About the First People Exploration Culture of North America

One could use Toynbee's criteria of civilization and conclude that the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations were successful rather than failed civilizations. Civilization may have stages of growth, maturity and decadence. In Meso-America there was a succession of cultures that might be said to have overlapped and built upon others before.

Across North America successful cultures arose that adapted to the sometimes plentiful, sometimes harsh conditions environmentally. One thinks of the tour de force of Arctic ice survival of Yupik hunters waiting for a seal in a land without forests for burning fires or building homes. If one spends even one winter without heat in a tent north of sixty degrees its possible to get an idea of the level of survival competence and adaptation required-one didn't go into Wal-Mart for another Bic (they had seal oil and moss wick lamps).

The United States today may be taking the Universal phase in the Toynbee cycle-the highest before collapse-and corruption seems to be becoming institutionalized these years from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. It has over-expanded abroad, taken on vast debt, allowed itself to be flooded by an external proletariat and in sundry ways taken a turn away from concern about the well being of all of the citizens of the democracy in favor of concentrating wealth. Hardly necessary to mention the environmental management failure.

Native Americans were of course originally from several locations in the old world. People landed upon Crete by water-raft as long ago as 25,000 years. If they arrived by accident then assuredly people also arrived accidentally via the Gulf Stream and rich fisheries as long ago as 30,000 years B.P. Some archeological sites in South America seem to indicate sites as old as that.

Via Berengia and Alaska before the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age some may have canoed down the Pacific Coast. When the continental and western ice sheets parted enough a new route to Montana developed from Alaska and waves of immigrants from Eurasia arrived to journey south generally.

Of course the Aleuts invented the fasted human powered boat-the kayak-until recent times. Yet Alaska remained sparsely populated I would guess as the new age explorers ventured across the great land to unsettled points everywhere. America north of present day Mexico had at most about 2 or 3 million pre-Columbian natives, yet the population of the hemisphere was far more-enough that perhaps 16 million perished from a variety of causes in the decades following the discovery by Columbus. The population of natives in the U.S.A. declined to 500,000.

The numerous cultures of the sundry tribes made quite successful adaptations to the new world. These explorers and decedents reached the Northern Arctic littoral about 25,000 B.C. and in historical waves journeyed far to the east and south when the way opened to human foot travel.

Just because a culture or civlization ends it does not follow that it was not successful in its day-neither are people failures because they are mortal and destined for dust (or hell unless saved through the grace of God). One cannot say that Periclean Athens or even Sparta were failures because they no longer exist. There are elements of cultures from the Pre-Columbian era that still exit obviously, and of course the cultivation of the potato changed Irish culture for the good except for the blight a few years.

Of course far later pre-Dorset Eskimo were wiped out by Dorsett Eskimo with dog sleds for very fast travel. They reached the eat coast of Canada about the same time as early Irish and Viking explorers. Frobisher Bay's natives that still remember when martin Frobisher arrived early in the 1500s only arrived themselves a couple hundred years before.

Native cultures are of course pressured into becoming part of world civilization a Toynbee called it. Western civilization and that of the East were the last two 'successful' civilizations yet they too were merged into world civilization. It is virtually impossible to separate technology from culture anywhere, and global economics have made all cultures versions of a local tool using culture.

It is said that Cheetah-Tarzan's chimpanzee-actually it was the third chimp following two earlier very likely-died a couple days ago. In Tarzan's 1930s there were still several very isolated cultures, yet today none can escape the corruption. Capitalism run amok fails Adam Smiths goal of promoting an antidote to aristocratic domination of democracy. Native peoples hadn't the problem that ossified civilizations present generally-except perhaps in Aztec land where the shortage of human sacrifices meant they needed to look abroad for victims.

There was a great though short lived civilization named Cohokia at the site of present day East St. Louis with very large pyramids at one end of a gaming court with a very fine clay covered with sand place that was the equivalent of the super bowl of spear throwing at a target. The Cohokians manufactured a hockey puck-yo yo like object that was exported as far as the Texas and S. Carolina regions where some sorts of games (and pyramidal mounds) were also played or built. It is difficult to say where those Cohokians got there game from, much less their pyramid idea. Very little trade seems to have existed between the Missourians and the Aztecs.

Plainly though, the mostly non-violent (well comparatively) Cohokian in their declining phase experienced radical change. In less than a 150 year the civilization vanished along with the culture of aggregated non-Cohokian tribes serving it agriculturally. Someplace in North Dakota a village wall was excavated several year ago, and there was evidence of human remains and a massacre at that wall, and indications of a mass infantry-like charge with weapon-this was though to be unknown behavior in North America then, and occurred after the fall of Cohokia. What could it mean?

I wondered if Cohokia was simulated by arrivals from Europe-perhaps Irish or Vikings in the 13th century a.d. who traveled mostly by water and Wisconsin to arrive logically in St. Louis and recruit the natives to build a pyramid-something like Michael Cain in 'The Man Who Would Be King'. Well-very challenging to consider-yet the fascinating history of America and the explorer that wandered to and around it will be good for archeologists and writers for some time.

The early Americans or first peoples, and the second etc. hadn't the sedentary and intensely populous life and competition that stimulated the eventual rise of civilization in Eurasia-Africa etc. The first arrowhead was made in Africa about 200,000 year ago and it took another 190,000 years for a civilization to develop. The Americans mostly left Eurasia before anything much was made besides hunter gathering tools, rabbit snares etc. With so few people they had no need to develop cities, stone walls and so forth. Yet one can see how quickly they became skilled horsemen after the Spaniard brought the horse to North America, and of course skilled horse warriors. One should recall that it was largely Attila the Hun and his mounted warriors with lassos that shocked and awed the decadent Roman Empire.

The lesson of the value of cavalry and the need for fortifications accelerated in America too as forts were built by the Spaniard and attacked by Frobisher and Drake. Custer dying at the Little Big Horn was a Union cavalry officer that fought for Grant in the 2nd wilderness campaign. His brother, the two-time Medal of Honor recipient, perished with him on that grassy knoll, when Crazy Horse' band brought about a logical infantry defeat in detail purpose to the battlefield.

The advance of technology in Native American cultures was consistent with the demographic and geographic history of the advance and dispersion of the first peoples to the two continents. They were probably responsible for exterminating 16 of the 100 or so Native American mammals that weight 100 pounds or more. Modern Americans are doing better than that I would think with a record of specie extermination extending into the hundreds of thousands including all forms of life.

The failure of the present American cultural branch in politics to provide free health care for the poor and let the privileged pay for their own health care, the failure to abandon fossil fuel engines and move to advanced electro-magnetic public transport, indicates that the continuing demographic intensification of population growth and resource depletion may be moving toward a critical and dumb time of troubles.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8993313723654914866 The Secret of El Dorado