![the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented](https://www.coursehero.com/thumb/58/d2/58d28fe73b9eeca510e916c91ccefcdca9cc0f1b_180.jpg)
(Although the horse was native to North America, it had died out and the remnants had migrated west into Asia and then Europe.) In North America, however 'By 1000 AD, trade relationships had covered the continent for more than a thousand years mother-of-pearl from the Gulf of Mexico has been found in Manitoba, and Lake Superior copper in Louisiana.' Moreover, the Amazon basin had been tamed and settled. Travel was difficult and limited to foot, or canoe until after the later European re-introduction of the horse. In the meantime, other groups, or tribes, had settled in different areas and developed the skills necessary to hunt and fish, or farm in their own areas. Evidently maize is quite nourishing and nutritious because that population flourished. The Olmec civilization developed in Mexico c1800 BC and corn, or maize, was cultivated as the principle farming crop. They made ropes from sisal and henequen fiber, and they exploited wild caoutchouc trees for their rubber latex. Indians discovered and used quinine, and planted their own tomatoes and beans. Mankind owes to these people the potato from Peru, and chocolate from the cacao bean. There is also considerable evidence to suggest that farming was started in c8000 BC in Mesoamerica, separately from the initial development in the Middle East.
![the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented](http://www.inquiryhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Monolito_de_la_Piedra_del_Sol-scaled.jpg)
Early American records by early Europeans confirm that wide burnings were continued into the post-Columbian era with positive effect. The early Indians shaped their environment with fire, burning dead grass and wood to give room for new growth and more grazing and predatory animals. Since the continents are so big and the initial numbers were so small different tribes evolved with little contact amongst even neighbouring tribes.
![the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented](https://i1.wp.com/archaeotravel.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Meksyk-2015-323-scaled.jpg)
People spread through and across the Americas filling every corner. He used the 'Kon-Tiki', a balsa-wood raft built along ancient Peruvian designs. In 1947, the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl sailed 6,900 kms across the Pacific from Callao in Peru to the Raroia atoll in Tuamotu Islands.
![the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented the olmecs giant mounds where the priests dwelled are thought to have possibly represented](https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/36/ft7x0nb536/figures/ft7x0nb536_00005.jpg)
Some anthropologists have proposed that people from Southeast Asia crossed the Pacific and arrived in South America long before the Siberian hunter-gatherers. These findings have led to a theory that people may have first reached South America by water and then traveled north. At Monte Verde, a well-studied site located along a river near southern central Chile, cultural sites have also been radiocarbon dated and the eldest dates to 31000 BC. Other pre-Clovis sites have been found recently in South America. This finding indicates the presence of humans in the Americas well before the last Ice Age. The charcoal material has been radiocarbon dated to be at least 50,000 years old. Īt a site named Topper along the Savannah River in America Dr Albert Goodyear found traces of carbon among human artifacts. There is no doubt that future discoveries and analyses will shed more light on a changing picture of New World prehistory. However, there is now convincing evidence of human habitation sites that pre-date the Clovis culture including remote sites located in South America. These first inhabitants, whose archaeological sites are scattered across North and South America, were called the Clovis people, named after a town in New Mexico where their fluted spear points, used for hunting mammoths, were first found in 1932. This immigration was to have occurred c11,500 years ago and followed an "ice-free corridor" between two large Canadian ice sheets (the Laurentide and Cordilleran) to reach un-frozen land in the south. The traditional theory has been that the first Americans crossed the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. But if the people they found weren't Asian Indians who were they and where did they come from? (In the fifteenth century many Europeans mistakenly called China 'India'.) The Europeans hoped they were en route to 'fabulous' trade profits in China. The early European explorers had hoped that they had discovered a new route to China and that the American natives were Asian Indians. Indian is the wishful Spanish label given to the Aztec, Inca, Taino, Caribs, Powhatans, Iroquois, Algonquins, and New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact." "Before it became the 'New World', the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought-an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.