Landscape Learning and Climate Change
Me, very proud of the stone arrowhead I found at Quebrada Seca. This is large enough to be attached to a spear and used for hunting deer and other large mammals.
Vocabulary
Isthmus:
A narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas (in this case, North and South America) across an expanse of water that separates them.
Diagnostic:
In archaeology, an artifact that is characteristic of a particular culture or time period and can be used to determine the chronology of a site.
Panama was first occupied by Indigenous people at least 13,000 years ago (11,000 BCE). Archaeological evidence of this time period is typically found in rock shelters near the coast, which would have offered protection from the heavy tropical rainfall and extreme heat. These environments are also good for archaeologists because they preserve organic materials (plant material, bone, charcoal) that otherwise can decompose quickly, especially in a very damp rainforest. Because Panama is a very thin isthmus that bridges North and South America, and it has more early Indigenous sites than any other country in Central America, it is extremely important for understanding the peopling of the Americas, particularly the relationship between early sites in North and South America.
The most common archaeological artifact from this time period is the Clovis point, a particular type of stone projectile point identified by their grooves that extend from the base of the tool about a third of the way up. Ancient peoples made these grooves so that the points could be hafted – attached to spears or possibly knives. These stone tools were usually made in designated workshop areas, located near to quarries where the stone was collected. In Panama, these tools were made from chert, jasper, quartz, and other types of stone. Clovis points are diagnostic to the window of time between 13,500 and 12,800 years ago.
Clovis points from Central America (c, d, f, h, and i are from Panama).
Courtesy of Cooke (1998).
At the same time as people arrived in Panama, the climate warmed by ~10°F, as the last glacial period came to an end. While we don’t fully understand all the causes, we think this glacial melting was related to more sunlight reaching the Earth. Unlike today’s climate change, this wasn’t caused by people but was the result of natural fluctuations in Earth’s orbit, tilt, and wobble. With that increase in temperature, the ecosystem began to shift from a forest of trees like oak, holly, and myrtle – now only found in Panama on mountains – to the lowland tropical plants with brightly colored flowers and berries that are more common in the region today. Therefore, people had to learn not only how to live in a new place, but in a place that was rapidly changing around them. As part of this learning process, they began to use fire to manage the ecosystem. They regularly burned particular sections of forest, maintaining them as grasslands. This created more local biodiversity, which made the ecosystem more resilient but also provided people with more types of animals and plants to eat without having to go far away. While the Indigenous people of Panama didn’t have to worry about forest fires as much due to the humid climate, this practice is very similar to the traditional controlled burning that Indigenous people in the Western United States perform, both to lower fuel load to prevent large forest fires and to create biodiversity.