Archaeologists have established humans were living in rock shelters at the southern tip of South America between 12000 and 13000 B.C. ...Monte Verde in Chile is dated at 12500 B.C. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond noted, if Native Americans migrated southward from the Plains area of North America eight-miles per year, they would be in Patagonia within a thousand years. Based on this, the earliest arrival at the tip of South America by Paleo-Indians that crossed Beringia Land Bridge would be 10500 B.C.. If the 12500 B.C. dating of Monte Verde is correct, the only way migrating Paleo-Indians could reach there that early was by watercraft, or the Bering Strait Beringia migration was at an earlier period.
Alternate Pre-Historic Indian Migration Routes - Anthropik Network
A complex Indian society had developed in three small valleys one hundred miles north of Lima, Peru by 3000 B.C.. The Norte Chico civilization consisted of about thirty major population centers....Satellite photos and visual observations from airplanes are showing many large prehistoric Indian sites throughout South America.
The Norte Chico area stretches from the Andes to the western coastline of central Peru. Some archeologists refer to Norte Chico as the oldest civilization in the Americas. Inhabited between 2627 B.C. and 2020 B.C., the most notable of the Norte Chico cities, Carla, was scattered over one hundred and fifty acres. Carla was comprised of platform mounds, two plazas, an amphitheatre, and ordinary houses. The population is estimated to have been about three thousand.
Radiocarbon dates show large-scale communal construction between 3200 and 2500 B.C. The construction was characterized by monumental architecture, large circular ceremonial structures, and housing. One hundred and twenty-seven radiocarbon dates firmly establish a civilization thriving in the Norte Chico region with an economy based on agriculture and seafood.
The Norte Chico area had multifaceted economies based on cotton, food plants, seafood, and trade routes between inland and coastal sites. The people of Norte Chico had wide-ranging trade with cotton at its center. Cotton was used to make textiles such as fishing nets, carry bags, and clothing. The oldest of these bags dated to 2627 B.C. Textiles were used to trade for seafood from the coast and agricultural products. Two items lacking from the Norte Chico sites were--ceramic pottery and Maize (corn).
Mesoamerica, or Meso-America, is the area of central Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras.
In the late Archaic period (ArchaicPeriod ~8000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.) prehistoric groups in this area are characterized by agricultural villages and large ceremonial and politico-religious centers. Some of the most complex and advanced cultures of the Americas, and for that matter in the world, developed in Mesoamerica.
Key to the development of Mesoamerican Indian cultural centers was the development of corn...in Norte Chico seafood was the basic staple for the growth of cultural centers. In order to develop cultural centers, a constant supply of food is required. Archaeological studies indicate that a form of maize (corn) was cultivated by 5600 B.C.. Maize in its present form did not exist as a wild plant. Evidence suggests maize originated as a cross between teosinte and gamma grass…the origin of maize is a subject of heated debate between archeologists. With cross fertilization occurring between teosinte and gamma grass, Indians collected and planted desirable cross-fertilized plants. Mesoamerican Indians selected for the formation of ears, or cobs, on early maize.
The first ears of maize were a few inches long and had only eight rows of kernels. Over the next several thousand years, the corn cob grew in length and size.
Selective Breeding of Tesonite to Corn
Archaic Mesoamerican Indians grew maize, beans, and squash in milpas. Milpa agriculture consists of maize and beans being planted together in the same hole while squash is planted between the maize stalks. As the maize stalks grow, the bean vines wrap around the stalk. Squash covered the ground around the stalks to reduce the weeds and keep the soil cool and moist. Planted together these three plants became known down through American Indian history as the Three Sisters.
Three Sisters - Milpa
Milpa agriculture is a form of swidden agriculture which uses slash and burn to create new fields. Swidden agriculture is labor intensive with family plots between five and ten acres. The plants were scattered across the field, not in rows as corn is planted now....lack of rows made flood irrigation impossible, except in small areas. The majority of the Milpa fields were hand watered. Despite the nitrogen fixing properties of beans, corn depleted the nutritive value of the soil within a few years. Crops could be rotated but most often new fields were cleared for planting.
Archeologists put forth many reasons, especially drought, for the decline of Indian population centers. Environmental conditions often triggered the collapse of a culture, but the basic problem was North and South American Indians never acquired the technology to grow, transport, or distribute food to large numbers of people in concentrated population centers. Farmers with stone and wooden tools and no work animals could not produce enough food to sustain the ruling class, religious leaders, artisans, and laborers within the centers.
Shoulder Blade Hoe - Knife - Awl
A major reason for this was the Americas lacked animals that could be domesticated for work animals. The lack of work animals limited the ability of farmers to support large populations.
Trade was an important factor affecting growth and social change in Mesoamerica, as well as, North America. A merchant class developed regional trade markets. Objects of trade included food products, silver, gold, jade, macaw and parrot feathers, jaguar skins, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, and rubber.
Three-fifths of the modern world's agriculture comes from plants first domesticated by Native Americans. Mesoamerican Indians were the first to cultivate: corn, Irish potato, sweet potatoes, manioc, several varieties of beans, squash, pumpkins, peanuts, tomatoes, chocolate, rubber, long staple cotton, tobacco, and the use of rubber.
Mesoamerican traders had spread into the North American southwest by the end of the late Archaic Period. Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon had corn from Mesoamerica by 500 A.D. Between 1250 and 1700 A.D., most North American Indians tribes had acquired Mesoamerican corn. After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers and traders carried maize back to their own countries, and from these areas, corn spread to other European countries. At the present time, Maize (corn) is the most widely grown crop in the America
