Thirteen thousand years ago, Paleo-Indians probably wandered southward through the natural corridor of California’s Central Valley into a region that was considerably colder and wetter than it is now. These hunter-gathers left behind just a few traces of their lives—stone spear points, animal bones and shell beads. Around 2000 B.C., their descendants started adding acorns to their diet—a development that led to a sharper division of labor between men and women. Using artifacts, anthropological studies and tree-ring sequences, archaeologist Brian Fagan explains the changing gender roles, climatic shifts and trading patterns that shaped the lives of the Golden State’s first inhabitants.
Who were the first Americans? Were they mammoth hunters who walked across the Bering land bridge from Siberia around 14,000 years ago and then roamed from Canada to Patagonia? Or did Ice Age migrants sail southeast from Siberia thousands of years earlier when the Bering pathway was still blocked by expanding glaciers? This book, written by a leading anthropologist, takes readers to North American sites filled with projectile points produced by the earliest settlers of the New World and the bones of the animals they hunted. It also tells the stories of the cowboys, farmers and amateurs who stumbled on these ancient finds.
Secrets of the Maya
(New York: Hatherleigh Press, 2003), 203 PP., $25.95
Satellite photos and hi-tech videography, rescue excavations in the wake of devastating hurricanes, and the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphics have led to new insights about the Mayan culture of Central America. This collection of articles published over the past 15 years in Archaeology magazine includes stories focusing on the systematic plundering of Mayan sites in Mexico and Guatemala. “Before-and-after” photographs taken by the looters themselves document the extent of the tragedy.
The Fall of the Ancient Maya
David Webster (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002), 368 PP., $34.95
What caused the Mayan civilization to collapse around the end of the eighth century A.D.? Author David Webster weighs in with the Malthusians: The Maya’s failing agricultural system couldn’t keep up with population pressures. He hypothesizes that rulers resorted to territorial conquest to acquire basic resources, but never developed an efficient system of moving staples over long distances. As the power of the kings lessened, drought, hurricanes and peasant unrest accelerated the decline.
Mexican author Florescano traces the spread of the myth of Quetazalcoatl—the mythic plumed serpent god associated with fertility, corn and the ordering of time—throughout ancient Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He examines texts ranging from the seventh century A.D. reliefs at Palenque (in Chiapas, Mexico) to later Spanish accounts dating to the conquest. The volume concludes with an interesting comparison between mother goddess figures in the Mesoamerican, Peruvian, Near Eastern, Egyptian and Greek pantheons.
Before California: An Archaeologist Looks at Our Earliest Inhabitants
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