years of providing New England a better quality of life who were the mysterious people that buried their dead in these mounds 2,500 years ago no real answers have ever been found recent discoveries on the coasts of Maine and Labrador are providing clues could there be a link between the ancient megaliths of Europe the red paint burials of the Northeast and the mound builders of the Midwest can scientists unravel the secrets of the lost red paint people funding for Nova is provided by Lockheed a bold new force in systems engineering management and technology services for defense space and industry and the Johnson & Johnson family of companies supplying healthcare products worldwide major funding for Nova is provided by the financial support of viewers like you the northern Atlantic coast is a remote and barren land locked in ice for much of the year and surrounded by bitterly cold seas it is almost unimaginable that ancient peoples could have survived in this desolate region [Music] but a series of archaeological discoveries in the United States and Canada has uncovered startling new evidence that a previously unknown culture more advanced than anyone had believed possible flourished here near the edge of the Arctic Circle many thousands of years ago the discovery of this early civilization is changing our vision of ancient North America and challenging long-held assumptions about the development of Native American culture the story begins just over a century ago with an accidental discovery on the coast of Maine it gradually unfolds into one of the great quests of American archaeology the search for the lost red paint people in 1882 augustus hamlin the mayor of bangor maine was guided to a region near the mouth of the Penobscot River by Foster Soper a local farmer Soper had told the mayor about a place where blood colored pools were rising out of the earth Hanlon was a doctor and a geologist but he was also an amateur anthropologist a so-called antiquarian who believed in theories about the past that scientists would later consider implausible this part of the Maine coast had generated legends for hundreds of years as far back as the 16th century European explorers had recorded an Indian myth about a fabled place called NorAm Bega which they interpreted to be a city overflowing with riches [Music] this map of 1569 placed NorAm Bega near the mouth of the Penobscot River Hanlon had searched but he never found a trace of a lost city he did find accounts of unexplained stone ruins discovered by the settlers who first cleared the dense forests along the Penobscot River like other antiquarians of his time Hamlin believed that these were the ruins of structures built by Europeans who arrived in the new world before Columbus he suggested that they might be the remains of Vinland the Lost Colony of the Vikings the stone ruins of the Northeast were not the only archaeological mysteries which interest at the antiquarians there were also hundreds of prehistoric mounds and earthworks like these located in the Ohio Valley as early as the 1700s amateur scientists had been digging up these mysterious man-made Hills and discovering the spectacular remains of an ancient culture these elaborate burials and artifacts indicated that the mound builders were more advanced than the known Indian tribes of the region 19th century antiquarians explained this by developing the theory of a lost civilization which existed in America before the Indian and then mysteriously vanished the earliest mounds were simple circular forms but later examples evolved into precise geometric designs built on a vast scale the geometry and surveying skills needed to construct these ritual landscapes seemed to be unknown among the Native Americans [Music] because there were ancient mounds throughout Europe other scholars who did not believe in the theory of lost races suggested that the American mounds were built by colonists from the more highly developed cultures of the old world they believed in the theory of diffusion that early voyagers brought the mound building tradition across the Atlantic eventually both of these antiquarian theories would be abandoned as the new discipline of scientific archaeology developed by the mid 20th century professional anthropologists would firmly deny that ancient people navigated across the ocean and they would dismiss as well the idea of lost races but here in the landscape forming the heart of the old NorAm Bega myth Hamlin the antiquarian was about to make a discovery which would eventually change scientific beliefs though it's real significance was not understood for a hundred years what he found here was the first evidence of a completely unknown ancient race of skilled seafaring people who once lived along the Atlantic coast as a geologist hamlin realized he was looking at a high grade of red ochre iron oxide the ochre had been turned up by the plow and the red pools were formed when it mixed with a night rain buried in the yogurt Emlyn found artifacts made of polished stone he knew that Native American peoples used red ochre for war paint and for their rituals but what surprised him was the quality and the perfection of the polished artifacts the stone woodworking tools were honed to a sharpness rivaling a metal blade and they were far superior to the artifacts found at Indian sites in Maine Ellen brought the tools to the Peabody Museum at Harvard and the search for the mysterious red paint people who was taken up by professional archaeologist Charles C Willoughby when Willoughby investigated Hamlin's site he discovered a mound at the water's edge and began a dig that has been called the first scientific excavation in America Willoughby's careful measurements and drawings revealed that the artifacts had been buried in ritual patterns he suspected that they were the remains of ancient graves but he found no skeletons to confirm his theory he suggested that the graves were so old that the bones had long ago disintegrated in the acidic New England soil they built this scale model to be displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian exhibition in Chicago along with Willoughby another archaeologist was presenting his work in the Hall of Anthropology Warren came warhead became famous when he displayed his discoveries of the Ohio mound builder treasure at the exhibition he was a self-taught archeologist who's less than careful excavation methods made him a maverick in the professions eye but his uncanny nose for spectacular discoveries made his name a household word Moorhead was searching for the origins of the mound builders and he soon became interested in Willoughby's site in maine with a team of excavators he called the force more heads set out on an expedition up the rivers of Maine to investigate Willoughby's claims of boneless cemeteries these recently discovered hand tinted glass slides were used to illustrate his popular lectures when Moore had got involved in Maine archeology he elevated the quest for the red paint people to high adventure like Hamlin Moorhead was impressed by the quality of the tools the workmanship of the polished stone led him to believe that the red paint people had a highly evolved culture he sent examples back to museums in the Midwest to be shown alongside the artifacts of the mountain builders by the turn of the century he had excavated several mounds and ritual sites both in the hills and along the coast of Maine Moorhead wrote that in all his explorations he had never examined sites appearing so old but like willoughby he never found a skeleton or a village without this evidence there was no way to determine who these people were how they lived or where they came from but he did note that some of the tools were made from a type of stone not found anywhere in Maine or New England Moore had daringly suggested that its source would someday be located in the far north and he claimed this was evidence of long-distance trade his prediction was born out 80 years later when archaeologists discovered the source of this unusual stone in Ramah Bay northern Labrador 1,500 nautical miles from the coast of Maine the stone is now called Rama chert it's beautiful translucence and sugary texture make it highly distinctive the church has been found in artifact collections as far south as New Jersey and west along the st. Lawrence River into Vermont the Rama Bay quarry was the only place in the world where this type of church could be found confirming Moorhead's idea of a link between the red paints and the far north at the time Moorhead's academic colleagues considered his claims to be too sensational some simply dismissed the idea of an advanced prehistoric culture and others thought that the red paints actually might have been a group of marauding Eskimo from the north eventually Moorhead's career was destroyed not surprisingly the next generation of professional anthropologists avoided the question and the mystery of the red paint culture was temporarily forgotten it was not until the 1930s that another major discovery occurred in Maine this one was found by chance under an Indian shale heap on the edge of Blue Hill Bay these heaps are the discarded remains of shellfish built up by generations of tribes a return year after year to harvest the ocean creatures they have been found in many places along the Atlantic coast on Blue Hill Bay red ochre began eroding from the bottom of a heap known as the net it was brought to the attention of archaeologist Douglas Byers the layers of crushed shale formed a calcium rich mixture that neutralized the acidic soil at the bottom Byers found the badly disintegrated remains of full skeletons covered in red ochre just as Moorhead and Willoughby had predicted buyers also found bone artifacts with surprisingly beautiful decorations engraved into the surface no one had expected to find such precise geometric designs among the red paints but the most surprising discoveries at the Neven site were toggling harpoons and the remains of swordfish a deep water ocean species these artifacts were the first clue that the red paint people might be a seafaring race at the time most of American anthropology resisted this idea there seemed to be no historical evidence for ocean navigation among the Indians but then the next major red paint discovery in Maine occurred on a remote island in Penobscot Bay in the late 1960s dr. Bruce pork of the Maine State Museum investigated a shell heap on North Haven Island near the bottom he found the remains of a red paint fishing station well ten years ago we didn't really understand much about the lifestyle of the people who left these cemeteries then in 1971 began excavations at the Turner farm site and got down near the bottom of this deep shale heap to a series of strata that related to a village of what I call the Moorhead phase people who left these cemeteries dr. Bork and his crew had a tool which had been unavailable to early archaeologists they used radiocarbon dating to determine that the red paint occupation of the island occurred over 4,000 years ago this surprisingly early date indicated that the red paint culture predated the mound builders civilizations of the Midwest by more than 2,000 years and we were surprised to find that most of the bone or great deal of the bone related to maritime activity specifically cod fish was very abundant and and very surprisingly swordfish was tremendously abundant now both these animals swordfish and cod fish are deepwater animals the people of the Moorhead phase were very skilled at going out and traveling the several miles necessary to get to the ideal hunting and fishing places for these two species the gouges which are so prominent in the red paint graves suggest to us great skill at working wood and when you combine the evidence we have here for dependence on deepwater marine species with the apparent importance or skill and woodworking well since then is that these people were maritime hunters who made very competent sea craft the boats that these people use were seaworthy that were rugged probably large dugout canoes perhaps not too different from those we know from the Northwest Coast during the historic period the sea peoples of the Pacific Northwest have recently become a model to help anthropologists visualize the way of life of the red paint people this rare footage of Northwest Coast Indians was produced at the turn of the century by photographer Edward Curtis Curtis worked with the quad you'll people and the famous Indian ethnographer George Hunt to build and photograph examples of their traditional boats and houses here George Hunt demonstrates the woodworking tools of the North West Coast that are similar in shape and function to the tools found in the red paint burials of Maine although the red paints predated these North West Coast people by thousands of years the similarity of their tools suggests how advanced the red paint culture must have been this island village located 200 miles off the coast of British Columbia was abandoned a century ago and has already begun to disintegrate if these wooden structures had been built four thousand years ago by now they would have disappeared without a trace like the sea peoples of the Pacific Northwest the red paint people of the Northeast built their villages at the water's edge unfortunately for archaeologists the edge of the ocean is one of the most abrasive environments known and there is very little left of the red paint way of life [Music] at the same time as dr. Bork's work in maine there was an accidental discovery at the edge of an island in the Canadian Maritimes port au choix is a fishing community in northwestern Newfoundland in 1968 construction began for a new movie theater on the outskirts of town a bulldozer cut through a patch of red ochre and the work was stopped as dr. James tuck from Memorial University and st. John's was called in I came up to see the what having fun it was something that we'd been looking for for a long time because it's apparently the remains of a burial cult that we are interested in finally archaeologists had found skeletons which were preserved well enough to identify enabling dr. tuck to give the red paint people a new scientific name a maritime archaic eventually it turned out to be a sight that I guess people had been looking for for a hundred years there were red paint cemeteries in Maine but almost never had there been any bone preserved when we first found the human bones we asked ourselves questions like are these people Eskimos or were they Indians it sounds almost silly now 15 years later but those were questions that were very real and important then Jim Anderson the physical anthropologist who studied the bones immediately after they'd come from the field was able to distinguish that these people were in fact racially American Indians North American Indians rather than Europeans or Eskimos I think the European question is is hardly important at all doesn't bear discussing but there are biological traits in the skulls and else and infra cranial skeletons are these people that allow physical anthropologists to distinguish between people we'd recognize as Eskimos and those we'd recognize as Indians the site proved to be over 4,000 years old about the same age as the sites in Maine when I first saw them I couldn't believe they were as old as they were the preservation was almost beyond belief they looked fresh and new and covered with red ochre when we completed our analysis of the Porta soir material we had for the first time a real good look at the sophisticated sea mammal hunting technology or sea hunting technology that these people had their weapons included toggling harpoons and barbed harpoons these were used to harpoon sea mammals the polished slate and bone Lance points were probably used to dispatch sea mammals seals and walrus and so forth there were specialized fish Spears things called leister's and a very sophisticated and well developed technology for exploiting the resources of the Gulf of st. Lawrence I think that the analogy is probably pretty good between East and West they certainly had a boating technology of which we know a great deal on the west coast but very little here because of preservation you get the impression now from looking at the collections from both areas that British Columbia material is much more rich say in terms of the wood technology abet though if you found a maritime archaic site with the same kind of preservation as you find in British Columbia really be a surprise knock your socks off so I'm gonna stuff their head if the Native American cultures of the northwest coast are any guide the spiritual beliefs of the maritime archaic were shaped by powerful forces in the natural environment anthropologists used the term shamanism to describe the religion of hunting cultures around the northern globe shamanism is not so much a formalized religion but a way of relating to the spirits of nature to the Shaymin each particular object animal and place as a spiritual identity and the Shaymin communicates with these forces through a state of trance often experienced alone in the wilderness this altered state of consciousness is brought on by starvation physical exertion or psychoactive substances the ritual is often accompanied by drumming chanting and dancing the Shaymin gains intuition and uses it to guide the community curing illness and ensuring success in hunting and war these spiritual techniques have existed for thousands of years and have been documented into modern times this 16th century European print of a sorcerer in a trance was one of the first visual records of Native life on the Atlantic coast 400 years later anthropologist Franz boas documented a similar event when he filmed this Northwest Coast Shaymin for his study of ritual gestures [Music] Edward Curtis in his film work dramatized the shaman's ritual with the help of George hunt he recreated a sacred place in the wilderness the Indian selects the skulls of certain ancestors who will share in the experience the dancing may last a few hours for a few days but it is followed by a trance-like sleep in which the Shaymin speaks with the spirits of the natural world at some point in history at natural world and its spiritual realm expanded when people began to communicate with the animal spirits of the sea a good example of that might be the killer whale effigy that was found in the chest of a young adult male it's probably speculation but we know that other sea mammal hunters have had killer whale cults why not the people at Portis WOD communication with the spirits of the sea was a major step for these ancient cultures which had been dominated by land spirits for countless millennia the recognition of these new and powerful spiritual forces released people from their bondage to the land and opened up a wider world of maritime travel and trade for these traditional cultures we can imagine that navigation was a ritual where the shaman pilot consulted the winds the waves the animals and the stars along with the whales several artifacts from the burials at port au choix indicate that water birds were also important to the maritime archaic the birds habits and migration patterns would have been especially important for piloting and navigation the image of the water bird gear carved on a comb was a common motif dr. Tuck also found burials covered with the beaks of a species known as the Great Auk these flightless penguin like birds once traveled in huge flocks which swam across the ocean from their home in Iceland to the shores of North America they spread out in a mass which extended from miles across the surface of the ocean as they moved slowly along their migration route from Labrador to the Carolinas the species was so easy for sailors to hunt that it became extinct in 1844 perhaps by following the slow-moving ox the maritime archaic first explored the remote shores of northern Labrador dr. William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution has himself been exploring the coast of Labrador searching for the northern limits of the maritime archaic if remains of the red paint people could be found here it would confirm that the maritime archaic were skilled long-distance navigators in 1980 on the desolate beaches of new Liat Cove dr. Fitts you found what it eluded every other researcher for a hundred years the remains of red paint house foundations new lyac is the largest settlement location that we have found and I expect it's very near the northern limit of this culture the reason that they were able to live so far north in a area that's pretty harsh with very rigorous winters and ice cover on the sea for eight months of the year at least is because of a very intensive maritime adaptation it's a type of adaptation which probably extended with variations into New England but yet there was a homogeneity to the style of life a kind of a similarity certainly in the ceremonial cultures to some extent in artifact forms which bound this entire area of the Northeast all the way from north of the forest fringe down into the temperate zones and it's been a puzzle for archaeologists because they could not understand the complexity of the burial ceremonialism the rather elaborate artifact types in terms of a northern typical northern Indian way of life something characterized by Algonquin culture by Montaigne s copy Indians and the Indians we know it graphically from this area who traveled in small bands who hunted caribou but never got into this intense kind of life which we see indicated by the maritime archaic Caribou come down to new lyac off the hills up here and they tend to follow each other frequently so that there's a trail which develops you can see beaten into the ground here and these things will last for a long long time you'll get projectile points primarily and broken frequently in this case here we've found one that's right in the caribou trail just as its dropped for 4,000 years it's been right there and I don't know how many caribou have ever stepped on that but certainly more than one the Smithsonian crew began by excavating a small stone mound which was the first clue that the red paint people had occupied the site generally it's found right at the bottom of the deposit but probably extends up out of the pit over here aways the archaeological team set up their camp below the beech Terrace where the maritime archaic had once lived the ancient settlement was preserved because geological forces raised the beach away from the oceans erosive edge thousands of years ago when the melting glacier receded from the ocean at the end of the last ice age perhaps ten thousand years ago a river channel was formed relieved from the great weight of the ice the landmass rose out of the sea and a beach developed at the mouth of the channel at some point after the maritime archaic first settled on the beach continued geological uplift raised the terrace above sea level and the channel was blocked forming a pond scientists now had their first chance to see how the maritime archaic lived before the discovery of newly a cracked eclis everything known about the red pain culture had been learned from their burials of the dead the first place where people could live was up on the side of the pond where they raised beaches come down from the hillside to the level of the pond when we first visited the site I was attracted by a number of bolder lines features in the earth which can be seen here they're roughly two parallel raised ridges of beach stones about two metres apart stretching away from us and they seem to be unnatural not the normal kind of geological features which would form as a beach Ridge and when we started looking at these things we began finding evidence of human activity and throughout the interior of these two Boulder lines and such things as flakes of Ramat shirt pieces of slate with a bulb of percussion where they've been snapped off the original block fragments of artifacts like the stem from a American archaic stem point and one of the problems we have is the the shape and size of this particular feature now the probability is that these raised ridges isolate living areas within this house we can see as we come down the inside of the structure ridges here here and two more till we get to the the end the Smithsonian crew found the remains of 26 multi room structures some measuring 90 meters in length the radiocarbon dates indicate that over 4,000 years ago large groups of people were living in well-organized communities here at the edge of the Arctic along the front of the ancient beech Terrace the Smithsonian crew also began to excavate a foundation that was near a mysterious upright stone this is a typical deposit containing fire crack rock chips of Ramat shirt fragments of tool-making activity pieces of broken tools that have been burned in the fire charcoal flecks red ochre this whole arrangement of artifacts is a little interesting because of this big stone here which may have been a structural feature of the house or a seat or have served some other purpose but it is interesting that the material is distributed in a cluster around this this large rock like the small standing stone dr. Fitts you found on the beach at new lyac there are other stone monuments in Labrador that also remain an archaeological mystery found primarily along the coast these stone pinnacles may have had both a spiritual and a practical purpose summers single slabs prompt into vertical position and others are Cairns built up with smaller boulders the Eskimo refer to these monuments as a nuke shocks their traditions say that the stone markers point the way to settlements boat pilots can navigate along the coast by using a simple technique of alignments and angles to identify their positions offshore these basic principles of geometry may have been developed thousands of years ago by the first cultures adapting to the sea the technique is still useful today especially in the far north where modern navigational instruments are not always trustworthy here we have a grinding slab of some sort probably for polishing ground slate axes and gouges implements such as stemmed projectile points and knives they had a whole variety of stem points from large to small perhaps some for hunting birds others for sea mammals and in addition very distinctive artifact soapstone plummets which are found in large numbers in southern Labrador maritime archaic sites and seem to be restricted to the 4,000 year old time period plummets have often been found in red paint burials and they were probably used as fishing weights but the smallest examples are often beautifully crafted sometimes decorated and may have been used for other purposes this engraved pendant from new lyac is a rare discovery a complex geometric design along with other markings indicate a high level of intellectual development among the maritime archaic over 4,000 years ago [Music] the surprising discovery of this advanced seat culture living in North America has encouraged fresh comparisons with the ancient sea peoples of northern Europe the shores of Scandinavia have supported maritime cultures for thousands of years this fact has been recognized by European archaeologists for decades in Norway professor Paul Simonson of the Tromso Museum has studied the remains of cultures that once lived above the Arctic Circle at the very beginning of human habitation after the Ice Age up here people came along the coast simply because the whole of the inland still were powered by the ice sheets it's impossible to imagine people walking up along the Navi chiyan coast because of the fjords and because of the ice so it's absolutely necessary that they're headed boat and well in some way adapted to the sea like the house foundations at new lyac the remains of these Stone Age dwellings at barangay Fuhr dword above the present shoreline by geological forces the site was discovered in the 1930s and professor Simonson began his excavation of the structures in the early 1950s on some dwelling places you have fish bones of deep-sea fishes and on the same places you have very large and heavy sinking stones meaning that they could fish up to perhaps 100 120 meter deep in North America use of the plummet vanished with the mound builders but in Europe it evolved as a Mariners tool this 16th century print shows how the weight attached to a line was used to determine the waters depth eventually a plummet became a basic element of navigational and astronomical instruments along with the sea hunting equipment professor Simonson's crew also recovered beautiful tools made out of polished slate during the excavations of the third norwegian anthropologist gu Torme yessing was the first to recognize that the tools were very similar to examples from North America he wrote nowhere on the globe are there to be found remains as closely related as those of Norway and the coast of Maine during World War two yessum retreated to his office to work on a theory suggesting that these cultural developments spread in the far north by diffusion the similar tools led yessing to believe that there had once been a single circumpolar culture that originated in central Russia and diffused across the land masses to the coasts of Europe and the eastern shores of North America because you must remember that he was devoted the diffusion ist's a man who sought that one thing can only be invented one time and from the this place spread out over if people living one in New England and the other in Norway made two things quite a lack we are inclined to say they had had invented them independent but if people are living very near each hour and then are making things quite a lot we say that one must have learnt it from the all but we don't know for sure more important than tools yessing identified what he believed to be deeper connections between the spiritual beliefs in both hemispheres for example this engraved bone from Norway as a geometric design created by mapping out an alignment of dots and then connecting them to form a straight line this same technique of aligned dots was also used to engrave the decorations on the bone daggers found at the Neven site on the coast of Maine these traits which are very very alike are not only traits for practical purpose they are ornamentation they are patterns they are spiritual things along with the artwork yessing carefully studied the spiritual traditions of northern cultures this archival footage of a lapis shaman was filmed in the Norwegian Arctic it shows a ritual involving a standing stone which may be thousands of years old yes I understood that similar tool shapes might be coincidence but they believed the deep-rooted shamanistic traditions so similar around the globe could only have been the result of diffusion at first yes ings theory of land diffusion was widely hailed by his colleagues it seemed to finally explain the extraordinary similarities which existed among the circumpolar cultures but appealing as the theory was there was no proof to back it up during the 1950s archaeologists working in central Russia and Western Canada could not find any evidence that a circumpolar culture had diffused across the central land masses eventually his theory was put on the top shelf to collect dust but yessing never gave up his idea of land diffusion according to Professor Simenson yessing never considered the possibility that ancient peoples could have been skilled Mariners I have never seen the word a maritime adaptation in his papers I don't think that just this perspective was a part of his acting concepts to me there still is a lot of sense in his theories I'll not speak about the circumpolar stone age I'm not speaking about the circumpolar culture at all but a circumpolar connections and communications from people to people surely exist and some cultural traits will be transmitted over very very long east-west distances in the Arctic like the trade patterns along the coast of North America there were extensive networks which linked the people of Norway with others see adapted cultures to the south artifacts have been found in Norway that were manufactured here on the coast of Denmark in 1975 at a site called vet bake archaeologists from the Danish National Museum discovered the remains of a C adapted culture that was once part of this trade network thousands of years ago there was a channel where these yellow flowers now bloom on the hills that surrounded the water they discovered 19 burials radiocarbon dates indicated that the graves were over 7,000 years old 3,000 years older than the maritime archaic sites found in North America some of the burials may have been ritual sacrifices this woman wore a large necklace of teeth to her grave a small child perhaps her own was placed at her side when the woman and child were first discovered they were covered with red ochre a round polished stone lay near the woman's fractured skull and a knife blade rested at the midsection of the infant nor these barriers we find the red Oakland that of course has been open to Gong speculation but what the meaning of the red over how that be understood the use of red ochre goes back at least 75,000 years into early Neanderthal times but the existence of red ochre cemeteries is especially prominent among seagoing peoples like the maritime archaic Barrios in North America the red ochre cemeteries of Europe are found along the shore in 1927 here on the island of Teddy AK just off the coast of Brittany French archaeologists Martin Sanchez Pequot discovered red paint burials near the bottom of a shell he liked vid bake the TV acts Emma teri proved to be over 7,000 years old and the burial rituals were similar but what was unusual about TV AK was that several of the burials had been placed in small stone structures beneath the shell mounds the peck quartz believed that these might have been early examples of the mysterious stone megaliths left throughout northern Europe and the British Isles by an unknown ancient people the megalith builders of Europe like the mound builders of America were often considered a lost race by 19th century antiquarians the PEI quartz suggested that the red paint people of T V AK were the ancestors of the megalith builders at the time their idea was considered too radical most anthropologists believe that the chambered mounds and alignments of standing stones had been built by Neolithic farming peoples of a much more recent time period but further north along the rocky coasts of Western Sweden conditions made it necessary for the ancient inhabitants to live primarily by fishing not farming Cambridge University archaeologist Graham Clark has studied these ancient maritime peoples his research also suggests that the early megalith builders were a seagoing culture and it's interesting that among quite a number Oh maritime 72 hours we find their parents on quite elaborate tombs something which until recently we'd always thought of as being a special future Cornell is it man Neolithic and later societies for example we have stone towns in the maritime our cake context Labrador dating from several thousand years before Christ one of the first things that attracted me to this site was the boulder constructions in a roughly circular arrangement this was suspected as a burial and we've now opened up the center of the burial feature revealing a pit about two meters in diameter filled with dark humid stained earth flakes of r amatuer bits of mica and other signs of cultural activity this ochre staying focused and down here so I suspect me when we get down below this layer of slabs you might might come down on top of those features have there been any flakes or charcoals there's flakes mixed in the burial fill but no charcoal yeah no how much deeper over here on the east side of the mound there is a crypt of some sort chamber built out of stones in a rather unusual way for a maritime archaic culture we've never seen anything like this before it is very unusual in this lintel stone on top of these carefully chosen flat rocks and of course it's an interesting fact that if you plot the distribution of megalithic tombs on a map you will find a logical course movement on or very close to the coast this in the past was interpreted in terms of diffusion it's equally possible that such magnetic structures were built by people whose economy was based fundamentally on farming just as antiquarians once believed that the stone ruins in America came from the old world anthropologist also once believed that the megalithic tradition in Europe spread by diffusion from the Middle East for antiquarians and scientists alike the stone ruins along the Atlantic coast have remained a provocative problem in human prehistory but professor Clark's work suggests that a new understanding of these early maritime cultures may offer answers in the future over 7,000 years ago his early seagoing people may have been the first highly evolved civilization to inhabit the European coast across the Atlantic were the awareness of an ancient maritime culture along the northeast coast is a brand new idea the phenomenon of the red paint people may also help to explain the antiquarian mysteries of the new world as researchers discover more about the maritime archaic they're beginning to realize that these early sea peoples may have left a legacy with far ranging effects on the development of Indian cultures in the northeast scientists are unsure of where the maritime archaic tradition began but the earliest evidence has been found here on the coast of Labrador when the French fishermen settled here in the 17th century they named this bay Lhasa mort the bay of Death the name gradually changed to lhasa more the bay of love ironically the primary attraction of lhasa more today is this burial mound excavated by dr. james tuck and professor robert mcgee the site proved to be one of the most important maritime archaic discoveries in north america when we first came we saw only a corner of it that had been exposed by this road construction and subsequent erosion we excavated the mound in quadrants and in near the center there was a rectangular stone cyst made of upright stones we were a little disappointed because there was no skeleton or any artifacts in there a little bit of red ochre but when we dug below the cyst just to make sure there was nothing there we were really surprised to find the skeleton of a child about 12 or 13 years old buried facedown head to the west we don't know it was a male or female because it was too young to be able to tell it's an unusual burial especially for so much time effort and expense to have been lavished on a young child it might be that these are not quite so much or not entirely for the disposal of the dead but represent as well renewal rights for the community holding the the community together a large flat rock lay across the burial and ritual fires had been set due north and south the charcoal samples were radiocarbon dated to about 7500 years ago making this the earliest known maritime archaic burial site in North America the almost identical dates in both Europe and America were a surprise to scientists previous theories about cultural development from the antiquarians to yessing were based on the assumption that diffusion had to originate among the more advanced traces of Europe but this new evidence suggests that cultural development may have been parallel on both sides of the Atlantic over 7,000 years ago the evidence also compels diffusion astiz ancient ceremonial traditions were once carried from north america to the shores of europe along the prevailing northern route of the Gulf Stream the Lance amor burial is also an important clue to the mystery of the mound builders in North America it predates the mounds of the Midwest by more than 5,000 years I suppose you could consider this the start of a mound tradition in the new world this burial and the ones that bread or and elsewhere are more than 7,000 years old I think therefore that the they're the oldest burial mounds certainly in this part of the world maybe in most of North America the artifacts themselves included toggling harpoon of a design we've never seen before since and since its 7,500 years old its if not the oldest one of the oldest toggling harpoons that's ever been found so these guys were pretty sophisticated sea mammal hunters from the time of lance amour the red paint people flourished for about four thousand more years then without explanation the traces of their culture vanish from the archaeological record most of the artifacts we have seen were never intended for our eyes but of all their remains the most intriguing are those which they wanted us to see the ritual monuments they left in the landscapes of the Northeast dr. Fitzhugh believes that these ancient people the first to live on these subarctic coasts have left us a glimpse of an early ritual tradition as it appeared in the new world one of the interesting features of the maritime archaic in Labrador at least is the association between ceremonial sites burial sites and imminent prominent locations and it seemed as though people were selecting these locations for qualities of the land high hills sweeping vistas magnificent scenery as well as conditions that were suitable for excavating burials sandy terraces and things like that the early maritime archaic mounds seem to be individual structures with single burials in them on these prominent locations they're always at the fronts of the terraces very near the sea very near the most sweeping panorama that you can get the valley brac situation is probably the most dramatic I've seen but we have located at maybe 10 or 12 the maritime archaic burial areas and all of them have these characteristics they're not putting the ceremonial sites back in under the hills hiding them away it's as though the individual is buried you know wanted to be placed in such a position so that he could see out across the sea and I think the people were interested in this kind of concept of beauty and landscape mixed with mountains and waterfalls and everything else there's a lot of that in laboratory but the sites that they choose to live in are really rather special that way you don't find that with other cultures either with the Eskimo cultures or the other Indian cultures the discovery of the maritime archaic represents one of the rare instances when antiquarian mystery and scientific exploration have merged together they have revealed an unknown chapter in the ancient history of North America [Music] watch our next nova program poison in the Rockies on Tuesday if you like at 8 o'clock some scenes are coming up after which at 1:00 today we have this Sunday afternoons feature film the scene a raging storm a florida hotel the guests held captive by a malevolent gangster key elements in Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart Edward G Robinson Lauren Bacall lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor Key Largo presented uncut with no commercial interruptions next at 1 [Music] funding for Nova is provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies supplying health care products worldwide and Lockheed a bold new force in systems engineering management and technology services for defense space and industry major funding for Nova is provided by the financial support of viewers like you for a transcript of this program send $5 to this address or called - 1 - 2 - 7 re ad this is PBS
