The Neolithic Revolution in the Americas

THE AMERICAS IN ANCIENT TIMES HIST 1301 | History The Neolithic Revolution in the Americas As was previously said, some eleven thousand years ago, Beringia was buried beneath the Bering Strait, severing the Western Hemisphere from the rest of the planet. Because of this, the Americas did not get the technical or cultural advancements that occurred in Asia, Africa, or Europe for many thousands of years. Similar advancements in the Americas did not also extend to the Eastern Hemisphere. This meant that the transition to agriculture took place in each of the three separate regions of North and South America, independently, each with its own agricultural traditions. These were Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Eastern Woodlands, which included the upper Mississippi River valley. The Andean area has produced the earliest evidence for the Neolithic Revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture—in the Americas. There, the domestication of plants and animals happened slowly and piecemeal; its exact beginnings are not totally understood. Camel domestication for meat and subsequently wool production, involving llamas, guanacos, and alpacas, may have started as early as 7400 BCE in some sections of the region. Similar to this, depending on the evidence cited, the domestication of guinea pigs for food may have started as recently as 4400 BCE or as early as 6200 BCE. Regarding food plants, research indicates that bottle gourds and squash were first cultivated about 8000 BCE. Scientists have also found that the dates for domesticated plants, such as the potato, are astonishingly early. Potatoes may have been domesticated from a wild variation between 8000 and 6000 BCE, according to genetic tests. About 5000 BCE, quinoa, another plant cultivated in the Andes, may have been planted for animal feed before being used by humans. In the Andes, at least partially established agricultural villages were becoming increasingly widespread by 3000 BCE, regardless of when or how the process started. Because of the sites' commonalities in central and coastal Peru, archaeologists have classified them as part of a single, broader culture that is often referred to as the Caral civilization or the Norte Chico. Some of the locations, such Aspero, El Paraiso, and Caral, were rather big. Every one had many mounds on top, with Ushaped building complexes situated on them. Caral is the biggest of the three, with a huge number of mounds dispersed across a wide region. At ninety-two feet high, the biggest mound, also known as the main temple, stretches about five hundred feet at its base. Such a mound would have needed a committed labour force to build, indicating a highly structured civilization. According to archaeological findings, the main sources of sustenance for the inhabitants of Caral were fish and cultivated and wild foods such potatoes, beans, avocados, and squash. We can only hypothesise about the Norte Chico's social structure, but organised spiritual or religious practice and class divides seem to have existed based on a review of the burial sites and the probable ritual significance of many of the ruins. It is also quite likely that there was some kind of strong hereditary leadership, given the large-scale architecture and the requirement for labourers. In addition, evidence points to links between the various locations in addition to their structural similarities. For instance, it seems that the bigger interior Caral site received the essential marine supplies from the smaller sites along the shore. Instead of merely a shared culture uniting all the places, there could also have been some sort of governing structure over them all. To yet, though, there hasn't been any convincing evidence to back up that judgement. In Neolithic times, the agricultural customs that originated in South America were difficult to spread northward into Mesoamerica due to the vast distance and disparities in temperature between the Andean area and Mesoamerica. It does seem, nevertheless, that at least one significant cultivated crop from Mesoamerica made its way to the Andes. This crop was maize, sometimes known as maize in American slang. Between 5000 and 3000 BCE, a wild edible plant known as teosinte was tamed to become maize. Though the precise mechanism of that process is still up for question, it is widely acknowledged that human involvement changed the dense wild grass into the big, robust, cob-producing plants that we are familiar with today. After being domesticated, maize developed into a significant staple grain throughout Mesoamerica, contributing to the rapid population growth. The Tehuacán Valley or the Oaxaca highlands are said to be the birthplaces of domesticated maize, which subsequently spread across Mesoamerica and eventually far beyond. In the Andes, there is evidence of Mesoamerican maize dating back to around 1600 BCE. Although it was frequently used to manufacture popcorn and a fermented alcoholic beverage there, it never gained the same prominence in the diet as it did in Mesoamerica. Around 2500 BCE, Mesoamerica began to experience cooler and wetter weather, and the availability of domesticated maize led to the emergence of several agricultural villages in the area. Normally, the people living in these communities would still hunt and gather, but they quickly saw how beneficial it was to produce maize. Gathering activities gradually decreased over time due to labour needs and the high caloric content of maize, leaving only sedentary agricultural cultures in their wake. As populations increased, more acreage was required to grow even more maize. As a result, maize farming spread throughout Mesoamerica's core, which includes southern Mexico and portions of Guatemala. Sedentary agricultural villages had proliferated throughout these regions by the year 2000 BCE. As labour grew more specialised, new social hierarchies emerged, as happened in many parts of the world during the transition from sedentary agriculture to hunting and gathering. These hierarchies were associated with the growth of leadership authority as well as the increase of riches. Maize gradually spread to what is now the southwestern United States at some time in the late third millennium BCE. There, organisations started using a plant kind that had adapted to the dry climate. For a while, the people living in this region were largely nomadic since it was only used as a supplement to other plants that were collected at the time. They experimented with maize cultivars for several centuries. They figured out how to grow it at high elevations and which places—like floodplains with naturally occurring irrigation —produced the highest yields. For thousands of years, humans in the Eastern Woodlands have been experimenting with food plants that grow naturally, such as squash, bottle gourds, goosefoot, and sunflower. The Eastern Woodlands had a long history of using bottle gourds as containers, and cultivation of these fruits may have been promoted as early as 5000 BCE. In a similar vein, domestication of sunflowers, valued for their nutrient-dense and oily seeds, seems to have started about 2300 BCE. But around 2000 BCE, communities in this area started working together to change the physical landscape and clear tiny areas of land so that these wild plants could be farmed more meticulously. Some migrated and spread the seeds of particular plants to new locations. From generation to generation, effective methods for promoting the development of these plants were transmitted. Thus, agricultural production independently originated in the Eastern Woodlands. Around 2000 BCE, the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands started to cultivate their own natural flora and started to live in more clearly defined regions. Nonetheless, there remained commerce and connection throughout various regions. Specific varieties of stone, copper alloys, and seashells from the shore may be transported hundreds of kilometres between tiny groups. It's also possible that groups from a certain area took part in some rites together. As food became more plentiful and people were exposed to affluence through traded goods, societal changes such as a decline in the egalitarianism typical of hunter-gatherers occurred. This is demonstrated by burial sites and the growing number of clay mounds from that era. In most areas, groups in the Eastern Woodlands probably had little more than a hundred or so members. A few outliers existed, notably at the sizable Poverty Point site located in the northern region of Louisiana. Around 1000 BCE, a remarkable and unique ceremonial site was formed by the construction of many U-shaped concentric mounds. Although the specific function of the site and the social structure of the people who constructed it are unknown, the people who lived there and surrounding it most certainly used both agricultural and hunter-gatherer methods, and the site probably had some ritual importance. For over three centuries, the location was in use until being abandoned for unclear reasons.