Category Archives: Indigenous People before Contact

Master Navigators

Ancient Humans, Indigenous People before Contact

The thought of those stupendous ocean voyages from the east coast of the Pacific Ocean, bring up the critical question which Niobe Thompson asked, “Are those skills of the master navigators still alive today?” When settlers reached Hawaii they were 4,000 miles from the nearest land. What could be more remote than that? According to Niobe Thompson, “it may have been the most dangerous voyage of discovery Polynesians ever took. Find land or die at sea. When Europeans arrived that incredible story was almost forgotten.” It may have been the most dangerous voyage anyone ever took anywhere anytime! That is a story that should never be forgotten.  It was truly an epic voyage—perhaps like none other the world has ever seen.

By the 20th century traditional sailing was dying in the Pacific. Of course, why sail when you have found paradise? I know I would have been tempted to stay put. Things don’t get much better anywhere than they do in the South Pacific.

In 1975 Hawaiians discovered a man living on one of the most remote islands of Micronesia. He was the last of the master navigators who could sail across the Pacific without modern instruments or maps. He was “living proof that Polynesia was discovered by master navigators.” It was no accident. How did he do it? He relied on watching the location of the moon, planets, and stars at different times. They paid particular attention to the rising of the sun and moon and used this valuable information to navigate across thousands of miles of oceans without charts, books, records, or instruments. He relied on what he had memorized.

Oceanic people know that they did not discover the islands of the Pacific by accident. As anthropologist Sam Low said, “for oceanic people to set out on the Pacific like that required almost ‘super heroic’ people. It was one of the greatest migrations of humans in the history of humankind.” We have a lot to learn from people like that. That is what is important in this story.

For many people it is very natural to go to the sea.  It took a 1,000 years for humans at the end of Asia to decipher star maps and learn to sail the open ocean.  Thompson said, “Once they did, the South Pacific was theirs.” Yet, the human odyssey was far from over.  What about the second half of the planet?  What about the Americas?

The Big Pacific

Ancient Humans, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

 

Countless islands can be found around Papua New Guinea. From these islands our ancestors perfected the art of sailing. They honed skills that were of vital importance for the human journey.

The Pacific Ocean is vast. It is the largest feature on the planet.  It is 19,800 km wide from east to west at 5º N.  This is halfway around the world or 5 times the diameter of the moon. It is also 15,500 km long from north to south and covers 1/3 of the earth.

The Pacific Ocean contains the lowest point on the planet—the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean and the deepest location on Earth. It is 11,034 meters (36,201 feet) deep, which is almost 7 miles. If you placed Mount Everest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the peak would still be 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) below sea level. The average depth of the Pacific ocean is 4,280 metres  putting the total water volume at 710,000,000 cubic kilometres.

Of course the Pacific Ocean was bigger when the Polynesians first crossed it. That is because of plate tectonics, which are causing the Pacific Ocean is to shrink at roughly 2.5 cm (0.98 in) per year on 3 sides roughly averaging 0.52 square km a year. The Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size.

The Pacific Ocean covers more than 30% of the earth’s surface. It is clearly the largest water mass on the planet with a surface area of 60 million sq. miles (155 million sq. km). The Pacific Ocean basin is larger than the landmass of all the continents combined. It has almost twice as much water as the Atlantic Ocean. It holds more than half the Earth’s open water supply. The conclusion is clear: the Pacific Ocean is BIG! It was a very big obstacle for ancient humans to cross, but somehow they did it.

As Niobe Thompson said in his television series, “its islands are like grains of sand scattered across a vast blue void.  They are impossibly remote. Yet eventually, humans reached every one. Yet how we came to settle the islands of our greatest ocean is a mystery that puzzled European sailors for centuries.” After all, they considered themselves the master sailors. How could these people have done it?

Around Papua New Guinea there are countless islands from which our ancestors—our wise ancestors—perfected the art of sailing. Those skills would prove invaluable on some amazing journeys. Journeys that astound us to this day. It is possible that we discovered those islands by accident. For a long time this is what Europeans believed. They could not comprehend the possibility that perhaps some people—well before them—had greater navigational skills than they did. This was another example of the familiar hubris.

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and his crew set themselves adrift on the Pacific Ocean on their raft Kon-tiki to establish the theory of accidental drift.  Ocean currents pushed them 7,000 miles from South America to Polynesia. He believed that natives gradually peopled the islands across the ocean island by island. On the other hand, Wulf Schiefenhövel said this is nothing but Eurocentric vision.   New research indicates a much different vision.

Geoff Irwin of New Zealand spent a lifetime trying to prove that the first explorers of the Pacific Islands were not drifting aimlessly, but were instead master sailors.

In the South Pacific, the trade winds blow from the east to the west.  Most people, like Thor Heyerdahl, thought that this was also the direction of human migration. It made sense didn’t it?  Well not completely.

Irwin believed people did not come with the prevailing winds. He believed that people set out in a direction that would most likely make it easy for them to return.  After all, who wants to set out with no chance of ever coming home? Sort of like these people who have signed up for space journeys with no hope of returning. Some people are this adventurous, but not many. Most people are too sensible to be that brave.

As a result of this analysis it actually makes more sense for people to migrate to the South Pacific Islands from the west so they can set off against the prevailing winds and come home with those winds. It is not easy to set off into prevailing winds, but sailors know how to do that. They were incredibly smart sailors.

Yet we need some hard evidence for this interesting theory. Where is that evidence?  At a wind tunnel at the University of Auckland they changed sailing in 1995 when New Zealand took the Americas Cup for the first time with a boat designed there. Even at 40º into the wind a canoe can still drive forward. Their experiments showed that upwind exploration was possible. This is still not proof, but it is evidence that it is possible for Irwin’s explanation to be right.

The next question was if people from Papua New Guinea used their boats to sail across the ocean how they did they navigate? Lisa Mattisoo-Smith used genetics to reconstruct the settlement of the South Pacific. She is Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Otago focusing on identifying the origins of Pacific peoples and their plants and animals in order to better understand the settlement, history, and prehistory of the Pacific and New Zealand.

As a result of her investigations she concluded, “the navigational skills and knowledge of course are not preservedarchaeologically, but it is indicated archeologically.” The fact that their exploration was almost instant is good evidence that they possessed the skills and had an exploration strategy. There was almost instantaneous dispersal from Papua New Guinea. Not only that, but they were continually successful at their settlements and that tells us “these people knew what they were doing. These people were prepared. They knew where they were going, and they knew what they needed to survive when they got there.” In other words, their explorations were far from accidental. They knew exactly what they were up to.

These ancient travellers crossed the islands near Oceania to remote Oceania about 3,000 years ago.  That was about 2,500 years before Columbus “discovered” North America or about 1,500 years before Vikings came here. We have to remember how far the Polynesians  traveled over the vast Pacific Ocean. These were astonishing voyages all made without western navigational instruments and with just tiny islands in the vast Pacific to be discovered.  As a result the Eurocentric view has been exploded. Within 300 years they did it.

Lisa Mattisoo-Smith makes it clear: “the whole settlement of the Pacific is under-celebrated and under-valued in terms of representing the capabilities of people thousands of years ago. They did amazing things.” These ancient people demonstrated clearly that ancient people were wise. We have to respect that wisdom.

As Schiefenhövel said, “Homo sapiens is a crazy animal. They do things which you don’t believe are possible and the migration into the Pacific is one of those things.” They traveled against strong prevailing winds, yet that is exactly what they did. It seemed impossible, yet they did it.

Other Hominins

Ancient Humans, Indigenous People before Contact

The other Hominid species were not as lucky as Homo sapiens.  About 200,000 years ago, at the time of the evolution of hominids, Africa was chock full with many different kinds of walking apes/primates. They were all much like us. We were kin—close kin. There were, for example, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus of whom we know very little.

There is some confusion about terminology here that I would like to dispel, but I am not sure I can. The two words “hominid” and “hominin” are similar and definitions have varied over time. Hominids were originally only humans (homo) and their closest extinct relatives. Those are now usually called hominins. Other than humans, all hominins are extinct.          The 21st century meaning of the word “hominid” includes all the great apes (including those that are still around) and humans.

Denisovans or Denisova hominins are a recently discovered species of human in the genusHomo. In March 2010 scientists announced that they had discovered a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived 41,000 years ago in a remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. She has been called “X woman.”  I wish they had given her a better name. That was a cave that had been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans. Since then 2 teeth from different members of the same population have been found.

Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the finger showed to the scientists that it was genetically distinct from the mtDNAs of Neanderthals and modern humans. Subsequent evidence has showed that the genome from this specimen suggests that this group shares a common origin with Neanderthals and modern humans. Apparently they ranged from Siberia to South East Asia. They lived with and even interbred with some ancestors of modern humans. DNA evidence discovered in Spain suggests that Denisovans at one time resided in Western Europe. Previously it was believed that only Neanderthals lived there. A comparison with the genome of Neanderthals from the same cave in Spain revealed significant interbreeding. The evidence also strongly suggests that the Denisovans also interbred with an as yet unidentified ancient human lineage. Other pieces of bones are now being analyzed.

Later mtDNA analysis revealed that this new hominin species was a product of an earlier migration out of Africa and was distinct from later out-of-Africa migrations associated with modern humans. It was also distinct from Homo erectus. The addition of this new hominin species makes the history of humans much more complex than it was earlier. It also creates a more complex picture of the Late Pleistocene. This research suggests that the Denisovans were a sister group to the Neanderthals, branching off from the human lineage about 600,000 years ago and diverging from Neanderthals, probably in the Middle East about 400,000 years ago.

Anthropologist Niobe Thompson visited a number of recognized experts on human origins and the African world of our ancestors. These experts, shown on the television show I watched, included Rick Potts the Director of the Smithsonian’s human origins program. As well he visited archeologist Curtis Marean, whose South African excavations are telling us how humans escaped the threat of extinction, and Chris Henshilwood, whose discovery of the earliest symbolic thought and art-making is revolutionizing our understanding of the beginnings of the “modern human.”  Along with other scientists they are changing how we think about our origins. These new views are fascinating.

A lot of recent archaeological evidence has been gathered in southern Africa in recent years. I saw some of those sites in 2013 during my visit to Africa with Christiane. Now scientists say that they have found evidence that southern Africa was “the cradle of the human mind.” This is where there is evidence that the Homo sapiens were reduced to pitifully small numbers. Yet miraculous they survived while the other hominins perished.

According to Thompson “some of our cousins were so like us that we ‘married’ into their lines, or they ‘married’ into ours. Our DNA carries the signals of those meetings”

All other species of hominins disappeared. That was because life during and after the last Ice Age was tough—very tough.  All died out, except Homo sapiens. Some of these species were bigger than us. Some had larger brains! Yet Homo sapiens survived. Their story is remarkable. It is worth thinking about that story. Our ancestors, like all indigenous people, were remarkable.

It does seem strange that Homo sapiens now occupy a “lonely branch of the evolutionary tree.” Why did Homo sapiens manage to do what all other species of hominins were unable to do?  That is a very important question well worth contemplating.  If the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said, and as I believe, this is a question worth pursuing. Why were Homo sapiens special enough to survive while all of their cousins went extinct?

         I like to think that Homo sapiens survived because they learned to cooperate with each other, better than other species. Of course, liking to believe something does not necessarily make it so.

 

Children of Extremes

Ancient Humans, Indigenous People before Contact

 

I watched a fascinating show on CBC television The Nature of Things. It was called The Great Human Odyssey: A World of Extremes.  This was the first of a series of 3 shows. The first show was the story of the evolution—the deeply interesting story—of human evolution.

The story was written, produced, narrated and directed by Niobe Thompson, anthropologist. He asked many important questions: Where did we come from? How did we survive near extinction? And why did we become one of the world’s very few global species? This is the human story. It is an indigenous story.

The makers of the series benefited from recent scientific research that has led scientists to revise nearly every chapter of human story. On the show, Thompson talked to some of the worlds’ leading researchers into the origins of humans. Thompson actually participated in the lives of some the world’s few remaining nomads and hunter/gatherers in Africa.

One of the interesting things about the evolution of humans is that humans are the only form of life, according to Thompson “unhitched from the natural limits of an ecological niche.” I am not sure I agree with that statement. Is anyone or any creature actually delinked from its ecological niche? I don’t really believe that.  Yet it is clear that humans have been able to adapt to new environments and even change those environments when it suited their needs. To that extent they were unhitched from that niche. Yet every one and every creature is intimately tied to our environment. We are a part—a vital part—of that environment.

Humans as a species evolved in  very harsh environments. That is why it was necessary for our species to adapt. If humans could not have adapted they would have failed like all the other species of hominids disappeared. As Thompson said, “ ‘evolution of adaptability’ is our inheritance from our difficult past.” It may be our most important trait.

In fact recent scientific research has confirmed that at one time Homo sapiens literally stood on the brink of extinction numbering only a few thousand individuals somewhere in Africa.  According to Thompson, there was such a population bottleneck that there might have been only 600 breeding pairs of Homo sapiens left on the planet. All of them were in Africa at that time. We are all descendants of that small group of humans.  We are all Africans. Imagine that: Homo sapiens were an endangered species.

Yet somehow the early humans managed to survive. They found a way to regroup and rebuild. From that small group Homo sapiens colonized the entire world, becoming the most dominant species on the planet in a virtual geological blink of an eye. How did they do it?

Climate change had created very difficult conditions in much of Africa where Homo sapiens could be found. Africa, in some places, experienced a serious drought for 40,000 years. That was the mother of all droughts.

There was only one way Homo sapiens could have survived such severe conditions with such small numbers.  Homo sapiens had to learn to work together.  They could have some rugged individuals. Some bright geniuses. They were important. But even more important, were the people who worked together to solve problems and then to pass on what they learned to the next generation of Homo sapiens. Both individuals and co-operators are crucially important to our success. This was a vital insight I gained from watching this television show.

Homo sapiens were at the time hunter/gatherers who needed to work together, co-operatively—to hunt their prey and gather food such as nuts, berries and other edible products. Without co-operation, I unreservedly believe, our species would have run out of gas and gone extinct like all the other hominids.

Because we could adapt we could survive. It is important to think about this now that we face an existential crisis. We can change, adapt and survive. But continuing on as we have done is not the right approach.

Evolving Economies on the Plains

Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

The Eastern woodlands of North America was home to Indigenous people for at least 10,000 years and maybe more. Although the first North Americans, eastern Paleo-Indians, who lived there used stone tools  they were not by and large hunters of big game.  They stuck close to the “river roads,” by which was meant the amazing rivers of North America.  They were nomadic, but usually travelled along those major rivers and systematically took advantage of the seasonal availability of grasses, fruits, nuts, fish, and game. Meandering you might say. This was wise. As Hurst Thomas said, “Their broad spectrum adaptation spread out the risk and buffered people against the failure of any particular plant or animal species. This generalized ecological adaptation was to gain them a head start toward the more intensive gathering economies evident in later periods. As their population increased, Eastern Woodland people became more efficient, intensifying their economic exchanges with others, and improving their ability to store food for the future. They learned to protect themselves against year-to-year fluctuations in resources.”

Unlike European farmers, they knew enough to avoid monocultures like they avoided plagues, at least until they came across a plague they could not stop.

According to David Hurst Thomas, “The earliest true pottery in North America appears about 2500 B.C. in coastal and riverine Georgia, unassociated with any archaeologically visible trace of agriculture.”

As always happens, some people are better at producing food in their environments than others. When this happened, inevitably, as if following the rules of Adam Smith, trade followed. With time it was noticed that in some North American indigenous societies that were often very egalitarian moved away from that to more rigid and unequal societies. Archaeologists have discovered this from examining graves. Status was reflected in the disparity of the goods kept in graves. Perfection is as hard to maintain as it is to achieve.

There was one famous archaeological site which I would love to visit. This is Poverty Point in northeastern Louisiana. I think I drove past it a couple of years ago without knowing what I was missing. As I keep saying, life is hard when you are stupid.

Around about 1300 B.C. Indigenous people there began to construct some spectacular earthworks. One in particular was very large and bird-shaped. It was about 75 feet high. Nearby were 6 huge concentric ridges that were likely used as dwelling sites. The outer perimeter extended about 2/3 of a mile. It was necessary for the people to move millions of cubic feet of earth to build the structures.

The people who lived there participated in far flung exchanges that were used to trade copper and other stones. Even though they lacked the stones that Indigenous people in California could use to heat up and drop into baskets for heating up the water,  they cleverly  “manufactured” artificial stones out of clay balls.

Although the people there probably cultivated small gardens, the site was eventually abandoned, like so many other sites in North America, and it took another 1,000 years before North America would again see such elaborate ceremonial spaces.

We have a lot to learn from Indigenous people.  It is very unfair to call them savages, as Canadians at one time routinely did.

The Bread Basket of the World is not quite what you think

Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

After decades of working with famers there is one thing I have learned: farmers are smart.  There is no denying that. On our way home from British Columbia this past summer, we naturally had to cross the Great Plains. This of course is my home. I’m a prairie guy. And the prairies now are the home of farming. The breadbasket of the world they like to say. And, of course, Canadian and American farmers take the credit for this and they certainly deserve some of the credit (and blame) for this. But this history of farming on the plains is not as simple as I was always thought. This is what David Hurst Thomas said in the book The Native Americans,

 

“Pick up any traditional textbook on “Western Civilization,” and it will tell you that agriculture originated independently in three places: wheat farming in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East, rice cultivation in Southeast Asia, and domestication of maize in highland Mexico. It would be remarkable, indeed, if farming had been invented independently at three different times, in three different places.

However, the textbooks have it wrong. Archaeologists have just discovered a fourth localized centre of plant domestication, entirely separate from the others. It is in northeastern America.  Although early explorers recorded extensive maize agriculture through the Eastern Woodlands, full-blown maize agriculture developed there only five centuries before the Europeans arrived.

The agricultural roots of native American society runs much deeper. We now understand that over the past four thousand years, the transition from foraging to farming along the rivers of the Eastern woodlands involved three key steps. First came the domestication of native North American seed plants about 2,000 B.C. Then, between 250 B.C. and A.D. 100, food production economies emerged based on these local crops. Finally, maize was introduced, and, between about A.D. 800 and 1,100, the role of maize changed from minor to major crop.

This still-unfolding story is yet another example of Native American ingenuity and enterprise.”

 

We have a lot to learn from Indigenous people of North America. Its time we started to appreciate that.

Gitxsan

Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact

In the year 2001 our son Patrick was involved in the Katimavik program. As a result he spent about 3 to 4  months in 3 different parts of Canada. One was Newfoundland, one was Quebec, and the last was British Columbia. The way it operated was that he was part of a group of young people who worked usually for a non-profit company of some sort living together in a house where they lived communally with minimal adult supervision, but strict rules, and then a couple of weeks or so with a local family. This was repeated in each of the 3 towns. Specifically, he stayed in St. John’s Newfoundland, a small town in Quebec not far from Montreal, and New Hazelton in northern British Columbia.

One day Pat phoned up Chris and I and said we should come up to see him and beautiful northern B.C. I had never thought about going to northern BC, but it did not take long for us to agree. Being travel sluts we were soon eager to go. This trip opened us up to experiences we had never had before.

 

One of the first places we saw was Kispiox where they had some fine totem poles.

I must admit that one    One of the things I had never considered or thought about before to any significant extent was indigenous people. It seems unbelievable now, but after 7 years of university, I had never really thought much about Canada’s indigenous people, until, in Hazelton, we visited Ksan an historical village and museum just outside of the town at the confluence of the Skeena and Bulkley rivers

 

‘Ksan Historical Village and Museum (‘Ksan) is located near the ancient village of Gitanmaax,  at the confluence of the Bulkley and Skeena Rivers in the community of Hazelton, British Columbia.

As a replicated ancient village, ‘Ksan illustrates many features of a Gitxsan village from the distant past. For example, like its predecessors, ‘Ksan’s houses form a single line with each building facing the river. From this position, the large decorated house fronts and totem poles of the village are visible from the water. In conjunction with other features, such as the smoke house and food cache, ‘Ksan illustrates characteristics typical of a past Gitxsan village.

Found within Gitxsan Territory, Ksan Historical Village stands where the village of Gitanmaax has existed for centuries. It is the desire of Ksan to preserve and truthfully portray the lifestyle of the people who have always lived here.

This is not a great photo but there is an Indigenous fisherman fishing it the traditional manner on the rock to the left. For centuries and possibly millennia, Gitxsan’s have maintained communities at important canyons and junctions on the Skeena River. This location was an important fishing site and transportation hub.

 

 

On the way we saw some lovely mountains. Pat had convinced us to come here by telling us it was as beautiful as Banff and Jasper without all the people. He was not lying.

 

We also drove from Hazelton to Alaska only about 3 hours away. Near Hyder in Alaska we saw a glacier from above it. I will never forget that day.

Many years later when I actually started to read a little about our Indigenous people in Canada, I was surprised, very surprised to read in the history book I was reading, that this First Nation was mentioned on the very first page of their book, A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations.  According to Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging, “The west coast Gitksan people maintain that the Upper Skeena River Valley, in the northwest part of the land that came to be called the Americas, is their Garden of Eden.” From my experience of this area nearly 20 years ago I can’t say that they exaggerated.

Years later I also realized that this area we visited with our son was the location of some historic cases on Aboriginal rights and titles and a modern treaty that has been a landmark precedent for relations between the Crown and Indigenous people, that I want to comment about in this blog at a later date. First I want to set the background for first contact with Europeans.

It is easy to see why Indigenous people loved the land and maintained a strong connection to it. This glacier was right beside the highway. I have Pat to thank for opening my eyes. I am grateful.

Coping with Abundance

Indigenous Issues, Indigenous People before Contact, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy

 

As anyone who has ever been there knows, the western part of North America is a very special place. It was also special to the original inhabitants.  This summer we drove through a small part of it. In 2001 we visited the more northerly part of British Columbia. Both are beautiful and interesting.

The shoreline that extends from Alaska in the north to northern California is actually slowly sinking into the ocean and this has created thousands of islands, channels, and fiords. It is warmed by the Japanese current that flows southward from Alaska, making the climate much more temperate than its location would suggest. This also helps to assure plentiful rainfall. And rainfall brings abundance.

One way that this area was special to Indigenous people was the abundance of food that could be obtained and the mild climate that made living relatively easy. This allowed for more permanent sites than were often found on the plains or elsewhere. That was how they coped with abundance.

Through millennia a distinctive Northwest Coast culture has developed and much of that has a direct relationship in which the Indigenous People there grew and flourished.

I was surprised to learn that the archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest people who lived there were very similar to the people in the interior. A hunting tradition developed at least 10,000 years ago. Many Indigenous People say they have been there for longer than that. They enjoyed elk, deer, antelope, beavers, rabbits, and rodents as prey. Gradually they learned to hunt river mussels and most importantly salmon.

Ass David Hurst Thomas explained,

“Northwest Coast people considered salmon to be a race of eternal beings who lived in underwater houses during the winter.  In the spring they took on their fish form and swam up the rivers in huge numbers, bestowing themselves upon humans for food. The first salmon caught each year was placed on an altar, facing upstream, and prayers were said. After each villager sampled the roasted flesh, the intact skeleton was returned to the river, and it swam back to the underwater world of the salmon people. One day, this skeleton would return as a whole fish.”

Major villages were often located at the shoreline on beaches that were convenient for landing large canoes. They also had some smaller encampments. In the north the houses were square. In the south, such as near Whistler, the houses were long and narrow and occupied by several families. As Hurst Thomas said, “Large wooden houses like these have been constructed here for more than three thousand years, suggesting the development of an extended family organization.”

The more I learn about Indigenous people, the more I realize they were amazing.