arguing something different, that people who have solved problems in one way will often return to those proven methods to solve new ones.
37 Domestication of tobacco: Winter 2000.
38 Itanoní description, plans, history: Author’s interviews, Ramírez Leyva.
39 Uniqueness of Itanoní: Small tortillerías using local maize persist in rural Mexico, although they are threatened by the industrial production of Maseca, the large, state-affiliated maize and tortilla firm. By contrast, Itanoní is a boutique operation that sells as many as eight different varieties of tortillas, each made from a separate local cultivar. The difference is akin to the difference between an Italian village café that sells liters of unlabeled local wine and an enoteca, a fine wine store featuring the carefully labeled production of the region.