EARLY INHABITANTS OF AMERICA

Evening Star, Issue 21935, 23 January 1935, Page 10

EARLY INHABITANTS OF AMERICA

MIGRATION AND CULTURE New light has been thrown on the migrations and culture of tho early American Indians by recent archeological explorations of the Smithsonian institution (says a writer in the New York ‘Times’). The results of these explorations, scientists hold, tend to support the belief ten thousand or more years ago infiltration of Mongolbid peoples across Bering Straits populated for the first time the western continents; and later, when many of these Amerinds —the people we call Indians —had pushed down along the Pacific Coast to the more fertile lands of Middle America, there developed tho high civilisations of the Toltecs, tho Mayans, and the Aztecs. While there were some population movements direct from Alaska over tho rest of the northern continent, it was from these southern centres, according to the neifr evidence, that the more important cultures spread. Prehistoric civilisations of the West Indies and the United States developed independently of each other, according to Dr M. Vf, Sterling, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, but tho earliest occupations of any consequence in both areas were separate ends of population-culture waves that began somewhere in the middle Americas. Tho West Indies came direct, probably from Yucatan; the Mississippi Valley cultures already have been traced back to Mexico; and now, as a result of Georgia mound explorations, the tie-up of the ancient South-east with these centres is being made.

NEW EVIDENCE FROM GEORGIA. Scattered throughout Middle Georgia are dozens of artificial earthen mounds, neglected “ tumuli ” of its early inhabitants. Scientific investigations of this area,, declared to be “ the most interesting and important unexplored field of the Pre-Columbian North America,” was finally begun early last year by a party directed by Dr Arthur Kelly and James Ford. While it is possible that De Soto passed through this immediate section, yet he made no note of its mounds. It Is 250 years later, from the botanist and traveller Bartram, that we have the first reference to any of them. “ About seventy to eighty miles above the confluence of the Ocmulgee and the Oconee,” he wrote, “ on the heights of these low lands are yet visible the monuments or traces of an ancient town, such as artificial mounds, or terraces. squares, and banks encircling considerable areas.” The picturesque remains of this “ ancient town ” on the hills above the Ocmulgee have proved to bo a most valuable record to archceologists. Nothing is known of its history except that'it was occupied for some time prior to the eighteenth century by the Hichiti Tribe of the Greek confederation. Greek legends say that when they came to this "spot and “ sat down ” the mounds were already there; the Greeks did not build them and knew nothing of the people who did. For nearly a half-mile along one of the ridges that extend down to the river bottoms there was, long before Columbus, a wall-encircled community with wooden houses, walled and roofed with laced cane or brush and covered with mud and sod; underground lodges, public squares, “ Chungho ” playgrounds, and hard-packed dance floors —all built over and into the ruins of older and more primitive sites. Excavations, made prior to the recent curtailment of the explorations, show several occupations levels with intrusions overlapping of various sequences of Stone Age culture. Several layers of culture were found, from the crudest

to that of tho Greek nation, wfyo lived there until about 1825. In this “ Macon Group ” there are live outstanding mounds proper. The largest, a huge Temple Mound, stands on the lower end of the ridge and rises more than a hundred feet above the river. It is now only about 45ft above its base on the ridge plateau, but still forms one of the largest earthen mounds in existence. It is a truncated pyramid with a level top surface, about 175 ft in each direction; and centuries ago it bore some sort of a wooden structure where rites and ceremonies were conducted.

ANCIENT ARTIFACTS FOUND,

Deep trench excavations along the plateau base of this mound brought to light quantities of extremely primitive artifacts, especially a predominating number of potsheds that were softtempered shell, bone, or vegetable that since had disintegrated, and which were either undecorated or bore simple designs crudely applied. Here, and beneath the mound itself, is the site of the earliest occupation—at least a thousand years ago. About a hundred feet to the north is a smaller, oval-shaped mound. This is a burial mound, excavation of it beyond a single trench to determine its use has been postponed. Here, however, as in tho other locations, preliminary studies of the burials and burial furniture (pottery, bears, stone knives, etc.) established unquestionably that all these people were Amerinds.

Near the middle of the plateau a complex village site extending over several hundred feet was unearthed. On the eastern slope of a central bouse and burial mounds, which has been lowered considerably by the last hundred years of cultivation and such destructive activities as a skirmish during the Civil War, there was uncovered what Dr John R. Swanton, leading American authority, has declared to be unique in archaeological research: an underground circular lodge. This “ council chamber,” similar to the Kiva or Estufa of the West, was forty-one feet in diameter and its depth into the mound was from five to eight feet, making it cool, in summer and comfortable in winter. Nothing exactly like it has been found before. Forty-seven clay-formed seats, each with a little niche for the possessions —or maybe the crossed feet—of the seated delegates, were built from the floor around the packed clay wall. Outside the walls and on the adjacent western hills is discovered the most colourful mound of the group. This too, is a fragment, but the one-third that remained proved to be an instructive model of mound detail and construction. Before excavation this fragment stood nearly forty feet above its base and spread through its northcentral section for about 140 feet. And hero was made another unparalleled “ find.” About fifteen feet below the top surface was uncovered a flight of pink clay steps leading from the base of this inner mound to its top. Prehistoric and perfect stairs have never before been found in America north of Mexico. To form the completed mound were superimposed over this lower one at least four others, cach_ sealed, some with white clay, some with red clay. From these 'investigations final verification is now obtained that mound building in North America did not necessitate a raco_ separate and apart from the historic Indians; it a culture trait common to all primitive low-country peoples. The chain is complete ; the mound builders of the East aro linked with the temple builders of the South and West, through them to the igloo dwellers of the North, and so back to the starting point in Mongolia.