The Untold Story Of The Americas Before Columbus | 1491: Full Series | Timeline

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] we are the First Peoples of the Americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and starved Crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and built a vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the Untold Stories of the Americas before Columbus when did the first people arrive in the Americas indigenous creation stories tell how our ancestors emerged as humans from the earth the water the sky and the land below some people believe that we walked into the Americas on foot across an ancient land bridge that once connected Asia and North America others say we paddled here an ocean-going canoes along the Pacific coastline there's one thing that all of these views of arrival have in common they all begin with a journey by 1491 tens of millions of indigenous people were living in every part of the Americas from the high Arctic to the southern tip of South America there were countless indigenous Nations each with their own distinct language and ways of life but this didn't happen overnight it took thousands of years to build this diverse World from a very small founding population since 1492 we've shared our traditional territory with people from every part of the world today we continue our search for the origins of our ancestors and the roots of our cultural identity as indigenous people foreign we have two different kinds of dates we have the archaeological date that says probably somewhere between 18 to 20 000 years ago the first non-native-born human came into this hemisphere in terms of indigenous perspectives we saw we've always been here philosophically we've never been anywhere else every indigenous nation has its own creation story stories have been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years creation stories form a powerful part of each nation's identity and our sense of who we are as a people in the beginning there was a great flood a few animals and birds survived by clinging to a log among them was the tiny muskrat the creatures decided they needed to find land but the world was covered in water one by one they took turns diving deep into the water looking for some dirt to bring back to the surface but each animal came back empty-handed finally the tiny muskrat Dove under the water when he came back he had a Paw full of Earth he placed it on the back of a turtle shell this is how North America became known as Turtle Island in the beginning there was only the sea and sky the gods created the Earth and populated it with animals and birds but the animals couldn't worship them so they decided to make humans the first humans were made from mud but they fell apart too easily then the gods made humans from wood but they had nothing in their minds so they destroyed them in a flood finally the gods made humans out of maize dough they had intelligence and knowledge and could worship the Gods so they became the first people in the beginning people lived in the sky and the only creatures they knew were Birds a young Hunter set out one day to find a rare and beautiful bird when he finally found it he shot his arrow and when he went to retrieve it he discovered a hole in the bottom of the sky looking through it he saw forests and rivers and wild animals he asked the other Hunters to travel to this world with him but they refused so he made a rope and lowered it down the hole and climbed down to the world below shot a deer and brought it back to the sky world but the others wanted to hunt deer too so they climbed down the Rope last person to go through the hole in the sky was a woman she became stuck preventing the people from returning to their home she can still be seen in the sky as the Morning Star historians have long supported a theory that our ancestors walked into the Americas across an ancient land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last ice age until about thirteen thousand years ago great sheets of ice kilometers thick covered much of the northern sections of North America Europe and Asia but there were some ice-free regions in the northern hemisphere where people lived one of these regions was known as boringia [Music] this thousand kilometer expanse of land connecting the two continents emerged when glaciers locked up vast quantities of water causing sea levels to fall more than 100 meters you see evidence that people came across a land bridge you see evidence that a land bridge did exist in the past in the Northern parts of North America Alaska the Yukon even Northern British Columbia we have a collection of some of the most ancient sites across the continent and of course that would be up in an area that archaeologists refer to as baringia and you know those people who made it across the land bridge all they had were their wits and a few stone tools and yet they managed to explore discover and colonize two continents so that's a pretty amazing achievement in the annals of human history and they did this by being very aware of their environment of being able to manipulate their environment to their own benefit the water between the two continents drops so low it exposed the bottom of the sea this arid prairie-like landscape remained ice-free and the Abundant birds and mammals provided people with food and materials for clothing and shelter but boringia was a temporary landscape around twenty thousand years ago the world's climate began to warm and the glacier started melting by fifteen thousand years ago the rising sea levels had covered up the beringia land bridge and people living there either had to return to Siberia or stay in North America the melting glaciers and rising sea levels created major environmental changes in the northern hemisphere the land between the two North American ice sheets widened about 12 000 years ago offering an ice-free Corridor for people to travel through historically in archeology it was believed that the spread further south into the continent was between the Lauren Hyde and cordiller and ice sheets and this is known as the ice-free corridor hypothesis and so many researchers saying this was the Gateway into the Americas [Music] taking this route South through such a harsh terrain would have involved a tremendous risk if they had a people who were up in Alaska and they see this opening between two ice sheets they're taking a big leap of faith to say well maybe we go a thousand miles south of here we'll find better land the ice recorder would have been a very Dynamic landscape it would have had terrible winters like harsh cold Winters and and not much better in the summer the Summers would have been cold and rainy so there wasn't a lot of opportunity for people to find stable land that they could colonize the end of the last ice age set the stage for the movement of people Overland into North America the indigenous people who traveled into the continent on foot from beringia could not have known it at the time but they were not the first people to settle south of the ice sheets in fact humans had already been living in both North and South America for thousands of years before the glaciers melted and opened up Roots South through the ice-free corridor [Music] glaciers covered much of the northern hemisphere until about 12 000 years ago temperatures warmed worldwide ice melted and sea levels began to rise these changes to the environment led to animal bird and human migration throughout North America Asia and Europe tens of thousands of years ago the climates and parts of the Asian subcontinent was much wetter than it is today in India the Tsar desert was once a vast fertile grassland Hunters following the herds eventually settled permanently in the region [Music] as the glaciers retreated the warming climate created new agricultural zones in the northern hemisphere early agriculturalists cultivated new food resources in the fertile soils of the Middle East and this led to the formation of farming settlements and eventually cities [Music] during the last ice age sea levels were 100 meters lower than they were today and this created a thousand kilometer wide land bridge to appear between Siberia and Alaska this became one of the migration routes that humans took into the Americas [Music] changes in climate over the Millennia has influenced the migration paths and hunting practices of humans throughout the world when they first started doing their surveys in the what would be the ice-free corridor the observation they made was that the sites were getting younger as they went North which is counterintuitive you'd expect that the oldest sites would be in the north and they could progressively younger in the south so it looked like people were moving North instead of South so this has always been very paradoxical and the only way you can explain it is that there were people already living south of the ice sheets and where did those people come from the recent discovery of an ancient Village and campsites in the Americas that are more than 14 000 years old supports a new theory that people first arrived by boat along the Pacific Coastline of North and South America in the 70s researchers proposed an alternative hypothesis to say that the coastal route was also viable and this sparked a huge debate in archeology that it had to be one or the other which one was it we're now coming to an understanding that it was likely both happened however archaeologists are more leaning towards the coastal route as the earlier alternative any Journey along the Pacific coast during the Ice Age would have been treacherous keep in mind that the West Coast at that time would have been choked with icebergs and lots of ice flows so for people to travel that way they would certainly require some good ocean going skills and that's not out of the question because we do know from the archaeological record in East Asia that as early as 40 000 years ago people were able to make open ocean voyages when people go on Journeys like this their destination is usually unknown to them we may never know what compelled indigenous people to embark on this treacherous journey by sea what is the history of humanity in North America we have indications that humans were here they were producing culture they were burying their dead they were becoming a part of the landscape they were taking taking ownership of the landscape in their own way once arriving on land these seafarers would have found themselves in a strange and foreign World filled with unknown Peril and promise when people are traveling into unknown countries they really have to rely on the skills that they bring with them so if they know how to live off the land if they know what seafoods they can consume this will give them a better than average chance of surviving any new country or a new terrain that they're starting to settle in foreign the idea of where we come from is extremely important it gives us that sense of place it tells us the locations that we are tied to both as a people as individuals it's the part of the landscape that continues to reside in in our bones in our blood but particularly in our minds it's not known how many indigenous people arrived in the Americas by water but evidence suggests this was not an isolated occurrence archeology keeps finding more and more localities which add pieces to the puzzle when we look at them all in a very broad picture it does give us that story that deeply complex story about the first people to come into North America [Applause] you know are such foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] whether our ancestors arrive by land from boringia or by water along the Pacific coast people were soon living in every corner of the Americas Native Americans were at the southern tip of South America more than 14 000 years ago so the hypothesis is that they took a coastal route just because traveling over land would have been uh very difficult at the time we have a much greater understanding of the fluctuation in sea levels so it's easier for us to locate those most ancient sites along the coast spreading all the way down to California and of course all the way down to places like monteverdi and South America Monteverde is an ancient Village site located in Chile about 50 kilometers Inland from the Pacific Coastline that was occupied at least 14 800 years ago The Village was discovered in the 1970s beneath a creek and was largely preserved within the wet environment The Village consisted of 12 small Huts that would have supported about 20 or 30 people the Huts were made from wood animal hide and woven rope there were two large and several smaller hearths in the village people at Monteverde collected plants in the mountains grasslands and coastal regions of southern Chile suggesting that they traveled widely to collect food and building materials along with the remains of Mammoth and llama ten types of seaweed and the shells of crabs and crabs were found at the site the marine-based diet of those who lived at Monteverde points to a people who were well adapted to a marine lifestyle over the course of many thousands of years when you're doing things such as experimentation of New Life ways or trial and error in new food types all of this accumulates over many generations and gives us what we call traditional knowledge since first arriving in the Americas indigenous people have hunted Wild game for food shelter tools and clothing the type of tools used by these Ancient Hunters are often used to define their cultures one of the most important discoveries of ancient stone tools in the Americas was made at Clovis New Mexico in the early 20th century the distinct way of manufacturing these spearheads led to the Clovis first Theory which suggested that the earliest people in the Americas arrived shortly after the glaciers melted and used the same tool technology when we look at the history of archeology as a discipline early on say in the early 1900s scholars believe back then that North America had only been inhabited by indigenous people for two to three thousand years however this changed of course with the findings of Folsom and Clovis points in association with what we call megafauna or Ice Age giant mammals and creatures that walk the earth along with the indigenous people the discovery of Mammoth bones alongside stone tools at the Clovis site revealed that indigenous people were hunting magafana with spearhead technology around 13 000 years ago Clovis was the type site where the first stone tools were found and so after that kind of became the umbrella term for fluted Point technology foreign [Music] this lethal tool was sharp enough to penetrate the thick hides of large game such as bison and mammoth Clovis points were made from Jasper chert obsidian and other brittle stones and were eventually discovered throughout North America the Clovis tool complex spread across North America very rapidly so this has always given the impression that people are moving along and occupying new lands and there's lots of lots of variety across North America the geographical variations and for many decades it was believed that the Clovis culture was the first and only culture to be across all of North America however most recently in the last 10 to 20 years the Clovis first model has pretty much been thrown out the window because we have ample evidence across North America mesoamerica down to South America of sites that predate the Clovis time period and this data and these sites are really interesting and pushing the boundaries of what we know about that distant time [Music] think of Clovis as an idea and that there was already a pre-existing population that was receptive to this new invention so when the new invention came along it was the idea of it that spread into a pre-existing population although stone tools were widely used in the Americas for thousands of years tools made from animal bones were also used for hunting and fishing before people had Clovis points they actually used bone technology and the bone tools were just as lethal as the stone tools now there's starting to be a whole series of sites that have been discovered and one of the discoveries was actually made very early on the mana's hill site in Washington State there was a bone tool that was embedded in the vertebrae of Macedon and it was actually made from another mastodon's bone from that he could get a radiocarbonate off the element of the tools but he could also get a radio accommodate off the kill that it was embedded in the remains found at the Manus kill site date back 13 800 years a full Millennium before the glaciers melted enough to open up the ice-free corridor to the north a hunter likely took down a mammoth once in his life and talked about it for the rest of his life as the glaciers receded and the lands opened up allowing migration across North America hunting techniques changed based on the terrain and their prey there's certainly a long history of hunting as a way of life and going right back to the ice age when humans first appeared on the scene and of course as people moved into the farther north regions they started coming across animals like such as reindeer and caribou and these are herding animals so they started hunting them communally Clovis tools were very lethal and whatever they hit would have been injured but of course you'd have to be very close to that animal and you bring them into natural traps and they're monster into the natural traps and then you can use your stabbing Spears to kill them [Music] were the first materials used by humans to craft tools for hunting some of the earliest tools to be discovered date back more than two million years [Music] foreign twenty thousand years ago nomadic hunter-gatherers lived in the kibara cave region in Israel they developed the khabaran tool technology using Flint to make spear points and arrowheads [Music] the salutrient tool industry emerged in Western Europe around 19 000 years ago the people of this region made tools by napping tiny flakes off the Flint core Hunters also used heat to make the flaking more precise [Music] one of the earliest Stone tool Technologies in North America was the Clovis point named after the site in New Mexico where the spear points were first discovered the people who created these tools hunted a wide range of makeup fauna including mammoths throughout the world the different styles of tools that people developed determined the type and size of the game they hunted as our ancestors settled throughout the two continents creating hundreds of Nations languages evolved and diversified and through these languages came stronger social and cultural identities the Western hemisphere is the most linguistically diverse region in the world it's estimated that there were as many as 2 000 distinct languages spoken in the Americas in 1491. each of these languages are part of a language family connected through common words grammar and diction Ary languages are more than a means of communication for ancient societies they contain their cultural historical and traditional knowledge of a Nation many of the languages spoken before 1491 are still in use today in South America Mayan in mesoamerica English Pueblo in North America is in the Arctic [Music] um [Music] Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya and Aztec had a complex writing system but most indigenous languages were based on an oral tradition language doesn't leave marks on on the land language isn't a thing that we can point to in the world it's something that is done by people and especially without writing all you have are people as your evidence in North America there's a very complex tapestry of different language families that have crossed over each other and there's probably about 30 families in North America there's probably another 30 or so families in Central America and maybe even 100 families in South America the original work on comparative linguistics was reconstructing languages that had long written histories like English and the romance languages like French and Italian so it was early on believed no you simply couldn't do that in a language that didn't have a written history the early Anthropologist linguists in North America proved that yes you could You Could reconstruct these languages and often could show materially that language here was actually a close relative of a language that was quite far apart from it separated by a number of others they applied these methods that had been developed in Europe and proved that they could be were used for Unwritten languages and that opened the door for people to work on Native American languages and figure out where did they come from which is always you know the question that presses a lot of people when they study us they also found sometimes that the indigenous people themselves would tell you oh well our language is actually related to those guys over there I mean you can ask and you find out well yes we share a whole bunch of words and comment and go talk to them you can tell and although they can't really communicate in each person's language they still find quite a large number of words that are similar indigenous languages carry deep cultural and traditional knowledge but tracing their histories is a challenge to linguistic researchers even though we have reconstructions internally reconstructed and externally reconstructed language families we can show that they're related but we can't go back any further and that's because unlike biology language doesn't have a constant rate of change it changes in fits and starts with long periods of little change sudden dramatic reconstructions of how the language works it's not something that we can predict with any reliability we can show that a language is internally related but we can't tell you how long the connections are and we rely almost entirely on archeology to give us some sort of calibration to our guesstimates oral entomology is both fluid and fragile and of the thousands of indigenous languages that existed in the Americas in 1491 hundreds have been lost forever the exact question of when these all these languages came here as far as Linguistics can tell they've just been here archaeological sites in every part of the world tell the story of ancient peoples and the cultures and civilizations they created over thousands of years [Music] Eric is one of the first major cities in the world that featured Monumental Stone buildings it was built at the center of a fast Trade Network in the Middle East [Music] five thousand years ago Egypt was divided into upper and lower regions a pharaoh named armor created a unified Kingdom and there are sites throughout Egypt that represent the artistic achievements from this era [Music] thank you Cahokia was the largest urban center in North America a thousand years ago it was part of an elaborate inter-tribal Trade Network that connected people as far away as the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes [Music] the archaeological record in every part of the world continues to inform us of the accomplishments and ways of life of our ancestors indigenous people settled in every region of the Western Hemisphere from the high Arctic to the Caribbean islands to the southern tip of South America historians estimate that by 1491 the population of the Americas may have been as high as a hundred million people population growth in societies worldwide can be traced to the Advent of Agriculture as people began to grow annual crops the need to travel to find food lessened Villages grew into towns and towns into cities with the farmers providing a steady supply of food the impact over thousands of years was a significant growth of population in the Americas throughout the Americas civilizations rose that fell like an oscillating Frontier Through Time some of them had great periods of development Innovation their Technologies were among the most incredible their populations were significant and then they collapsed archaeologically we're looking at a Pelham zest in other words we're looking at layers and pieces and fragments it's like looking at a wall of graffiti and seeing one layer on top of another on top of another on top of another and when an archaeologist digs he may be digging through 10 different layers or she may be recovering the relics of maybe 10 civilizations an example of a significant population surge was the Aztec city-state of tenochitlan founded in 1325 on a man-made Island where present-day Mexico City now stands it was the capital of the Aztec empire the city had a complex social strata that included the working class military members priests and the elites it was a vibrant city with a bustling Marketplace at its peak tenorchitlan was home to more than 250 000 people and was the center of an Empire with a population of between two and three million in 1491 tenochilan was the largest city in the Americas the question then is what about North America the Mississippian side of Cahokia was a center that maintained significant populations into the tens of thousands Cahokia was arguably the largest and most influential urban center in North America before 1491 at its peak around 800 years ago Cahokia had a population of forty thousand or more the city's strategic location where the Mississippi Missouri and Illinois rivers meet made it a natural Gateway for inter-tribal trade but over time like the major cities in mesoamerica Cahokia also disappeared we have factors like drought we have Warfare we have Invasion and Conquest all of these things factor into the variable landscape of demography and population in the Americas indigenous archaeologists are much more Adept at thinking about the who of the past and the why of the past rather than just the what of the material culture it's not just a piece of pottery that happened here without humans being involved in either transportation and breaking it and moving it from one place to another and I think that's what drives a lot of good archaeologists is recognizing that we're not in it for the artifacts we're in it for the stories that the artifacts can promise one of the most important things about being an indigenous person involved in archeology is knowing the importance of story the importance of the individual and knowing how these all fit within who we are today there are so many tribal people involved in trying to relate the history of individual tribes individual places in the past it has been perceived to be the role of the expert to tell what the history is history of place and it often has been based on someone else's stories some written reports and such now it's extremely important that indigenous groups have the authenticity the authority and the right to present the history as they know it there are so many indigenous people who are getting Advanced degrees who are getting recognized as Authority and so now they're able to take that and tell the stories that their communities want them to tell so that people outside of the community can really understand what has gone before [Music] has led to many significant discoveries about the migration and ways of life of ancient peoples throughout the world [Music] foreign [Music] Egyptians believed that the soul remained with the human body after a person died Egyptian rulers and their families were buried in tombs with gold tools food and animals to help them on their Journey to the afterlife [Music] the counts of cave in Israel is the site of the earliest known human burial the remains of several adults and children were found including a boy buried with a deer antler placed across his chest [Music] at the bottom of a Cenote in eastern Mexico archaeologists found the remains of a young woman who died more than thirteen thousand years ago her DNA is a close match to many indigenous people living in Central and North America today [Music] for tens of thousands of years people in every part of the world have been carrying out rituals and ceremonies as part of their burial practices while there were tens of millions living in the Americas in 1491 the population soon after people arrived would only have been in the thousands it's not surprising that the discovery of an ancestor from this period is an extremely rare event thirteen thousand years ago a teenage girl in the Yucatan fell into a deep hole and died over the Millennia sea levels Rose and water filled the cave in the 1990s a group of underwater archaeologists found Nia as they named her and 40 meters of water deep in a Cenote near Tulum testing Maya's DNA confirmed that she is a direct ancestor of the indigenous people living in north and Central America today when the human genome was sequenced early in the 21st century it opened the door for geneticists to study the biological blueprint of human beings the data collected from studying the DNA found in human cells can be used to trace a person's ancestry by comparing the DNA of modern indigenous people with that of ancient people we can see how our ancestors migrated and settled down during the past several thousand years it's using your DNA to look at similarities between different populations so there are many different ways we can do it we can look at your maternal lineage we can look at your paternal lineage or we can look at everything which is the whole genome and in that instance we're sort of looking at the entirety of your father's contribution your mothers and all of your ancestors this is just another way to think about our past and figure out how we were related to each other we are all really connected and our genetics is telling us that too to have a really rigorous study you want to have ancient samples because with the ancient samples you can tell date it back really accurately how long ago did they live and what did they eat and also where were they if we're looking at ancient DNA we're only looking at the people that they actually were able to extract DNA from these are only 50 people but there were thousands of people at that time and there are very few samples that have been included from the United States and also from Canada the majority of them have been from South America and Central America what does DNA from the ancient ancestors we've discovered tell us about our Origins actually the closest relations to natives in the Americas is from sort of Central Asia so we know that we migrated in but a lot of people have questions about was it just one big migration did it happen at multiple times did we actually migrate and stay in one spot or did we just spread all over the Americas and how many migrations occurred DNA can only tell us so much we need to know actually when these occurred where they occurred so if a group split off from another group just by looking at DNA we can sort of make a guess but we won't actually know where it occurred or when it occurred unless we have archaeological data the study of DNA from ancient peoples requires a culturally sensitive approach and ongoing consultation with indigenous communities while archeology and genetics may seem at odds with our indigenous origin stories they all contribute to the overall history of our peoples [Music] going back to my creation story that I grew up with it was a journey because I think a lot of creation stories are journeys and that's how I sort of reconcile it with the genetics we're talking about population migration our ancestors they went on this huge long journey for thousands of years and I'm a product of that so not only did they have to journey across continents and oceans but we they also had to fight disease and once European contact came so many of our people died our ancestors but we here as living people are actually the products of all of that that long journey foreign Columbus first encountered indigenous people in our traditional territory more than 500 years ago he mistakenly called us Los Indios we thought he'd found a new route to India actually arrived in a world unlike anywhere else on Earth a world that was home to thousands of distinct Nations and millions of people today we keep our history alive through our stories and traditional knowledge and we stay connected to our ancestors through the material culture they left behind before 1491. [Music] [Music] foreign we are the First Peoples of the Americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and stars Crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and built a vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the Untold Stories of the Americas before Columbus [Applause] [Music] we've been taught that the Western Hemisphere before 1491 was a sparsely populated Wilderness virtually Untouched by humans but this pristine world was nothing more than a myth in reality there were millions of indigenous people living throughout the Americas and the majority lived in large cities and towns to provide for these large Urban centers Innovative techniques were invented to modify and manipulate the environment our ancestors used fire to clear the land they constructed canals that turned deserts into productive farmland they built Terraces on steep mountainsides to grow crops and in Amazonia they manufactured a soil so fertile it transformed an entire ecosystem these impressive modifications to the environment were driven not only by the needs of a growing population but by an ancient respect and connection to the land and water like a lot of indigenous metaphors convey whole bodies of thought and philosophy and understanding and this is many times not captured in an anthropological record or a archaeological record or historical record because this this is really the thoughts that guide the people we have relationships to water which is the most basic Elemental relationship because water is life you know in all cultures in all traditions and so we have a lot of metaphors that reflect and that represent and that symbolize water and all of its various stages from from Waters sitting in in the lake or a pond or moving in a stream or a river to water that is cycling in clouds and coming down as rain and snow and so all of those uh forms of water are sacred in the context of indigenous thinking covering an area as large as the continental United States Amazonia holds 10 percent of the world's plants Birds animals and insects it also had an indigenous population that numbered in the millions in 1491. so that idea the demos one was a tropical pristine rainforest is probably very recent rainforests grew up on the top of places that used to be settled before if you could go back a thousand years ago and we would see a different landscape that we see today about two percent of the land lies within the floodplain of the Amazon River and its many branches and the soil here is fertile the Amazon comes from the end is brings lots of like nutrients with its Waters and then it floods every year it brings nutrients to the floodplains so this soils are very rich but the majority of the soil in Amazonia is too acidic for extensive agricultural use normally Amazon stores are not very rich they're very acidic the pH is not very good tropical foil very fast will lose its fertility because of rain leaching in the places where the land was less fertile indigenous people engineered a soil called terraprita or dark Earth made from broken pottery plant waste fish bones and charcoal terraprita has been found in Village sites that date back 7 000 years about the time that Pottery was first produced in the Amazon in Guyana they go back to 5 000 years even more in in Southern Arizona they go back to seven thousand years what's interesting though is that there are the idea that they're used for farming for improving the conditions natural conditions of the soils were valid foreign plant cultivation and soil management is passed down from generation to generation among indigenous people come on beer Tara prita has been found throughout the Upland areas of Amazonia often far away from Rivers developing a way to make these soils fertile and productive for agroforestry was a matter of survival but the abundance of terraprita soils next to Village sites that were already in Fertile areas has raised many questions about its Origins it's interesting because we're finding also to have pretty soils in areas which are very fertile muchachi Yaki the essential ingredient in taraprita is charcoal the people who made this soil used to slash and Char method to create the charcoal this causes less carbon emissions and produces a more stable product than slash and burn doodle Washi now cook ER Papa and this is very productive they really really rich and productive soil they allow one to cultivate in same spot for many years some of this Orchards or this you know Manish Forest there was no need for farming it was a very highly productive environment that entails a different relationship with people and their surrounding landscape Villages were often situated in rings and while the center of such a ring would be Barren on the outskirts of each Village were middens where food waste was deposited the people who developed and used this rich soil were not farmers in the traditional sense but horticulturalists they simultaneously cultivated domesticated and wild vegetables fruit grains and trees the terraprita soil found in these Villages may not have been intentionally manufactured in the same way as the Upland sites it may simply be the result of thousands of years of man-made organic waste when we expect to find the soils away from the settlement eras but what we do find that in most cases decides distance or the soils are in a very same place where people used to live in order to live well in the Amazon one has to really be aware of the wealth of information and that takes really very sophisticated societies the ancient amazonians discovered a way to sustain a growing population despite having acidic soils in much of their territories the ability to engineer the soil to meet the needs of the people is one of the most significant environmental achievements of our ancestors throughout North America indigenous people depended on access to hunting grounds as well as distant communities for trade it's quite clear that people used to travel very very long distances it seems incredibly difficult but people knew how to travel back then communities were often hundreds of kilometers apart with forests mountains and prairies in between finding consistent and predictable routes of travel year round was a necessity the answer was a natural highway system embedded in the surrounding environment whether flowing in summer or frozen solid in Winter the rivers of North America were a Dependable Transportation Route for indigenous people the Denny people could travel thousands of kilometers on frozen rivers because they had such highly developed Snowshoe technology traditional denisnosis are still better than commercial snowshoes in many ways they're designed for your feet they're designed to deal with the exigencies of the climate in your region you pick particular wood and sinew for them they're sewn in different ways so that they adapt to different snow conditions and you might carry more than one pair for different kinds of snow and then of course in in the summer traveling thousands of kilometers along many of our huge Rivers the Mississippi the Yukon the McKenzie these rivers are enormously long and you can travel on them quite easily throughout most of the year the preferred vessel for transportation along North American waterways and coastlines was the canoe the canoe is always Central because we're marine-based people that were the the rivers and the oceans were our highways so we needed the canoes so we became very skilled canoe makers to adapt to the stormy weather and strong currents of the Pacific Ocean the peoples of Northwest North America carved heavier canoes from Cedar we know how the waters are here in the northwest coast you could lose yourself out there while some Coastal vessels were smaller and more suited for Shoreline fishing others were ocean-going canoes carved from massive logs that required exceptional craftsmanship to build they had various types of canoes depending on what Duty it served or what purpose it served so you'd have canoes for traveling to pot latches canoes for for Gathering foods and medicines and plants canoes for warring canoes for whaling canoes for fishing and so you had various types of canoes that were carved for a specific purpose so variations to that canoe existed Inland water travel required a different style of boat using the same basic vessel the canoes of indigenous people living Inland were smaller and lighter to accommodate long stretches of river or lake travel these canoes were typically constructed from the barks of trees sturdy enough to withstand River Rapids birchbark canoes were also light enough to Portage or Carry long distances between waterways people thought nothing of packing up was anything that they could carry and then going off for six months or a year to go travel to go visit distant distant relatives or just to go explore there's absolutely no question that people would get around all over all the time [Music] yeah foreign man-made Earthworks created an artificial topography throughout North America before 1491. these Mound structures were built over thousands of years one of the largest concentrations is located on the Mississippi River near present-day Saint Louis the ancient city of Cahokia at 120 Mounds with the largest known as Monk's Mound this massive earthwork covered five and a half hectares and was 30 meters high to construct this mound thousands of workers carried more than a million square meters of Earth in woven bags to the site for my own tribe we have a story about a mound site in Mississippi called naniwaya and we came up from from below we came up out of that mound according to one story or we followed two brothers Tata and chiksa from the West we came we traveled East and finally stopped at a place and and built that mound and we carried the bones of our ancestors with us and built the man either story it talks about this one place that's very significant in um tradition and it places Us in Mississippi so it tells us where how we came to be in that area and the stories tell us about our relationship with other tribes the Chickasaw and the Cherokee among others the science actually fits in well with that if you think about people moving from the West into the East and if you think about Mountain sites in the Southeast that frequently functioned as burial mounds so there are mounds that have human remains in them Mounds are also part of the creation stories of indigenous peoples a large concentration of ceremonial Mounds are located throughout Central and Eastern North America as family groups form societies and settled into Villages and cities the practice of burial mounds expanded we can follow the Evolution if you will of of Mound construction from 300 A.D on up we get small Mounds we a little bit larger we get Mortuary Mounds we get Mounds that have houses on top so we can see an in situ development around 2000 years ago the mound building tradition intensified throughout the region and resulted in ceremonial centers along rivers and lakes the Mounds were spiritual gathering places where people would travel to make offerings and bury their family members and leaders so we can recognize that at one point in time there was a large group of people that probably all spoke the same language all agreed to serve under whatever political structure was in place and then after a time of stress probably during the the little ice age in 12 1300s people started realizing that they could no longer exist within one large area that they had to pull apart again but we also get some indications of influence from the south the first pottery that occurs in North America is in Florida and then it disappears and then it comes again from in the southwest and it moves across but I think one of the important things is for North American tribal people to recognize that we our cultures did develop in place and whether we had some influence or not these are North American cultures and that we don't have to rely on someone from coming from somewhere else to help us move forward cultures throughout the world constructed Earth and mounds for religious and ceremonial purposes people would travel long distances to bury and honor their dead at these sites [Music] the kurgan people who originated in the Black Sea region buried their dead in deep shafts topped by Mounds the name kurgan in Latvian means mound builder [Music] foreign are distinctive Keyhole shaped structures that were used as burial tombs in Japan they range from several to 400 meters long [Music] thousands of burial mounds still exist throughout the Great Lakes region from the Hopewell era sacred objects and personal belongings were part of the burial ritual [Music] in every part of the world mounds and other man-made structures were used to honor the places where ancestors were buried steep mountainsides high altitude and cool climate of the Andes would seem a most inhospitable environment for humans to thrive let alone agriculture in looking at the American hemisphere we are looking at a region that is highly mountainous very fractured part of what we call the neovolcanic axis these regions of Bolivia and Peru have been home to successive indigenous societies over thousands of years and the vertical topography didn't stop them from developing one of the most productive farming regions in the world in places like Lake Titicaca and sacred Valley of Peru people began to sculpt the landscape into a series of stepped flat plateaus to make the mountainsides more accessible for agriculture the same tendency occurred throughout the Americas but perhaps the best known such Terraces are those of groups like The Inca they have Terraces from the formative times that is probably 1 000 years before Christ by the time the Inca civilization came into existence 600 years ago Terraces already covered more than one million hectares of mountainous land in the Andean mountains as The Terraces became larger and more structured laborers built them with expertly cut stone sand gravel and soil in some cases you have the leveling of an area the soils are pushed away and then Agaves and other plants are planted along the boundary and then through the course of time these become formal masonry structures okay foreign I live those systems were among the most sophisticated I would I would contend given that not only were these Terraces often cut from Stone that was easily fitted and entire hillsides were terraced but in order to prepare the terrorists soils were basically cleared uh the area was cut and then gravel was placed in the basins of these terraced walls [Music] The Terraces stone walls and multi-layered soil were designed to prevent the leaching of nutrients from the soil retain heat during the Cold Mountain nights and provide a natural gravity-fed watering system this formed a kind of a like a carbon filtration system in which Clays and other soils and then Rich soils for agriculture were placed over that and the entire Terrace packed such that it could sustain crop year after year foreign potatoes and in some islands of the the itikaka lake they grown up corn also they have quinoa because of the nature of the clay soils in the region Peru for instance those soils were almost impervious to erosion so this allowed those Terraces to be maintained through the course of centuries and even today many of The Terraces built as much as a thousand years ago are still in use by literally Moving Mountains the Andean people of South America manipulated their environment to create one of the world's greatest engineering achievements for thousands of years Farmers have been sculpting mountains and hillsides to create usable land to grow crops rice potatoes and yams are some of the grains and vegetables that are grown on terraced farmland in Southeast Asia Farmers grew rice on Terraces that were otherwise unusable hillsides they used a system of ditches and canals to move rainwater between platforms [Music] Pond Fields were constructed on hillsides in Polynesia a thousand years ago they were designed to produce larger yields of yams and Taro for a growing population [Music] foreign [Music] ERS first built Terraces in the hilly terrain around Lake Titicaca more than two thousand years ago by the time the Inca farmers were working the land 600 years ago there were twenty thousand square kilometers of terraces in the Andean mountains Terraces offered Farmers larger amounts of arable land which in turn provided food to support the growing populations in nearby Urban centers during The Long Winter months the Arctic region becomes an endless expanse of snow and ice further south in Central North America the Prairie Summer Landscape is a never-ending Sea of Grass with few naturally occurring landmarks to guide Travelers and Hunters both environments can be daunting and even dangerous places to travel through ancient peoples have erected Stone markers on the landscape for thousands of years in North America two of the most prominent stone structures are the inukshuk in the Arctic and sub-arctic and the medicine wheel on the central plains a lot of the inukchuks that we have have been there for hundreds maybe thousands of years the inuktitude word inukshuk means one that looks like a person from Alaska to Greenland these anthropomorphic stone structures have been built for more than two thousand years have many purposes including keeping track of seal caught during Hunting Expeditions catch seal sometime in the summer it sinks and if you want to retrieve that seal and you don't have anything to retrieve it with you go ashore and you put up a couple of inoxuks to point to exactly where the seal went down you know so you can get back in that water and line up you know when you'll find your seal and that's you know so he made little ones just to a point where uh you know where our seal had gone down or some animal had gone down another purpose for an enochuk is to serve as a guiding Landmark on the landscape you grow up uh living there you know and all these nuts are everywhere you get to recognize them you know they help you navigate out on the land in 1973 we went on a canoe trip down the Ferguson River and it's about 160 miles long and at one point we were completely lost you know we had two canoes and four people and we're paddling around this huge Lake that had twice as many islands as they were supposed to be and by the end of the day we had gone nowhere you know still looking for the way out and so late in the evening we decided we'd stop and you know spend the night and look for the way out the next day so we saw ninook way off in the distance and I said let's go camp there and so we paddled around all these islands got up to the enochsu and put up our camp and before I turned in I said you know I'm going to go up there to the enochuk and take a look around and um I climbed up and got you know Stood Beside the inukshuk and there was the river that we had been looking for all day after that every time he got lost we would just find a ninoksukan on the horizon and we would battle paddle there and it led the way all the way out and that's why we navigated the Ferguson River the enukshuk is one of the most enduring symbols in the Arctic of ancient Inuit life [Music] found in various locations across the central plains of North America are low-lying man-made Stone circles known as medicine Wheels medicine wheels are enigmatic they come in all shapes and sizes some of them are Effigies of turtles or other animals some of them are Effigies of humans but what they all have in common is some relationship to the landscape medicine Wheels had many possible purposes such as ceremonial gathering places or as a place of cosmological alignment medicine Wheels may also have had more practical uses there has been some attempt to try and find calendrical devices that astronomical alignments from them myself I'm skeptical of that area in fact I think the the better explanation is that they are geographical markers where we find medicine Wheels they are usually on a very prominent Butte so you have a good view of the surrounding landscape major rivers are easiest to cross you know like the majorville medicine wheel is located right near Blackfoot Crossing which is the best place to cross the Bow River and when people don't have Bridges and they have to Wade through the water this is crucial knowledge I think in actual fact that these uh what we call medicine wheels are not so much calendrical devices as they are mnemonic devices for the cognitive geography on the plains one of the oldest stone structures in Central North America is located in Blackfoot Nation territory in Southern Alberta at the center of the majorville medicine wheel is a nine meter Central Cairn connected by 28 stone spokes to an outer ring people didn't just build this at one time it was a slow accretion of the central Cairn and then also creating the outer rings and sometimes the spokes that joined the Karen and the outer ring besides being a significant geographical marker on the landscape indigenous people traveled to majorville for ceremonies and gatherings majorville medicine wheel at the very bottom of the Cairn that the artifacts came from a time that is closer to five thousand years ago and they discovered a lot of artifacts like projectile points but they also found other things like phalanges or finger bones of people you know and again that was a very common thing where people would uh if somebody is grieving they would cut off a tip of a finger and then leave that at the medicine wheel recently the University of Calgary wanted to repatriate those artifacts back to the Blackfoot Community but Blackfoot people say no we don't want those because when somebody left an artifact at the medicine wheel they were leaving their troubles with that artifact so if you come along you take that artifact today all you're doing is taking somebody else's troubles with you they have ceremonial functions in that people go there to lead their troubles and make offerings but they also serve as geographical markers when people are traveling across the Prairies as one of the oldest continually used ceremonial sites in the Americas majorville suggests that the plains cultures were strongly rooted to a traditional Homeland and continue to maintain their sacred Gathering Place for thousands of years The ancestral Pueblo people have lived in Southwest North America for more than ten thousand years to survive in this semi-arid region with its seasonally high temperatures it was crucial to find a way to control the rivers to irrigate land for farming and to provide a year-round supply of water for cooking and drinking given the requirements of living in this kind of landscape this kind of environment the essential uh foundation for developing communities in this area because it's it is a desert or was your access to water known for their multiple story multi-family Adobe apartment complexes the ancestral Pueblo were also Master Engineers when it came to manipulating and controlling the Region's limited sources of water beginning about 1400 years ago the agriculturally based peoples in the Phoenix Valley designed and built an advanced irrigation system of canals and reservoirs known as the hohokum canal the main sources of water for the canals were rivers that originate in nearby mountain ranges and the Salt River were the ones that delivered the water or brought the water and it was through these irrigation canals that they were able to of course Farm the largest Canal measured about six meters in depth and more than 20 meters wide the longest Canal was 32 kilometers long the hohokum canal system irrigated more than 40 000 hectares of Farmland a great deal of physical effort and great deal of planning cooperation and everybody had a common goal that was to achieve that that agricultural way of life the hohokum canal really represent a application of the communal mind in both the construction of the canals and also the conceptualization of the canals the essential way you survived he was through the community and through participation in community work it was a realization of the part of the community as a whole that these structures were necessary again to to reach towards that goal of a good life to the production of food and ways that allowed for the people to grow the communities to grow the hohokum canal system that flowed from the salt and Gila Rivers transformed the desert landscape and supported a prosperous agriculturally based society it was as much an engineering achievement as it was a life-giving source of year-round water although a long drought likely forced the people in the Phoenix Valley to move the footprint of this elaborate water system is still visible today the hohokum were one of many indigenous peoples in the Americas who developed sophisticated irrigation systems in Northern Peru Rivers flowing from the Andean mountains brought water to the semi-arid not the chico Valley where tens of thousands of people lived in cities between 4000 and 5500 years ago irrigation canals carried water to Fields where cotton and food crops were grown in mesoamerica the Aztec city of tenorchitlan was built on a man-made Island in Lake takoko an intricate system of Dykes canals and reservoirs were built this supplied the hundreds of thousands of people in the city with fresh water for drinking bathing gardening and Fish Farms [Music] after humans started domesticating wild vegetables and Grains they began to devise ways to manage and divert water to irrigate fields and Orchards irrigation and water control systems were common throughout the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years in Sri Lanka a massive artificial lake called paracrama samudra built 1600 years ago is still in use today [Music] one of the oldest irrigation systems in the world was built six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia rainwater and runoff from the mountains was caught and held in dams then diverted to irrigate farmland [Music] foreign [Music] the Phoenix Valley was transformed from a desert into a highly productive agricultural region through the building of an 800 kilometer long Canal system that irrigated over 40 000 hectares of land canals artificial lakes and dams built thousands of years ago formed the ancient footprint of irrigation systems still in use throughout the world today throughout the Americas indigenous peoples extensively altered and manipulated the environment sometimes changing entire ecosystems in the process what we see in Eastern Woodlands is intensive modification of the landscape over thousands of years archaeological research has currently shown that the development of agriculture in that region occurred a lot earlier than previously believed we are as archaeologists as researchers just coming to realize and acknowledge how the land was shaped and formed and we tend to call this anthropomorphic shaping of the landscape six thousand years ago we do find the occurrence of stone tools that have been polished and shaped and have an edge and we can we believe that they were used to chop down trees to clear the land the earliest plant cultivation in the Eastern Woodlands of North America began about 4 000 years ago among the earliest crops were sunflowers goose foot and squash later Maize beans and nuts were grown widely in eastern North America people in the Southeast ate fairly similar types of things and then you move across and people live differently because they're different cultures different tribes different communities after the introduction of maize about 1 000 years ago eastern North America was transformed into a patchwork of agricultural fields and Orchards this intensive production of crops was the result of a new organizational structure for farming and better tools made from antler bone and Stone throughout the Eastern region Farmers cultivated a variety of nuts including pecans acorns walnuts and chestnuts forests were even designed and modified to attract animals for hunting eventually they would plant the crops they would create Gardens the gardens actually brought in animals that they could use for food and so as they started creating these Gardens they did cut down the trees they would open expanses up they also use the the trees for building they built homes they also use them for fires in the houses for heating for cooking so they would open up landscapes it was a new balance of Nature and farming completely manufactured by indigenous peoples people in many parts of the world began leaving behind a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of farming it became necessary to clear land this led to the development of cultivated Farmland in areas that were once forests and wild grasslands around ten thousand years ago in the Middle East people progressed from harvesting wild grains and hunting to cultivating wheat and barley and domesticating livestock this change to a farming lifestyle ensured a supply of food throughout the year and led to the establishment of permanent villages [Music] broom corn and foxtail Millet were first domesticated in northern China 6 000 years ago in Southern and Central China one of the first domesticated crops was rice [Music] indigenous people in eastern North America have been cultivating plants and Grains for thousands of years to grow three of the most important crops Maize beans and squash they cleared vast areas of forests using fires and tools as hunter-gatherers started domesticating animals and growing annual crops farming Villages appeared permanent settlements required an ever-increasing agricultural land base and this led to larger Urban centers as communities in North America became larger and more centralized the need for stable food sources increased this led to man-made changes to the landscape to open up land for Agricultural and hunting purposes an expedient way to manage the landscape was to carry out controlled Burns fire is like indispensable and I really you know I think this goes right back to when our ancient ancestors first discovered fire and how useful it was in several parts of North America indigenous people used fire one to clear land to create agricultural plots and of course burning of that landscape enhanced the soil for a certain amount of time on the west side of the continent people literally burnt parts of the forest and what this did was encourage other kinds of plants to grow notably berries which could also be Mass harvested to support large populations on the central plains grasslands were cleared with fire to encourage new plant growth in the spring this in turn attracted large herd animals like Buffalo fire was also used to drive Buffalo to certain hunting locations when Blackfoot people were preparing a Buffalo Jump they knew in advance where they were going to hold their Buffalo Jump so they would send somebody there in the fall time to burn the grass in the Gathering Basin and by burning the grass you put the seeds back into the ground but also you give a little bit of fertilizer with the ash so in the springtime that's where the grass is going to be greenest first and so that's going to attract grazing animals like bison a Buffalo Jump didn't just happen it was very purposeful you know people uh created the conditions that would ensure a success controlled Burns generated higher yields for farmers and hunters and brought about significant changes to the Natural ecosystem [Music] indigenous peoples before 1491 impacted the natural environment through agriculture Earthworks Urban Development Water Management controlled burning and deforestation these were innovations that were driven by the need to provide food clothing and shelter for a constantly growing population in the Americas all of these adaptations created an artificial landscape and had a profound effect on the climate soil water and wildlife in the Americas today we have a powerful tradition of land stewardship that evolved from these ancient Technologies [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] we are the First Peoples of the Americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and Stars Crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers and scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and built a vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the Untold Stories of the Americas before Columbus [Music] [Applause] 100 throughout history people in every part of the world hunted fish and gathered wild plants for survival over time these Foods became a central part of the cultural identity of each Nation the Americas our ancestors harvested fish seals and whales and hunted Mammoth bison and other animals and we adapted more species of wild grasses vegetables and fruit than anywhere else on Earth but no single food has had a greater influence on the history of our ancestors then maize for thousands of years Maize has permeated every aspect of Maya culture from the Practical to the spiritual not only is maize the foundation of their creation stories it is the heart and soul of the Maya civilization in Maya oral and written history the gods created the first humans from cornmeal after attempts to make people out of mud and would fail to Beto yet foreign [Music] the maze God was referred to as the first father and the Maize goddess is associated with fertility the moon and new corn maze appears in the most sacred of Maya ceremonies and in the simplest acts of everyday life Maize has nourished and inspired the Maya people for close to 4 000 years it really is a very integral part of people's lives everyday life from you know again providing them with nutrition but Also spiritually is really important I mean this is what has shaped people's lives and the history of people culture not only does it include you know our beliefs about creation for example it has allowed people to survive to this day the Maya people didn't actually develop the Maize plant that honor goes to the indigenous farmers in the balsas valley in Mexico who initiated one of the world's earliest forms of Agriculture by cultivating a wild grass known as teosinte which became the maze we know today after each growing season Farmers selected the plants with the most desirable attributes and planted their kernels in looking at the evolution of Base we have a history here beginning with diosinte that extends back some 8 000 years Maize could well be the First Act of genetic engineering in human history between six and seven thousand years ago maze had traveled to the Andean and Amazonian regions of South America we begin to find Maize moving over these ancient routes early on so we know that foodstuffs were critical maze was also easy to transport and store which the Maya used to their advantage considering the importance of corn for people's diet I'm sure it was a valuable commodity valuable food to trade how do you get those products when you yourself don't grow Maize you trade beads you trade shell you trade obsidian and you get the product as the Mayan population grew so did the need to generate food on an industrial scale one method used by the Mayans to mass-produce Maize was known as slash and burn so that would mean that you know you live in an area you cut down the forest you grow corn and then after a while that soil might not be able to provide for you anymore so you move on to another place and you cut it down and do the same thing other agricultural methods were adopted as well including step to Terrace farming along hillsides and raised Farm beds and marshes they would make weeds or plants growing in the water they wouldn't Mound them to as a source of nutrients crop diversification was also essential to the health of both the people and the land itself and Maize was grown alongside Chili Peppers squash and beans Corners it requires a lot of nutrients and so beans is actually a plant that provides nitrogen into the soil so so the beans help the corn to grow you obviously need to have these crops grow together so they provide for each other or help one another to grow better by using a variety of methods for growing Maize the Maya developed intricate agricultural infrastructures in mesoamerica as Maize spread throughout the Americas it contributed to the development and growth of the Inca Aztec ancestral Pueblo and many other indigenous civilizations foreign [Music] oh yeah it's nice it's Mesoamerican civilizations Rose and fell over the Millennia there is one thing that remained constant the central role that Maize held in the diet traditions and mythology of the people today Maize is one of the world's most widely grown crops its development remains one of the most impressive acts of agricultural achievement ten thousand years ago people in three different regions in the world were domesticating wild vegetables and Grains rice in China wheat in the Middle East and Maize in central Mexico were three founding crops rice was first cultivated in China and grown on terraced hillsides In classical Chinese languages the word for agriculture is the same as the word for rice foreign [Music] wheat was first cultivated in Mesopotamia and is thought to be the first grain to be domesticated by humans five thousand years ago the Egyptians made the first bread by adding yeast to wheat flour [Music] maze was first cultivated in Mexico and within 8 000 years had spread to every part of South America and much of North America Maize can be ground into a flower the cobs burned as a fuel and the husks woven into mats and baskets today rice wheat and Maize are three of the most widely grown crops in the world [Music] the potato is to the Andean region of South America what maze is to mesoamerica a stable source of food and essential to the cultural identity of the people unlike corn the potato grows at high altitudes and can be left in the ground for a year or more [Music] the potato was first cultivated between eight and ten thousand years ago near Lake Titicaca which straddles the borders of Peru and Bolivia [Music] over time indigenous Farmers created more than 5 000 varieties of potato each with its own unique flavor and color from the onion point of view color is also important for this for these people because each each kind of potato have a social role the planting of everything in the Andes have a powerful ritual is is very entangled with many things that they are doing all the time the communities the real communities in the Indian s they don't get that distinction between the ritual political or economic things for these people is almost the same the planting of the potato each season was accompanied by prayers performed by priests Farmers carried out a planting ritual that involved the men breaking the ground and the women planting the potatoes the potato is especially adaptable to the climates of the Andes as it grows well in the cooler higher Mountain ecosystem using the agricultural process of Terrace farming the Andean people sculpted the sides of mountains to create flat sections of land to grow potatoes and other crops like Maize potatoes were Hardy and easy to transport but unlike Maize which traveled from mesoamerica to South America soon after its development the potato did not arrive in Mexico until about 500 years ago from there it was traded with other indigenous communities and eventually made its way to the northwest coast of North America and as far north as Alaska cultures in Mexico along the along the western coast of Mexico all had potatoes in some way or another it's only when you get into the United States region that potatoes start to completely disappear and yet they reappear up in Washington and in Oregon simply called or clinkit potatoes there are old potatoes they're the ones that everybody used to have before we got these big ones a potato research lab in Wisconsin sequenced the genes of the cassan potato and the clinket Maria's potato and they found that the nearest relatives of them were the ozette potato that was known from the Maha area and ozet on the outer coast of Olympic Peninsula in Washington then the next nearest relatives are in Mexico it remains a mystery as to how long potatoes have been grown along the northwest coast of North America the earliest Explorer said explicitly that they saw people with Gardens in the northern northwest coast it could have been the very earliest Spanish ships that introduced this but it's hard to see because the Spanish didn't spend very much time up in klinka country they came they named things they stopped said hello in yakitat and then left I'm of the opinion that these are probably pre-european if potatoes that originated in Mexico reached the west coast of North America before the arrival of European seafarers how did they make the journey to Alaska [Music] if we know that a clink at a couple of young clinket men could paddle all the way down from Wrangle in Southeast Alaska to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River there's no reason that people wouldn't have traveled as far south as California to pick up potatoes and bring them North and what's more extraordinary is that in the intervening centuries we've maintained the exact same potato line and I have it growing back at home Maize and potatoes were integral to the ancient economies of the Americas and are still vital components of the world's food supply today foreign and storing plants and vegetables offered ancient peoples a year-round food supply and valuable trade products [Music] coffee is one of the world's most popular beverages but it's ancient history remains a mystery it originally grew wild in Ethiopia and about 500 years ago coffee beans were being exported to Northern Africa and Europe foreign [Music] tea traces its Origins to medicinal use by the Emperors of China it eventually became a popular beverage throughout Asia and the world [Music] potatoes were first cultivated in raised gardens in the high altitudes in Peru and Bolivia [Music] Inca Farmers developed a dried potato product called chimu that could be stored for more than a year tea coffee and potatoes were an important part of ancient diets and economies and they still are today the population in Amazonia before 1491 numbered in the Millions people lived in small coastal Villages as well as large cities along the tributaries of the Amazon River the wild plants and small game that were harvested from the rainforest could not sustain this growing population indigenous people needed to find a way to produce high-yield plants [Music] plant domestication is as old here as it is in places like China or Mesopotamia but These Guys these people here in the new world they were like domestic they're domesticated with squash very early Chili Peppers and then Maize corn and we know there are many Amazonian plants like cacao for instance it was so domesticated in the Amazon for thousands of years people living in the Amazon River Basin have practiced a form of Agriculture that led to the development of dozens of varieties of vegetables and fruits unlike potatoes and Maize this type of plant cultivation didn't involve the Intensive clearing of traditional style farming instead they practiced agroforestry which is the mixing of wild and cultivated fruits vegetables and nuts in a forested environment these people they're eating a lot of corn for instance but they're also eating palms and Brazil nuts technically their wild plants they're not domesticated but I mean they didn't become Farmers they were generally as hunter-gatherers that had domesticated plants in their backyards for thousands of years unlike the farming practices in mesoamerica and the Andes agroforestry required less intensive labor to prepare the land and harvest the crops so traditionally how would an archeology look at this that archeology would say well this this people there were incipient Farmers traditionally how scientists would look at that oh these guys are backwards they're not Farmers they haven't achieved like they never climb to another step or another layer in cultural revolution that's a false premise if you look at the evidence today we see that you know these were stable lifestyles agroforestry was as Innovative and productive as farming methods used elsewhere in the Americas each type of environment demanded different approaches to agriculture normally places for farming become more important in the beginning there were places where there was scarcity of resources places like Carl for instance it's a small River Valley surrounded by deserts very dry desert and the mountains whereas if you look at places where resources were abundant like the Amazon or the northwest coast there was no pressure for these people to become farmers and that idea that farming necessarily is a change for the better it's a modern idea it's been applied from Western Europe but in areas which are covered by tropical rainforests I think we're dealing with different strategies the Amazonian record you really help us to rethink things that we take for granted in the Amazon we see this context of abundance so much protein in the waters in the rivers but also like lots of plant diversities better strategies work based on diversification if you look at the biological data I said one of the most biologically diverse fight places in the world so it's only natural that people who are living there were aware of that fruits vegetables and Grains such as squash beans and quinoa cultivated in South America thousands of years ago are now widely distributed throughout the world you can look at the forest as a library there's so much information there and to be able to classify understand and actually find a way to use all those resources it's a very sophisticated knowledge constant source of abundance the Amazon remains one of the most biologically diverse places in the world among the first tree crops to be cultivated by humans were apples in Asia olives in the Middle East and Peach Palms in South America foreign [Music] the wild ancestors of Olives grew throughout Mesopotamia they later spread to the Mediterranean region and Northern Africa where they were domesticated and grown for cooking in lamp oil fruit and wood [Music] the domestication of wild apples first took place in the mountains of Kazakhstan Farmers planted apple trees and Orchards and over time cultivated new varieties of the fruit [Music] Peach palm trees are a wild plant that developed into an important cultivated Tree in Amazonia [Music] the tree eventually spread throughout South America the Caribbean and mesoamerica through human intervention [Music] apples olives and Peach Palms are an important source of food throughout the world of kilometers north of the Amazon is another major rainforest the Pacific Northwest like the Amazon the vegetation and waterways provide such a diversity of Flora and Fauna that indigenous people had little need to engage in large-scale farming one of the few exceptions is Camas the nutritious bulb of this purple flowered plant was a significant part of the Coast Salish diet while it grows wild it became an important food source and trade item through long-term cultivation the women who had the role and responsibility to manage these Food Systems they knew all the different things that needed to be done the burning that had to take place in the fall and managing the areas where the canvases can be Harvest all the different other plants that needed to be taken care of throughout the year and harvested as well the process of cultivation used by Coast Salish women to grow Camas was a hybrid between farming techniques seen in mesoamerica and the Andes and agroforestry found in the Amazon it's not running lines and dropping seeds in a row it's harvesting the Camus when they're in seed and turning the soil selecting the bulbs you're going to take putting them back the ones you're not going to take you're dropping the seed just before you're putting the final bits of soil back down they maintain their plots through regular clearing and controlled Burns Camas was cooked for 24 hours or more to break down the bulb's crystalline fibers into a digestible sugar once cooked Camas was mixed with berries flattened and dried into a fruit leather it was cooked with other Foods or dried and ground into a flower I would say if anything it might be close to a parsnip but have a consistency of a sweet potato they wouldn't be here if the women didn't manage these Food Systems in a way that sustained the community like the Maze of mesoamerica and the potatoes of the Andes Camas holds practical spiritual and cultural significance for the Coast Salish peoples I know when me and my family go out we Harvest Camis and we do pick Cooks it's a whole different kind of conversation that takes part we're talking in a different way that you normally wouldn't be at it at your dinner table we're connecting to the land we're connecting to the food and all of these memories come up of our what we've been taught about our history we start talking about the history of the area we're harvesting we're talking about the food we're talking about the stories that come within our ancestral lands and within the food system as well and I imagine when I'm there how it must have been for our ancestors to have that kind of conversation and to connect to the food and remind everyone that we're still a part of this food system [Music] foreign addition to their agricultural achievements indigenous people throughout the Americas developed innovative ways to fish and hunt the Arctic region of North America has been home to a succession of indigenous cultures over the past five thousand years they found ways to survive the harsh winter climate without the advantage of wood stone or clay to build houses the primary source of food for the Thule Dorset Inuit and other Northern peoples was the sea emulate all across the north survived mainly because of one animal and that animal is the sealed [Music] we will travel mostly out in the sea ice hunting seals all winter because that's what we lived on seals the traditional way was to use a harpoon because you know the seals are very wary and but apparently they don't see very well you know when they're out of the water and they have to come up you know because you know they have to breathe and they come up and they have these holes they some themselves really close to their holes so they can just dive down when you know when we or polar bears come a successful seal hunt depended on patience skill and cunning in the spring when all the uh snow was gone from you know the Ice uh we would have to crawl basically on on the sea ice pretending to be a seal you know uh until we got close enough to go on Harpoon it we had all these implements that we used to detect when they were coming up to see when the water was going up you know uh up and down when the seals swam under or came up you know and took her breath we used dogs to sniff them out and then we would use a harpoon to catch a seal we study the animals that we hunt so that we can outsmart them but we're also very grateful to them for supplying us with you know what we eat in a region where people lived off the land for months at a time Hunters used every part of the animal every part of the seal was used we ate the meat of course and then weave skins you know mostly for what we call kamik which are seal skin boots and they're warm they're waterproof and and they're very comfortable to wear we use the fat to to burn in our cool looks which are like a half moon shaped lamps you know to to cook with and to heat our igloos with and the fat uh from the seal was pounded to you know release all the oil and that's what we burned we eat seal we ate it well we eat Caribou we not only hunt them but we also thank them for supplying us with all this food and and our survival weighing more than 30 tons and measuring 15 meters the largest animal in the sea would be a formidable challenge for any fisherman for the Macaw and nuchanov nations in the northwest region of North America the hunting of Wales was more than an exercise in man's superiority over animals it was a way of life whales are Central to our identities as new channels and Macabre peoples in our oral traditions we say we were Whalers from the day we were created with the archaeological evidence in both new channels and Maca territory demonstrate a connection to whaling for over 5 000 years that's from the whale bones they've collected from the whale in the middens showing that it was a major food product the whale bones were used as part of the equipment and tools that we utilized the whaling culture permeated every part of these nations lifestyles trade to ceremony to Art you grow up knowing that you come from wailing from teakin from the Thunderbird who gave the whale to us with the eclip with this with a sea serpent and you see it everywhere I mean it's in our songs it's in our dances it's in our artwork that's how we keep that whaling culture alive in the springtime when our Foods were being depleted that's when we would hunt the whales in the early spring when they were going up through their migration pattern up to Alaska Wales contributed to over 70 percent of the food in our diet especially in our early spring because whale meat oil and fat had major nutritional benefits within the new channels and Macan Nations was a distinct hierarchy that dictated the role of each person in the whale hunt the chiefs were the people who wailed so the chiefs were the ones who basically had the rights to the whale products to the whale meat oil and fat the oil itself was a very highly prized trade item it was traded up and down the coast and to some interior communities as well the Thai Hawai which is the highest Chief would ultimately oversee the distribution he and his family would keep the choice pieces of the of the whale and the chukwusi which is the dorsal fin which is where the spirit of the whale lives they would have prayers conducted for four days after that to show the respect of that spirit and when that Spirit left the chukwusi the dorsal fin would stay with that Chief the rest of the whale would be distributed according to status in that community so to the next chief in line and the next chief or it would be distributed in this larger Potlatch two invited guests from other communities but for the new channels and macaw peoples the whale hunt represented far more than a source of food a lot of people don't understand this when they look at wailing especially in the idea of what it meant to kill something the killing of a whale because they miss and they misconstrue that spiritual emotional psychological connection that we have to whales we wouldn't put whales on our walls if we didn't Revere them if we didn't respect them if they weren't Central to who we were if it was just a matter of killing something for food it went beyond that and how you understand that is by looking at the prayers the certain rituals that were conducted not just by the whale or by the entire whaling crew but especially the Whaler's wife many people say and is passed down to the oral record as well as anthropological research conducted on whaling the Whaler's wife the hakum which is a woman of high status in our family in our language she had a special and intimate connection to the whale the whale that was being sought and it was believed that if that whale came to the boat and gave itself which is ultimately what we believe that we're not killing the whale it's provide that Spirit of the whale is giving itself to those Whalers to that wailing Chief it's giving itself to her so she has some of the the most important rituals to observe and especially when the whaling crew leaves she cannot move because it believes that her spirit is connecting to the Wailing spirit so if she moves she could make that that wailing Spirit unruling she could cause the whale to leave she could cause the whale to to to hurt the the whaling crew so she lays very still in her home in her Longhouse while the crew is out seeking the whale and even after they catch the whale the whale will come if it is connected to her spirit the Whaler's wife even though she is not out on the water she is ultimately the most important and central figure in that whale hunt because that whale is connecting to her [Music] one of the largest land mammals to be hunted by our ancestors was the Buffalo also known as the American Bison in the central region of North America the Buffalo has been an important source of meat hide and fat for indigenous people for more Ten Thousand Years right from the end of the Ice Age people are already hunting bison but they were extinct they were hunting the extinct forms of bison three meters tall and a thousand kilograms each these extinct bison would have towered over a hunter very early on we see that people are already focusing a lot of their energies on this one species thousands of years before the introduction of the modern horse to the Americas the Buffalo would have been an imposing Target for even the hardiest of hunters on foot right after the Ice Age the way that communal hunting worked was you'd have a small group of hunters for example maybe six six or seven hunters and they'd Ambush a small herd of bison like perhaps a dozen they did herd in small herds but the large mass of herds that we hear about in the historic period became more gregarious as they grew smaller in size about two thousand years ago bison hunting on the planes went through a dramatic transformation instead of small hunting parties going after a few bison there were suddenly hundreds of people working together to chase herds of Bison over Cliffs or into natural or man-made traps this form of hunting required large numbers of people to hunt process the meat and hides and transport it all back to the settlements they would get as much as they could in as fast as they can and then of course the carcasses will start to be less good for human consumption but they're still good for Animals such as planes Grizzlies or Wolves or coyotes even things such as turkey vultures and California Condors would have big Feast at the Buffalo Jump after the people have taken their share and gone away rather than being a waste of Buffalo it's a part of the food chain on the prairies basant Valley in South Central Saskatchewan was where the first site was discovered and it looked like they lured a herd of bison into a Corral and then butchered them in there but the Buffalo Jump wasn't the only significant discovery made at the basant Valley site they also had created a structure that was in architectural form very similar to what we would later on recognize as a Sundance Lodge so this idea of the Sundance and the invention of the Buffalo Jump come together at the same time almost in fact in earlier archaeologists on the plains noted this connection and speculated that people congregated for the ritual and the Buffalo Jump was a byproduct of that other people would say that the Buffalo Jump brought people together and the ritual context was a byproduct of that there is another theory about the sudden increase in large-scale buffalo hunting several large cities on the Mississippi River including Cahokia were important centers of Continental trade indigenous people traveled thousands of kilometers from every part of North America to trade goods in these cities the market for buffalo meat had expanded and so it was an economic solution was to import more buffalo meat from the plains which meant that the people on the plains could Harvest a whole herd of bison take as much as they can for their own consumption but also enough for a surplus that they could trade and so this led to a cycle of dependence between those two communities fish and seafood have always been a part of the human diet people in different parts of the world invented tools and fishing techniques to improve the success of the Harvest [Music] the Egyptians invented a variety of copper and bronze fishing hooks that they use to harvest fish in the Nile River and its tributaries [Music] foreign [Music] in southern France harpoons were carved out of deer antlers and used to capture fish and seals in rivers and seas [Music] foreign [Music] fishing mirrors in the world was discovered under 120 meters of water near haidaguay the stoneware confirms that people lived along the coastline of North America before the end of the last ice age [Music] fishing tools developed thousands of years ago are still in use in many parts of the world today thank you rivers lakes and oceans have always been an important source of food for indigenous peoples throughout the Americas [Music] the discovery of an underwater Stone fishing wear in haidaguay and a village site near Bella Bella dating back more than 14 000 years reinforces claims that our ancestors lived along the Pacific West Coast long before there was an interior route into the Americas after the Ice Age ended since that time the waterways have provided protein in the form of fish shellfish and a variety of sea mammals the Fraser River in Canada is the largest single salmon run in the world with millions of fish making their way from the Pacific Ocean up the Fraser's many tributaries to spawn each year there was an understanding that the migrating fish would be shared by The Many Nations living along the ocean and interior rivers and lakes the Spanish people were often called The Saltwater people because much of our traditional territory was marine environment salmon are still one of the most important foods the salmon that we did catch because we caught them in the marine environment we're we're much better quality than when they reach the river our salmon was prized and we would often travel to the river to trade with those people for the things that we needed so there was a traditional economy there as well salmon is not only an important food and trade item it's also part of the mythology art and culture of the Region's many nations indigenous peoples in the Northwest had both personal and Community ceremonies to honor the salmon that they harvested for food when the first Sockeye was caught it was the first salmon ceremony it was the children who who greeted the salmon at the shore and brought the salmon back to the community in our thinking the children were very pure so the most appropriate people to to bring the salmon back and they would carry the salmon back to the community but carrying it like a like a baby I've been told and we we've started to bring that ceremony back as well over the last number of years while the tradition was different for each nation in each case the salmon was honored for returning to spawn and feeding the people for another year of the many species of salmon found in the waterways off the northwest coast one has stood out from the rest the most important salmon in our in the traditional times and even today was the sockeye salmon we don't have any Sockeye spawning rivers in our territory but the Sakai travel through our territory on the way to the freezer to spawn so we needed fishing technology that would be capable of catching the salmon in the marine environment methods used by indigenous peoples to harvest salmon from the ocean and rivers included Nets traps Weirs Pooks and harpoons some speared fish from platforms they built over the river others made conical fish traps three-pronged Spears and dip Nets made from Willow and Alder one example of that is the development of the technology for the straight Salish people these Reef Nets were traditionally capable of catching you know thousands of fish and I think the capability was there to catch them all if we wanted to but the idea of conservation was already part of that system we would actually in traditional times would would weave in a ring of Willow in the end of the in the bunt end of The Reef net to allow some of the salmon to escape not because it was just an act of conservation but it was also because of a belief and a world view that the salmon that were our relatives and that salmon traveling together we're we're family lineages salmon had two names they had a common name and they also had a prayer name and those prayer names referred to those salmon as they were using kinship terms praying and speaking to the salmon as if they're they're relatives so if we allow some of the salmon to escape then those families will continue to to perpetuate themselves into the future and that they would be able to come back to us year after year while our practices might have looked um primitive that was only because we used everything that was found in our you know natural environments but I think the key thing behind it was also the world view and the belief system that upheld all of those traditional Technologies and that's what really made it sustainable [Music] [Applause] over thousands of years the First Peoples of the Americas developed techniques to hunt migrating animals fish from abundant oceans and waterways Innovations in agriculture in the Americas through the domestication of wild plants was a turning point for our ancestors we cleared forests and Terrace mountainsides to grow crops we built towns and cities near farmlands and like the animals we hunted the plants we cultivated influenced our traditions and beliefs but the greatest impact of agricultural and hunting Innovation was not realized until 1491 when the indigenous population in the Americas was in the tens of Millions this was a feat that could only have been achieved by a people who had mastered the art and science related to fishing hunting and plant cultivation [Music] we are the First Peoples of the Americas [Music] we have been here from the beginning [Music] our ancestors navigated by the wind and starved Crossing vast oceans and mountain ranges searching for new lands over thousands of years our ancestors became astronomers and architects philosophers scientists artists and inventors we created distinct societies and built a vast trade systems that covered two continents in 1492 our world was changed forever but we did not disappear today the languages and teachings of our ancestors remain and these are the Untold Stories of the Americas before Columbus [Music] [Applause] thank you the architectural styles of our ancestors reflected the diverse natural environments of the Americas and the social and cultural needs of each Nation ice houses in the Arctic Adobe apartment buildings in the Southwest [Music] and hide teepees on the planes our Unique Designs that have endured for thousands of years [Music] our architectural accomplishments are not limited to houses throughout the Americas large cities featured temples Central plazas markets and ball courts over the Millennia indigenous architecture adapted to changes in the environment Innovations in technology and a growing population indigenous people have lived in Southwestern North America for more than twelve thousand years early Pueblo people lived in underground pit houses constructed from wood and mud with the natural insulation of the earth these houses were cool in the summer and warm in the winter around 2000 years ago the ancestral Pueblo began to cultivate Maize beans and squash farming led to a more settled way of life and eventually to the growth of villages and towns here in the southwest this tradition if you will of communal building uh was very well developed so that Community sense that Community spirit certainly was the essential way you survived he was through the community and through participation in community work tonight foreign architecture changed dramatically as the Pueblo people began to construct rectangular attached family houses above ground 1200 years ago multi-story Department buildings began appearing across the Southwest Adobe structures were built under Rock overhangs and on mesas and were home to hundreds and even thousands of people Pueblo cities like those at Mesa Verde in Colorado and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico are among the largest ancient cities in North America you see the height of the building of the apartment structures especially really beginning during the times I think of the large cities in Mesa Verde and chocolate Canyon those are definitely structures that required an understanding of geometry and understanding of practical engineering skills figuring things out in terms of you know load-bearing walls how you can actually Place one structure on top of another structure without it caving in those are our technical Feats which have some Central Architects you know that are guiding the way the the structure should be built but the knowledge of how to do that is actually held collectively because everyone participated you see in building these structures the individual is like one strand of a much larger web of relationships foreign [Music] thank you Panama and so that Community sense that Community Spirit certainly was responsible for what will be today called Magnificent Feats of architecture and planning for about 400 years these large Urban centers thrived but change was in store for the people living in these cities we know that there was climate change you know that affected and impacted the people issues like a major drought in the 1200s that catalyzed a lot of movement of communities out of those large structures again water being the the central Factor here in the southwest you know you have to move to where the water sources are a 50-year drought in the southwest that started about 900 years ago inevitably led to crop failures the people of Mesa Verde and the Chaco Canyon faced famine lack of water and most likely social upheaval they had no alternative but to abandon their cities and search for new places to live some people move South and establish new towns along rivers like the Rio Grande others joined smaller Pueblo communities in different parts of the Southwest with new people moving into these towns the demand for housing increased migration out of the major cities did not mean that Pueblo Society disappeared it simply changed Pueblo communities today are are really coalitions of large family lineages that have come together you know to form that Pueblo and that goes all the way back to to ancestral times you know in the sense that it's really the extended family which then forms into a what is called a clan and then the Clans come together to almost through a confederation create a particular Pueblo you on on the Third foreign the people who built charcoal Canyon and Mesa Verde were the same people that you see today among the public people this was not a this was not a dispossession of one group of people over another realizing that it was time to set a foot on a New Journey hello hello [Music] people were able to come together in a variety of different kinds of communal ways to do community work the physical building of community was an integral part of indigenous life multi-story apartment buildings and towering pyramids were not the only architectural accomplishments of indigenous peoples about a thousand years ago a vast Road system connected millions of people in South America originally constructed by the Wadi Society this ancient Highway was expanded by the Inca it is the roads of the ancient peruvians of those who came before the Inca who began building Road segments that extended you know the ability for communities to send troops trade engage in ritual and ceremonial activities all along the Andes you had these systems that the Inca built upon one of the things about the Inca Empire and it truly was an Empire they extended these throughout the span of the Andes the Inca designed their highway system to connect the people living in the four regions of their empire forty thousand kilometer great Inca Road connected hundreds of cities and Villages through a wide range of ecosystems and terrains these roads extend all the way from Ecuador all the way down into Argentina their empire extended in length some 2000 miles from north to south the Inca Road was essential for the transportation of goods and information as well as the movement of armies what the Inca had devised was a system whereby they could Supply armies or communities from a distance in order to maintain their over 24 000 miles of roads they used pre-existing Road systems and then they taxed people to maintain their portion of the road system in tandem with conquest and population growth everybody was involved in the maintenance and construction of these Road systems the engineers who designed the Inca Road were faced with a range of natural obstacles including steep mountains rivers deserts and wide gorges we are looking at a region that is highly mountainous very fractured part of what we call the neovolcanic axis how then do you connect Road segments when you have you know chasms and gorges and well they built suspension bridges and these two are Marvels for their day these ultimately became the models for the kinds of suspension bridges we here use today in modern society they were able to span entire Gorges build durable rope Bridges sometimes extending all the way to the top of mountains in the region some 16 000 feet in elevation they could run a road right through the desert with shifting Sands and they did this by virtue of building low walls on each side that allowed for those to bank away the sand and allow the road to remain clear this is a massive system besides being an impressive feat of engineering the great Inca Road served the political social and economic needs of the Inca rulers this vast highway system was instrumental in creating one of the largest empires in the world before 1491. foreign every part of the ancient world the efficient movement of people food and trade goods from one place to another was crucial to survival some Road systems were impressive engineering Feats that covered vast distances [Music] built over more than two thousand years the Great Wall of China was designed to prevent foreign Invasion and protect lucrative trade routes this 22 thousand kilometer long wall also served as a major transportation route through Ancient Asia [Music] foreign year reign of the Roman Republic and Empire more than 80 000 kilometers of stone-paved highways were built throughout Europe without this vast Road system the Romans would not have succeeded in conquering and controlling most of Europe and the Mediterranean basin [Music] north-south roads that followed the spine of the Andes today parts of the road are still in use including the trail that leads to Machu Picchu the Chinese Inca and Romans built vast transportation systems these architectural Marvels allowed them to conquer cultures by controlling the movement of armies food and trade goods throughout their Empires long before the Inca Empire Rose to power in South America the people of the North Bay Chico region in Northern Peru designed and built one of the earliest known Urban centers in the Americas carbon dating has confirmed that buildings in the region including those in the city of caral are at least 5500 years old is foreign was the most prominent of the 20 or more cities in the north de Chico region featured pyramids sunken circular plazas platform mounds and residential neighborhoods [Music] the buildings in the region were built on a foundation of quarried stone and River Rock transported in Reed bags to the construction sites organizations the North El Chico region is prone to earthquakes and the engineers of the day designed buildings that could withstand seismic activity is Innovative design techniques were used to prevent buildings and walls from collapsing during an earthquake a grass called shikra was woven into a meshed bag and filled with stones and used to form the retaining walls and foundations of buildings the construction of short wall sections prevented major damage during an earthquake foreign the accomplishments of this ancient society that existed more than 5 000 years ago reflects a society that had Superior engineering skills and advanced social and cultural structure and a strong sense of community prep [Music] in the high Arctic region of North America indigenous people had to adapt to the extreme weather conditions that existed most of the year High tents were used for summer homes and in the winter whale bones sod hides and snow were the building materials commonly used for housing the engineering you know that goes into an igloo it's built in a dome shape of course but that's not the most amazing thing the entrance way down low traps heat inside the igloo because heat rises you sleep about halfway up the Dome and that's the you know one of the warmest places snow houses are igloos were used for both Hunting Expeditions and a semi-permanent winter homes sleeping areas and storage spaces were placed near the wall and the Central Area was a communal space for cooking and daytime activities when you build an igloo you test the snow to make sure it's it's even all the way down because where the layers are the blocks will break usually you find a place with snow on a slant you start at the top of the slope and trim your blocks like into a wet shape you trim your block so that it goes up in a spiral until you get to the top and you lean them in you know so you make a nice Dome you stick the last piece up through the hole and you trim it so that it fits right in the hole and you just let it drop and then you're done if you build your eggs with that way it will not fall down you can actually climb up on top and it won't fall down [Music] it would be nice you know if somebody could find the original igloo but of course you know snow melts Every Spring and the extreme weather conditions and scarcity of building materials in the Arctic region led the Inuit people and their ancestors to develop Innovative housing designs that were used for thousands of years [Music] the construction of pyramids in Peru Egypt and Iraq at around the same time in human history suggests that peoples throughout the world independently develop the concept of building massive architectural structures [Music] the Giza pyramids were built from Limestone blocks that weighed from 2 to 15 Tons each the Giza complex included three large and three small pyramids that were tombs for the Pharaoh and his wives [Music] the ziggurat of UR was a massive step pyramid that measured 64 meters in length and close to 30 meters in height All That Remains today is the foundation it's believed that the pyramid was part of a temple complex and a shrine to the Moon god Nana [Music] the main pyramid in corral measures 150 meters long and 28 meters high it was made from hundreds of thousands of Reed bags filled with quarried stones that were carried by laborers to the construction site thank you the Ingenuity and Engineering skills of ancient peoples can still be seen in the pyramid structures that have survived to this day 600 years ago the Aztec civilization was at the peak of its dominance in central Mexico founded in 1345 tenochitlan was the capital city of the Aztec world and home to close to 200 000 people it was not only the political and spiritual center of the Aztec empire it was one of the most impressive technical achievements in the world so we have to go back to this geography of central Mexico 4 000 meters or 5000 meters in elevation in between all these volcanic ranges a gigantic Lake collecting all the water melting from the glaciers of this volcanic edifices and this Lake doesn't have an outlet so basically this lake is going to be growing and growing and growing and growing because there is no River that is going to empty it is like foreign s of the Aztecs is going to be the modification of tiny silt Islands into a gigantic artificial island of 13 square kilometers and an unknown volume of cubic meters of dirt that had to be brought from the shores of the lake artificially to create that massive Island [Music] at the center of this man-made Island was the sacred Precinct of the Aztecs there's a big Plaza the Palace of Moctezuma is on one side the Palace of the father of the Summa is on the other side and then you see the main Temple and the second percent the entire Cathedral of Mexico City would fit inside the volume of the main Temple and that's only one structure in the sacred Precinct of the Aztecs we know that this area had more than 80 specialized temples so from this Center you are going to have four causeways one is going to be this one to the South the other one is going to be the takuba street that is going to connect to the western shore of the lake and then there's going to be another Causeway to the north that is going to connect the center of that part with the twin city of Tennessee and that's laterco we don't have to pay attention to the pyramids the pyramids were small elements it's the volume of building an artificial City in an island outside of the Sacred Precinct was a vibrant City where residents traded and Bartered in a large Central Marketplace for flowers fabric Jade spices chocolate and everyday Goods along the side streets there were workshops where Artisans specialized in metal Jade and fabrics but constructing an island from scratch and designing and building a city on top of it was only the beginning there had to be infrastructure built to grow food for Tino chitlans large population and then began to play with the levels of the lake they have to create a system of dikes to basically regulate the flow of water in the lake prevent the brackish water to enter the area and also delay the movement of the fresh water that is coming down from the rivers in the mountain so that the dykes basically change the Ecology of of the lake completely these Dykes levees and causeways divided the waters around tenochitlan into large freshwater ponds some of which were used for fish farms along the Shallow Lake beds crops were grown in man-made Fields called chinampas [Music] but even if you are if you are waiting for producing food you are cultivating to create This Magnificent Gardens beautiful gardens then when we have that context we have to go back to the first Europeans arriving to this and climbing this paths between the volcanoes and then at one point when they are in this High Point for the first time they look at Lake they see these 40 cities around the the lake and in the middle of the lake one gigantic Island is artificial we need to be reaffirming these that island is not natural that island is completely man-made is the product of the Aztec empire seeing the architectural Deeds of the Aztecs they said this is another Venice basically that was the comparison it's like this is another Venice tenno chitlan was not only the ceremonial economic and political heart of the Aztec empire it was among the most impressive engineering Feats in the world the ink has got a larger and part of the Aztecs the Aztecs had a more Dynamic demographic Empire and tenor sidland became the largest city indigenous City ever created by the indigenous people [Music] in Northwest North America the abundance of red cedar made it a natural choice for a building material the trunks of these massive trees were used to build structures called big houses that were used for both residences and Community ceremonies the diverse nations of the northwest coast lived in villages that consisted of several big houses some of the larger communities were made up of 30 or more houses and had populations of more than a thousand people building a big house involved weeks of preparation with several families working together to construct the house different Clans different families would help each other out and through kind of ancient engineering they were able to move these and be able to maneuver them into place it took a village really to to be able to move the pieces for the house posts pre-contact era some of those house posts would have been you know 500 or a thousand years old very Ancient Cedars even more so the beams that go across from house post houseboats were huge several related families shared a big house each family had its own cooking fire and sleeping area the bedrooms were often made out of planks or mats and each section of the big house there would be a number of different fire pits we'd open up smoke holes in the roof for the smoke to escape but when we wanted to hold a winter ceremonial we'd clear out all of the bedrooms out of the big house and we would light one Central fire and for us when we light a fire in our ceremonies it's a way to connect to our ancestors it's like a conduit right to the spirit world through the smoke that rises up to the Smoke Hole so we we light one fire in the big house and invite other tribes to come inside of that big house and and to witness our dances and listen to the songs that belong to that family or Clan inside of a big house in our territory we usually have four house posts and all four of those house posts are carved and they relate generally to the origin story of the family that lives in that big house and that's the purpose of our host post is to remind us of of where we come from when you wake up in the morning you'd look up but your your house posts and and realize that you know where you come from and where you come from means so much to us it's literally the structure you're living in if you can imagine being able to look look at your origin and realize that your whole ancestry is is holding up your house the cedar beams and posts that form the frames of the big houses were permanent but the wall planks could be removed and transported to Summer Village sites for our people planks were very important possessions there was methods in order to take planks off of living trees and still have the tree survive so today you can find culturally modified trees that have had planks removed and even pre-contact time the temperate climate and abundance of food in the Pacific Northwest led to the establishment of many permanent Village sites as a result the big house was the primary housing structure in the region for thousands of years today big houses are still used for pot latches and other ceremonies by indigenous communities throughout the Pacific Northwest between 900 and 1700 years ago taiwanaku was the dominant Society in a region that included parts of Bolivia Peru and Chile its far-reaching influence is thought to have been based on religion trade and culture tiwanaku the Empire's main city was built on the Southern Shores of Lake Titicaca seven-tiered pyramid called akapana dominated the city's Skyline [Music] the city also featured impressive works of Monolithic art dewanaku featured running water sewers and painted walls the buildings were made from massive red Sandstone blocks that originated in a quarry 10 kilometers away [Music] foreign theory is that the stones were transported on Reed boats across Lake Titicaca [Music] you have this massive Lake system Lake Titicaca and this was a system that was was an incredible resource for the populations of that region and Through Time the populations grew as tijuanaku expanded so did its influence City Center was organized to the cardinal points its temples palaces observatories and pyramids had both religious and astrological functions it was a place where people were prompted and I believe by virtue of the ancestors that spread its influence and set the basis for the the principal Cult of the Andes where mountains were sacred and sacrifice was key among the most imposing structures in the city is a solid 10 ton block of andesite called the Gate of the Sun these massive Gates the tenant heads the the moats around the city the waterborne causeways uh the uh the various structures like the kalawasa all of these were structures that clearly are devoted to ceremonial edification of the elites so the Elites in this ancient city clearly stood apart from the commoners in the city about 1 000 years ago tiwanaku had evolved into a large urban center with a regional population in the hundreds of thousands at the same time further to the north and Peru the wary civilization was expanding its power base through military conquest and Whitey as it grew was a juggernaut it engaged in conquest and conflict interaction and we have a lot of evidence for it in the archeology of the Andean region and along the coastal margins where they dominated so you have these two juggernauts of civilization both of them expanding into imperial status they were no longer kingdoms in order to assert themselves and to build their places of prominence and their sacred Civic enclosures they began carving massive blocks of stone like the Gateway of the sun with what some have identified as the staff God or Vida kocha to others this deity that kind of was an Overlord Creator being foreign while there is no evidence the Wadi ever conquered tawanaku they were the two major civilizations of their time for thousands of years ancient peoples carved massive Stone sculptures and transported them across vast distances the engineering expertise tool technology and artistic skills came together to create these impressive public monuments Stonehenge is made up of a hundred Stone monuments placed in a circular pattern Stonehenge is made up of sandstone slabs transported from nearby quarries and blue stone slabs from Wales a distance of more than 200 kilometers [Music] Easter Island was settled by Polynesian Mariners around a thousand years ago over the course of several hundred years 900 statues were carved in a stone quarry and transported to different parts of the island the tallest statue is 10 meters high and weighs 82 tons [Music] the Gate of the sun is a solid stone monument constructed by the ancient taiwanaku peoples carvings on the stone depict human faces Condor heads and a central staffed man foreign it remains a mystery how ancient peoples quarried transported and erected Stone monuments that weighed up to a hundred tons the indigenous large game Hunters of North America faced one significant challenge above all others elk Buffalo and caribou migrate constantly in search of food who survive hunters and their families had to follow the migration of these animals sometimes hundreds of kilometers every year across the central plains or the sub-arctic regions this nomadic lifestyle created a dilemma if housing was permanent it couldn't be packed up and taken with them each time the herds moved on but if it was too lightweight it wouldn't protect them from the cold Winters on the plains the solution was the teepee the word TPS would be considered a Southern word that's from the Dakota language which is a theipi which means a gathering place for people is a conical structure made up of multiple poles covered by animal hide or birch bark these portable houses were relatively easy to put up take down and transport from one encampment to the next the earliest forms of teepees were made from tree bark with wood frames the TPU would have been more like a sweat lodge in its very ancient Origins which could be as far back as 10 000 years ago so it would have been a small bent wood frame and it wouldn't have had a fire in it traditionally or they would have used rocks to heat it and done the cooking outside that would have been mostly bark covering and those Benders would have been Willow black Spruce possibly a younger Lodge pole Pine as well over time the Ojibwe cree and other Woodland peoples moved into the plains where bark was scarce eventually the bark was replaced with the more accessible and durable hides of larger game the shape of the teepee was also altered to accommodate the central Fire Within the structure as time went on and as people expanded and trade routes opened up some more following the Buffalo was also probably the most important development of the TP because he would have had to have been able to move Camp very quickly throughout the summer months and so it would have made an economical sense to have something you could take down very quickly and set up very quickly following the Buffalo along their routes in the Great Plains area everything east of the Rockies teepees were always faced to the door to the east because of the prevailing winds as well it was also the first light of the Sun that would make you warm in historic times the teepee was the primary possession of the woman and it was almost exclusively the women's responsibility to pack up the teepee and properly put it together for transportation women were primarily the manufacturers of the Hide and the Builders of the teepees there's no definitive evidence for dating there are many remains there's a big horn medicine Wheels which are the most famous of them and they they showed that there was very large teepees if that's in fact what they were for there's other suggestions that these these were not teepees like we know them for living but they were TPS for astronomical observation and so they would set up the Rocks around the teepees in a very particular manner foreign there's also evidences in Alberto Saskatchewan Montana of many large encampments the evidence as being the rocks that were used to stabilize the the TV pools I think as far back as between 4 500 and 5000 years ago [Music] despite being portable and lightweight the TP could withstand inclement weather and constant handling through setup and tear down that is a very remarkable structure first of all as a circle goes that is always one of those strongest structures there is to build with this is shown time and again in throughout the world with other similar structures that are using the circle as well so in the case of storms in the case of uh any sort of inclement environment or whether the circle is the strongest as far as TP goes and architecture it's portability is remarkable it's incredible to to see how fast a home is made with a few poles and and a cover I mean a lot of people say well it's just a tent and it's not just a tent this is a possibly technology that is thousands and thousands of years old and it hasn't been Advanced on it doesn't need to be it's perfect the way it is [Music] some of the earliest houses invented by ancient peoples were portable tents they brought together all the elements of a small house with the added convenience of being light enough to take down quickly foreign is associated with nomadic horse riding Mongolian tribes who lived on the steps of Central Asia these portable homes are made from an expanding circular wood frame and covered with animal skins or felt made from sheep's wool a yurt can be dismantled and rebuilt in a few hours [Music] the ancient peoples of Northern Africa have used portable tents for thousands of years a family would have a smaller tent while a tribal leader would have a more impressive dwelling measuring 20 meters or more long [Music] the teepee was the primary housing style for people living on the plains of North America for more than five thousand years in the center of the teepee was a hearth with an opening in the roof to allow for the smoke to escape foreign the functionality of the Arabian tent yurt and TP were so Advanced that they are still in use today ancient architecture is a window into the cultural worlds that existed in the Americas before 1491. from the tundra of the high Arctic to the slopes of the Andean mountains to the jungles of Central America indigenous people created unique housing from Ice wood Stone Adobe and hides Villages and cities they designed and built were powerful expressions of the Innovative Spirit of our ancestors [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 11,955,532

Keywords: Instagram, Native American history, Native American societies, Netflix, Timeline - World History Documentaries, ancient art, ancient technology, ancient traditions, cultural diversity, cultural significance, discount, documentary, historical accuracy, historical documentaries, historical events, historical exploration, historical preservation, indigenous ancestry, indigenous tribes, native civilizations, promo code

Id: 42uVYNTXTTI

Length: 186min 40sec (11200 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022