Source - Norte Chico Civilization - Wikipedia

When we hear about ancient civilzations in the americas, the names that spring instantly to our mind are the incans, mayans, toltecs, olmecs etc.
But here is a civilization which is a mother-of-all civilisations type one.


and perhaps the quipu was invented ny this civilization!!


Source - wikipedia.

I think more attention has to paid to this civilization!!

I totally agree. From what I have read about this culture it is absolutely amazing. There are several good videos available on the web. Truly fascinating and history changing research.

Are they the people that left all the ancient ruins in the jungles in Peru?

(A nit-pick, but you can't say "Most Oldest", use "The most old", or just "oldest".)

Very Cool thread!

It certainly is interesting -- but it's a long way from Central America. I'm not sure I see influence from that far away (inasmuch as I know that much about Meso-American culture).

--Jaylemurph

the first carved from the bedrock like the underworld of egypt but it still would not be the first you have to look to that great emergents from mother earth,

south america is one of the fallen .

when that ice boat came and is now gone one of many sailing's of this boat,it push the population southward but before, the mother of all was in the atlantic

and even as far back as when the land mass was one and one was the ocean you had the one's that were at the top,the middel ,center of all that surrand them.

and then you had the one's that were all around ,when they lost there head which is the father they fell from grace and down to earth came.

the nothern atlantic tobe more accurat you see in each of the one's that have fallen you have an ending and 2012 is there's but out of the dark comes light because with evey ending there is a rebirth and the way the canaidean north is melting mother earth is feeling the birth paines or i should say here water broke.

let's hope her labor pain's arn't that bad.

Just a curious enquiry, but why does it seem that the oldest civilsations (not cultures) in the Americas are all in the South? I would have expected, given a North-South migration of prehistoric humans, for there to be more ancient relic civilisations in the North American continent.

What was it about the North that precluded civilisation from appearing there at an early stage (prior to the southern civilisations), or was there a prior migration (proto-Polynesian or some such) initially from the Pacific making landfall on the South American continent?

For the life of me I do not know what you are trying to say. I've read it several times and cannot make any sense of it.

I, obviously, don't know for sure but their are some factors that may have been a difference.

1 - Climate. The mostly arctic, subarctic and temperate NA continent is more conducive to hunter/gatherer type existance rather than farming.

2 - Ecology. There are far more herd animals such as bison and deer that are relatively easy to hunt. The requirement of clothing and energy may have made a sedintary existance less likely. Also most of the NA continent was covered in temperate forests which produce very acidic soils that aren't good for agriculture. The act of clearing then converting land would be a multi generational affair that might not have made sense when energy could be aquired more easily by other means. This also comes to what I think is actually the most important thing. There were little to no native plant species that lent themselves to cultivation as opposed to the what central and south america had available.

3 - Timing. As far as I know, even if there was polynesian migration, the timing was quite similiar to the northern migrations. Neither would have been coming from cultures that were megalithic builders so I can't see either having a "headstart" so to speak. For that reason I tend to think it was reasons more based on local than the peoples themselves.

Also, let's not forget the pueblo civilizations. They were north american.

Really? I mean -- and let me emphasize -- I know next to nothing about this, but I thought the northern migration were tens of thousands of years ago. The Polynesians didn't arrive in New Zealand until the 11th Century or so. I'd've thought it would take longer to reach the Americas.

--Jaylemurph

Look up Old crow in northern Yukon and you will find researchers pushing the migratory figure back to over 65,000 years.

I know down in South Carolina, there's a site that some people put at 50 kya, but I can't seem to find anything about Old Crow, YT that throws around your date. Any links you can give?

--Jaylemurph

No,no, what I meant was the hypothetical polynesian migration hypothesis that a lot of folks adhere to around here. I myself don't see enough evidence to support it. I was just saying if only ocean migrations populated SA and only land migrations populated NA niether of places they were coming from had any technological advances that would indicate one would start building cities before the other. I'm sorry, I should have made that clearer. I myself am no huge expert on it either but I know my around it a bit. Do we have any in-house precolumbian civilization experts? We need one.

Are you referring to the Topper site? Because, as you probably know, that site is highly disputed.

M.A.D, Atlantis is not going to rise from the Ocean off the coast of Canada, even if it ever was located there.


I agree with capeo that it was probably likely due to the large amount of game to hunt that the peoples of North America lived a Hunter/Gatherer lifestyle much longer the those who traveled south into Central America.



I thought that the Polynesians reached Easter Island in the 3rd century AD. Not early enough to be the parents of any of the peoples of South America.

That's true but it has little to do with when polynesians reached NZ. A much easier feat that. Easter Island is closer to SA than NZ. Also, recent radiocarbon dating is arguing that Easter Island wasn't reached until about 1200. There doesn't seem to be any sites earlier than that and it also makes more sense in the rate defoliation of the island.

I wasn't sure either, which is why I said something.



I am, and I don't really think people have been here that long, but I do know of it. I've never heard anything about the Old Crow thing D.S. was on about.

--Jaylemurph

Yeah, the Topper site is being pushed by one guy named Goodyear. The problem is his "tools" are just naturally fractured rock that exhibit none of the tooling or wear marks exhibited by even our earliest ancestors. I've never heard of the Old Crow site either but I'll check into it.

I flew there [Old Crow] for "social purposes" back in '91. Met up with a few archaeologists who first mentioned the revamped timeline to me. Said most of their research was performed in a place called Old Crow Flats. The Gwich-In did mention to me later that their oral history pushes back the dates even farther than that. Never kept contact with that team since all we did was share time in the plane and a little in the community. And all I found on the subject is this site. I'll look for more.

Just my 5 cents, I would think if there was a north glacial crossing, most evidence would be wiped out, so there could have been older civilizations to the north.
Depending on time and how active and large the glacier was covering the portion of north America.
Then also there was the inner lake that blew..(Agassiz)

Makes me wonder if the crossing could have occurred from the south.

Whoever made the crossing, they sure got their bearings straight...

It'd would be pushing boundaries of credibility a lot further than I ever would personally, but I can believe in the possibility of humans in America tens of thousands of years ago, maybe, possibly, at the extreme, sixty-five kya.

But I do not, for one second, believe in a living (or even otherwise) oral tradition 65,000 years old. There isn't even an intact language that old.

--Jaylemurph

Maybe people don't listen hard enough to be able to memorize anything for an appreciable length of time. If something Earth shakingly vital and important happened today I'm sure we would find a way to make sure hundreds of generations in the future would recall the event and what it meant to us. Also remember that not all knowledge transmits solely through language. Symbols and other means can do the job just as well - and just as thoroughly. The written and spoken word is subject to far too much interpretation over even just a few short years.

firstly don't call me wacko then it's personal!!!!!!!!!!

second i didn't say atlantis you didi and what i said was the first is in the northern atlantic ,i know what's here in cape breton i have afforde any to come and see but you all just call me wacko that is fine .

i understand not all will be abel to see what lie's in the shadows i think it's because there is a new song that is song up here .

to think of an ending that comes to mind how old is that barringer creater you know what the people at hand think

i think around 50 or 60 thousand and if that wasn't the only one to hit north or south it would have driven them away, migration happened in many form's

and to think about it didn't though's Knoble One's start there travel from russa to india way back then.

One thing to keep in mind when wondering why there is not more evidence of humans in the Americas before the "accepted" date of 12,000 years ago is that all the coastal regions prior to that date are now 200ft below water.

I mean, currently 60% of the worlds population lives withing 100 kilometers of a coastline. If the coastline from the Americas 30,000 years ago is now 200 feet under water, how many important archaeological sites will never be revealed?

I imagine that any one coming to the Americas by boat island hopping would be a seafaring people and wouldn't stray far from the coast so it's safe to say that most of their sites are now under not only water but many feet of mud and silt.

One thing to look into is the Topper site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topper_(archaeological_site)

A dig in South Carolina revealed charcoal that has been carbon dated to 50,000 years ago.

Keep in mind that Australia was inhabited at least 40,000 years ago and those people could only reach it by sea. Why are there those that claim the same could not be true for the Americas?

up here in the atlantic with that much gone under water you can start to understand why the gouverment wounld put atleast 75% of the cape breton highlands as a prov-park since the geoligy is right with all the dectonic plates are involved but not only the highlands but with the br'dor lakes and the mira
the condition for such a civilzation to thrive is over welming.

Capeo and jay,

The kumara, a type of sweet potato, is the main food crop of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand and has been since their arrival (est approx 1000CE), yet the sweet potato is a native of the Americas.

For this to have been present in the Maori society as early as 1000CE the plant would have had to have been sourced from America and then travel across the Pacific in time for the Polynesian migrations into the South Pacific.

How does this tie in with accepted theory of Polynesian migration/discovery of South America?

But you're the one who threw out the oral tradition thing. I think the natives were just puling your leg.

--Jaylemurph

The topper site is a good dig. While I realize that there will be many years before it is accepted by the majority of the scholastic community, I am very much convinced. If any of you can flint knap, you would be amazed at some of the tools. It should be quite obvious to one acquainted with lithic technology that they are in fact primitive tools. Now how the artifacts came to be deposited at the depth they were excavated from may still be up for debate, but to me personally, this is definitely a human inhabited site. The lead on the project is Dr. Albert Goodyear from the University of SC. This is a solid dig with everything well documented and cataloged. I am convinced though I can understand why a lot of people aren't. Heck, some people still believe Columbus "discovered" the Americas.

Amerindians developed agriculture not because they wanted too. Because they had to. Population growth forced it upon them. My tribe, the Nanticoke and the Chinconon Lenape did not develope agriculture until after contact when we "cash cropped" to feed settlers.
Jay, the only accurate date out of the Topper site is about 15,000 years. The carbon date of 50,000 years came from coals that possibly were the result of a wildfire. No identifying artifact forms were found with the associated date.
The lithics are well made but they are Cumberland and Clovis tradition which dates about 12,000-8,000 BC. I flint knapp very well but I am better at biface reduction (percussion) than pressure flaking.


Lapiche

Like I said, I'm prepared to believe it once there's enough data to support the finding -- but so far, we don't have much, and "enough" to overturn basically everything we know it /a lot/. For me, anyway.

What's your take on the 65 kya oral tradition mentioned earlier?

--Jaylemurph

Let's also not forget the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian moundbuilder civilizations, which oddly enough people tend not to know of (even though they are some of the most spectacular Pre-Columbian archaeological sites north of Mexico). Sites from these cultures include Cahokia, Hopewell, Moundville, and Poverty Point.

- Regards, Bokonon

Is this what you were thinking of Jaylemurph?

Melbourne -- Food was plentiful in the lush land that was Broward County 8,000 years ago, making life good for the people who buried their dead in a shallow pond near Titusville. They walked the ground between the site of today's Walt Disney World and the Space Coast, hunting white-tailed deer and bobcat among the pine and oak trees. They fished for bass and sunfish or scooped up turtles, frogs, and snakes. Their primary job -- filling their stomachs -- took only about two hours each day, leaving plenty of time for making jewelry from bones and seeds or weaving clothing from the leaves of sabal palm.

That is a richly detailed picture that continues to emerge today of the Paleo-Indians, whose watery burial ground was discovered in 1982 during construction of a housing project off State road 405. Known worldwide as the Windover Archaeological Site, more than a decade of research from that dig is challenging previous notions about these people of the distant past.

The Windover site, named for the sprawling rural housing development that surrounds it, bore archaeological treasures that amazed experts with their quality and quantity.

Skeletal remains of 169 people, split almost evenly between males and females, ranging from 6 to 70 years old. About 75 of the skeletons were relatively intact.
90 intact human brains that include the oldest DNA samples in the World.
Artifacts of wood, bone, and seed that were made into jewelry and tools, providing insight into the ancient peoples' lives.
Tests showed the oldest skeletons were buried 8,100 years ago. The youngest was placed in the ground 6,900 years ago.
"To put this into context," Doran said, "these people had already been dead for 3,000 or 4,000 years before the first stones were laid for the Egyptian pyramids!"

They were lean and robust, most likely a copper-skinned people. The tallest man stood 5 feet and 6 inches tall. The average woman was 5 feet and 2 inches.

Like all people of their time, about 6,000 BC, they kept moving in a yearly pattern that followed the most ample sources of food. For this group that meant walking the land between the St Johns River and the Ocean.

They had risen above the subsistence level, giving them time to do things not typically associated with early people.

But they were not free from human hostility. The remains of a 29 year old male show a deep wound in the buttocks, probably caused by an antler. The injury is such that Doran thinks it was caused by a human wielding the antler in anger. He says that the wound is counter to previously stated views of these people as passive. Most of the other skeletal remains showed signs of long festering infections that likely brought natural deaths during a time before antibiotics and medicine. But overall, the group appeared to be healthy. They had triumphed over the rigors of daily life.

"Relative to a lot of other populations at this time period, these folks were relatively well off." Doran said. A sign of their wealth is the cloth that was found among the bodies, the oldest cloth ever found in the Western hemisphere.

"This cloth will set the example," Doran said. It is rare that fabric textiles even 1,000 years old are preserved in the United States."


All told, 87 cloth fragments from an estimated 67 complete items were recovered from the dig. The cloth was made from the leaves of sabal palm. The pieces reveal five different methods of fabric making, all without benefit of a loom. Even so, some fabrics are woven as tightly as a cotton T-shirt. Others are made more loosely twined into blankets, capes, and toga-like garments.
Some skeletons were found with especially fine cloth, suggesting some of the dead enjoyed a special status, but not necessarily a society of kings and paupers. In addition to the cloth, artifacts of bone and wood were found among some of the skeletons. They include a wooden pestle and a paddle, perhaps used to pound plant fibers for weaving; a small hammer, needles made from deer antler, and the bones of manatees, rabbits, and fish.
If the number and quality of skeletal remains at the site caught the attention of archaeologists, an added discovery in 1984 caused great excitement.


They found one skull that contained a soft, greasy, lard like substance. Doran scooped the material out and stored it in the refrigerator of his Cocoa apartment before sending it to a laboratory for chemical analysis. He guessed that it could be anything from slime mold to brain tissue.

"Organic matter," was the laboratory analysis. The material had decayed too much for the tests to determine whether it was human brain tissue.

A second chance came in December. Archaeologists found another skull with the substance inside. This time they sent the entire skull to the University of Florida laboratory in Gainesville, where molecular biologist, William Hauswirth and his colleagues were waiting. Instead of spooning out the material. Hauswirth removed the rear portion of the skull and tilted it. A shrunken but intact human brain slid out! Over time, the organ had lost mass and its tissue had mixed with peat, but the softball-sized matter was clearly a brain.

By the end of the excavation, 91 brains were recovered. Ninety of them, minus the first that was not salvaged, are stored in the pathology freezer at Sands Hospital in Gainesville.

Although brain tissue has been discovered before, this was the first time that intact human brains had been preserved. Even while the bodies' other soft tissues deteriorated, the brains were secure in the safest place in the body, the skull.

"The crania is well designed to protect your brain while you are living," Doran said. "The end result is that it protects it when your are dead too."

The brains hold a frozen gold mine of genetic information in the form of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. While Doran said he thinks older human DNA has been recovered elsewhere in the World, so much of the genetic material never has been isolated from a single group of people.

Hauswirth said it contains genetic markers, or specific segments of DNA that are affiliated with one small subset of modern American Indians. This suggests that the Windover people did not reproduce with people from other groups, a finding that again challenges previous assumptions.

A New Culture Model for the Ancients

The primary significance of Windover is the seeming sophisticated culture of these people who lived there 8,100 years ago and before. Windover dates an advanced culture in North America that precedes any previously discovered anywhere else in the World. Their egalitarian culture paints a new picture of ancient people of the Americas. Until now, the model of ancient peoples pictured roving bands of hunters, grunting semi-savages, having no culture to speak of. Of course, the 4,700 BP pyramid builders of Egypt had advanced further in terms of architectural achievements and they had pictograph symbols to convey meaning, but they came along 3,400 years after the Windover people. Windover revealed a culture of people in the New World, twice as old as the Egyptian culture. Of course, there are artful paintings of animals and symbols in caves that are attributed to the Neanderthals, but little else to associate with Culture.

Now we know that 8,000 years ago, the Windover people wove fine cloth.; They buried their dead ceremonially. They cared for each other; by indulging and taking care of the handicapped. And they adorned the bodies of their dead with fine clothing, placing them in special positions that were spiritual to them, and things that would be useful in an after life were buried with them.

Logic places them in Florida for quite some time before they buried their dead in that peat bog. How long?; 1000 years? 5000? Could the ancestors of the Windover people have been the Clovis of New Mexico 11,000 years ago? Time, distance, and logic says not. The Windover people might be the ancestors of the Seminoles. They might be related to other Paleo Indian cultures of North America, past and present. There is sufficient human DNA to find out. The ancient human DNA is of such quality as to allow genetic cloning, or to make comparisons with present living ethnic groups, or to test kinship with other ancient peoples. But the latter would require usable DNA, and this treasure trove seems to be the oldest group of human DNA ever found anywhere in the World. Also, the artifacts collection has an abundance of the oldest fabrics ever found in the Western hemisphere... 8,000 year old cloth woven as fine as in a cotton t-shirt! At first it was thought that the clothing was hand woven, but that does seem to be possible. They must have used some sort of apparatus, a loom, to weave such fine cloth.

LOL! That came out of AIM ( The American Indian Movement) in the 1970s. Vine Deloria Jr., a Lakota activist had us riding on the backs of dinosaurs. I am at the 35,000 years ago theory. Southeast Asians crossing on boats. Both our genetics and the genetics of our "yellow dogs" point in this direction.

The Adena did not grow any Meso-American crops. They grew maygrass, marsh elder, amaranth, knotweed and a northern variety of tobacco which was psychoactive. They came out of the North, spoke Proto-Algonquian and were the originators of the Southern Coastal Agonquian "Death Cults" on the Delmarva Peninsula and Delaware Bay area. They also never built the Great Serpent Mound ( (The "Temple Mound Culture" did) which is now dated at 1050 give or take. The Hopewell was a extension of the Adena and aquired Meso-American crops through trade.


Lapiche

Did I say they grew Meso-American crops? Or that they built the Great Serpent Mound? No, I was just saying that there were important pre-Columbian indigenous North American civilizations north of Mexico (besides the ones noted in the Southwest of the United States and elsewhere) that are not commonly brought up in this forum.

- Regards, Bokonon

I wasn't eldering you. I was just getting into more detail about them. Since I am involved with archaeology research on both the Delaware Bay and in Delmarva I thought people would be interested in reading more about them. Most of what is on the net is trash.

Lapiche

yes ,yes this is all good but it is what's expected after the earth has been wiped clean and one's would have to repopulat an areia and slowly addvance eastward again

Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to approximately 7150 BC,

In the late 1990s, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man, with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's molars.

http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk/aol/redir?src=e...tion=WebResults

Creationists come forth and defend your beliefs!!!!!!

You mean Young Earthers don't you? A person can believe in Creation and in the scientific chronology of the world too. Only the Young Earth people are truely threatened by dates more then 5k years old.

Actually, you hit a few things. The book "Guns Germs & Steel" by Jared Diamond sums a lot of this up. The Aboriginals on the North continent for the most part didn't have the resources ideal for agriculture society; animals that can be well domesticated, & crops worth the time of farming. There was an attempt at a large civilization near the Mississippi, but in order for that you need to clear land, & feed a standing army. This took too heavy of a toll on the game & it quickly fell apart. (cant recall the city name at the moment). The geography of the North was only ideal for hunter/gatherer society until other goods were introduced.

If Europeans wouldn't have arrived for another 1000 years, it would have very likely been different since agriculture crops such as corn did eventually make its way north. The Llama & alpaca (easier domesticated animals) may also have eventually been introduced north.


Either way if you are interested in this topic I would highly recommend that book.