These rock carvings from southern Wyoming date to the early 1600s and relate to the ancestors of the Comanche and Shoshone American Indians. Clearly pictured is a scene with a rider on a horse. The choice of subject — horses among indigenous Americans — is also the focus of a groundbreaking study published in _Science […]
Indigenous Americans and Horses Read More »
On today’s history menu we have a special duo-treat: art, as well as a revised theory about women hunters in early human cultures. And both stories are bound in the spear-throwing devices known as “atlatls”. An atlatl (the name is in the Aztec language Nahuatl because the Spanish saw the Aztecs using it, but
This is a shagbark hickory tree from New Jersey, and the likes of this species used to be far more common to America’s eastern forests than they are today. The same holds true for pignut hickory, black oak, and white oak trees (as well as beech, pine, hemlock and larch). And these all have some
How Indigenous American Burning Practices Shaped the Eastern Forests Read More »
At the time of the Spanish discovery of the Americas, the Timucuan peoples were the largest linguistic group around modern Florida and Georgia, numbering about 200,000. They were not united peoples but lived in different groups, sometimes hunting and gathering, other times farming, but their culture was rich (see second image for Timucuan lands in
Timucuan Amerindians Record Their Written Language Read More »
Catoctin Mountain Park — situated right next to Cunningham Falls State Park, is in north-central Maryland and is run by the US National Park Service. Its 5,120 acres overlook the Monocacy Valley. Back in 1935, the area was put under the CCC to be fostered as a public recreational area. Cunningham Falls State Park has
Catoctin Mountain Park and Cunningham Falls Read More »
One of the coolest Indigenous American weapons was the blowgun, which was developed well before the Columbian exchange. You can see painted on this ceramic from the modern Guatemalan Highlands from the Late Classic Maya period (CE 600-900) a row of hunters holding their blowguns as they return from a hunt (this image is a
The Invention of the (Poisoned) Blowgun by South American Peoples Read More »
These projectile points were discovered in a 9,000 year-old grave at Wilamaya Patjxa in southern Peru. Archaeologists immediately diagnosed the burial items as part of a hunter’s toolkit and assumed that the person they were buried with was a high-status male from an ancient hunter-gatherer community. However, DNA analysis revealed that the hunter was actually
Ancient Peruvian Weapons and Evidence for Early Women Hunters Read More »
The excavations of the Ancient Maya world have continued to reveal surprises, and in 2020 two fascinating stories about urban water supply made headlines. Both were about the city of Tikal (known as Yax Mutal among the ancient Maya), but one was much sadder than the other. Tikal was an epicenter of power and was
Classical Maya Water Reservoir Technology Read More »
In the four corners region of New Mexico, a population of ancestral Pueblo people settled for a few centuries around the first millennium CE and built magnificent structures and created beautiful pottery like this pitcher (dating between 1075-1150 CE), fostering a relatively large population in the arid region. Archaeologists call this the Chaco Canyon civilization,
Chaco Canyon’s Pottery and Gendered Work Read More »
Making string figures is a dying cultural practice. It was done by people all over the world for who knows how long (because string decays quickly and most writers of history didn’t care about the varied designs made out of string using different hand motions). One of the most complex catalogues of string figures comes
Inuit String Communication Read More »
