Ask an Archaeologist #5: Horses, Arrows, and Ignored Sites

[@AncientAmericas]

THE LONG AWAITED SEQUEL!!

[@rocksandoil2241]

My ignored site is Afton Springs near Afton, OK. Apparently it was a site that natives gave homage to for centuries and included Mastodon teeth. That spring dried up 100 years ago when lead and zinc mining pumped huge amounts of underground 15 miles to the north.

[@charleshankins3074]

Is it your site? Just curious

[@brendacooper5729]

South America has some wheels on figurines. They don't appear to have been used for anything practical, or at least that we would consider practical, but they have round wheels mounted on the feet of animal figurines.

[@qwertyuiopgarth]

If the wheel is such a "this is a great idea!" invention that it spreads so fast there is no detectable origin point that suggests to me that it may have been invented several different times as soon as the 'supporting conditions/inventions' occurred.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@pUrP!€ @nArX!$t it does happen, but it's not the only way that two cultures end up with the same or similar features.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@pUrP!€ @nArX!$t we've been using fire since Homo erectus, so that's not a great example, but burial mounds? everybody does that. Copper metalurgy was developed independently in the Americas and Eurasia at almost the same time. Pottery was likewise invented at various times all over the world independently. Mesoamericans invented writing independent of any of the writing systems of Eurasia. So there are plenty of examples of independent invention all over the world.

[@LillianArch]

Atlatls are being found as the ice disappears from the slopes of land near the North Pole. Actual points and atlatls with rope and feathers wound on them. It's amazing but sad at the same time

[@uncletoad1779]

You have an excellent channel, Nathanael. Thank you very much for sharing all this interesting information. Greetings from the Old World!

[@EastKYancients]

Great content man. Thanks keep it coming. Found 4 chert tools yesterday at a knob cliff overlooking creek yesterday at my place. This part of eastern kentucky is loaded w history. Here, if a spot looks promising, scratch around a little, and bam, confirmation. I think the ancient cliff people thrived in these hills way back. Thanks man

[@nyanarchy]

Be sure to keep track of the locations and depth and details of the soil that each thing came from with notes, so they can be contextualized archaeologically... hate to lose history like that. And be sure to not move soil around or you could mess with future archaeologists trying to map out soil patterns. I also recommend finding a local archaeological society, so as to give access to more precise methods and give the descendants of those whom these artifacts belonged to some say in the process.

[@Melanie-dt4pi]

Thanks for the effort you put into these videos! I've just finished listening through all of them, and I'm grateful for them. Please keep making more! I agree with you about the terrible dearth of material about pre-contact North American history. I've been looking! Do you have any recommendations for books that provide a survey North American (or Eastern Woodland) history, and address the big picture questions about how cultures changed over space and time? When you think about the thousands of books surveying and analyzing European history, I find it amazing I can't find one about North American history for these periods. I hope I'm just missing them, and you can point me in the right direction.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Give "Recent Developments in Southeastern Archaeology: From Colonization to Complexity" a look.

[@Allienator]

Are you interested in looking for anything pre Clovis?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Paleo isn't really my thing, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at the opportunity to work one of those sites.

[@mikeCavalle]

great to see a new clip -- i haven't seen you in my feed lately -- youTube! get with the program.

[@tomevans4402]

Love this stuff

[@dalecarpenter8828]

Well you are headed in a good direction ...

[@domarinolo6947]

Man I love your channel . I have a question for you, what mystery in your line of work would you like to answer? Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Why people so desperately want to believe that there was regular and sustained contact between America and Eurasia prior to the 1400s.

[@ronpflugrath2712]

​. Civilization chopped heads off to keep earth flat.

[@user-nn6nq8kv3y]

FYI - the Aztecs made toy dogs on wheels. You can look up the image. So they clearly knew about wheels.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

This has been covered elsewhere, but that's not the same functional class as a wheeled vehicle. You're free to split that frog's pube if you want to though.

[@orlandosantos406]

The toys with wheels are well documented, and the question is why the principle of the wheel was not scaled. Urban civilization seems to have developed in jungles, maybe that suggests other modes of carriage. Another technology that was not scaled - the canoe to boat. The Americas are curiously devoid of serious shipbuilding or navigation. Curious.

[@paulsmith5035]

It proves they understood the wheel and axel to employ it for toys but didn't make the conceptual next step to ease their physical burden in construction of temples, homes, transporting people and produce. That is fascinating. Perhaps they had a spiritual reason for building sacred buildings with their own backs like a form penance or debt owed to a diety. They didn't enslave animals to do their labor which might have a spiritual basis as well. I think it merits deeper inquiry. It could also be a form of European cultural condescension used to justify invading and taking their land.😢

[@benhumphrey7999]

Very great content sir. Thank you for your approach on these topics. A breath of fresh air to be sure. Quick question: interested to hear your opinion on clovis culture and its similarities to paleo-European cultures. "Would there have been a possibility of travel from western Europe to Eastern America?" The above was a topic that came up in college that I was always skeptical about.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

That's the Dennis Stanford/Bruce Bradley Somutrean hypothesis. Genetic evidence makes it very difficult to defend, and it was already a thin argument. The solutrean culture ended several thousand years before Clovis started.

[@benhumphrey7999]

@@NathanaelFosaaen thanks for the response. I did a little more reading on it and I think I agree with you there, at least until more evidence shows up. Very vague in my opinion. I'm currently trying to reconceptualize my timeline of human migration from Africa, any suggestions on material??

[@thechronic555]

I’m pretty new to this whole scene but my exp with T.O.A and what I consider their definition of portable rock art is, and forgive me, but it seems like at least half the time, one or two people are almost certain on mushrooms, at the very least, while 10 or 20 more just enable and condescend to the one or two people that just mock them endlessly and quite a few people wholeheartedly agree there are dozens of faces in the tiny rock or whatever.. Cuz you seemed slightly confused at their question..

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

There's a lot of "seeing shapes in clouds" type mind tricks going on there.

[@rljatfrogpondschool7283]

.......hi Cee Tee..............smiles.................to prove " rock art "..........has to be done with facts.....i'm taking a few weeks off from making videos about rock art.....season 3 will be my attempt to present facts.....rock art is the new frontier..............welcome aboard

[@jackaroo1231]

Did I hear a Mormon apologist question in there hahahaha

[@nyanarchy]

Which one? I've only ever seen ex-Mormons, so I don't know how to identify Mormon concepts or such.

[@lindafoxx2033]

How can you tell the difference from a sesonal hunting site or a homestead site ? How do you know they didnt practice timeshare??

[@missourimongoose8858]

I wonder if there was a way for someone like you to setup a website where folks like me could send you pictures of stuff we find so we could kinda help with the archeological record because alot of folks just find stuff and put it in a drawer and I think that's kinda sad when you think about it

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Just file a site report with the SHPO. You can do that online.

[@rljatfrogpondschool7283]

......i understand what you are asking...i too would like to have my findings confirmed....but when discussing something that has been overlooked....it's hard to ask another for opinions.........missouri mongoose some paths have not yet been walked...............smiles from s w missouri

[@askforcorn]

@ ~8:00 don't forget about the Turkey

[@ktulurob]

The Spanish intentionally released horses, pigs, & other stock on the gulf and east coasts years before they began colonizing those areas theoretically so they would have a bunch of familiar feral animals to recapture and domesticate when colonies were established.

[@lesjones5684]

Your new video The drunken arkiolagist 😂😂

[@seekcamera2638]

Off topic question; what did people smoke 12000 years ago? Tobacco? Cannabis? Or something else? 4 stones powder? Was it considered medical? Where plant substances used in other 'unusal' for medicine or fun? How has it changed over time?

[@yibaibashimu6223]

I've heard since anthropology class about north American legends about Giants. Lately I've heard some stories about giant bones being found. I wonder if you have any experience with that? How would you advise me to view such stories.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Completely fake. Big bones preserve better than small bones. If giants existed it wouldn't have taken until the 21st century for us to get a positive ID on one.

[@yibaibashimu6223]

@@NathanaelFosaaen Thanks sir! Makes sense.

[@Wildernut]

Alaska? Brrr. Hope you kept all ur digits. Thanks for the content.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

It was summer.

[@chucklearnslithics3751]

I'll have to correct you a little bit, but depending on how you're defining "North America", there are in situ excavated Mayan "toys" that are wheeled. They clearly had "invented" it, but appear to not have taken next steps with it.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

That's the case, but a figurine with small discs attached is a far cry from the composite construction of wheeled carts or barrows. They're wheels in name, but not in function.

[@chucklearnslithics3751]

@@NathanaelFosaaen Yes. Agreed. I just wanted to parse it down enough to be clear that they were aware of the concept of a wheel. My personal bias in calling it out is, I've heard many snarky remarks, that seem to be born out of manifest destiny ethos, that are along the lines of "if they were so smart why didn't they invent or use the wheel?". There are several interesting papers out there in why they didn't use it, and my favorites are around Gods that seem to encourage bearing and carrying your own physical burdens.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Oh absolutely. You can turn that around and ask "If Europeans are so smart, why did they destroy the biodiversity of their whole continent? Why can't they seem to practice agriculture without destroying the soil?" etc. Europe only looks "advanced" if you ignore the fact that their tradition of resource management is ass-backwards.

[@johnn3542]

The lack of domesticated draft animals to pull a wheeled cart or whatever, made the wheel kind of useless. Plains tribes did use "travois", just two poles dragged like a sled, would use them on dogs.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@@johnn3542 nah, wheelbarrows and carts would have still been effective without draft animals, and natives did have a breed of dog that they used for pack animals so it wouldn't have been out of the question, but the earliest wheels in Eurasia didn't have spokes, so they were extremely heavy and better suited to oxen or ponies.

[@devinadler8337]

How big were the largest pre-contact polities north of Mexico? I've read that some of the complex or paramount chiefdoms had about 50,000 people in them. Is that as large as they got? Thanks for everything that you do!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Honestly, I have no idea. It would depend on how you define a polity more than anything.

[@devinadler8337]

@@NathanaelFosaaen Thanks! I was thinking of a polity as a politically sovereign entity, as opposed to some of the "tribes" that shared common language/culture/etc but were not politically united.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@Devin Adler how would we know who was under a unified political entity and who was involved in multi-faceted confederations and who was a loose network of political interaction? For that matter, what makes you think there was any such thing as a sovereign state in North America prior to colonization?

[@devinadler8337]

@@NathanaelFosaaen I don't necessarily mean a state when I said sovereign, just that it was politically independent. For example, in historical tribes/nations that weren't politically unified, but had self governing villages, I would call the villages sovereign polities.

[@nyanarchy]

@@NathanaelFosaaen The Haudenosaunee Confederation is possibly an example that is older than first contact with the imperialists, however the time of their organization by the Great Peacemaker is inconclusive.

[@cpstr828]

There are the wheeled toys found in Mesoamerica. Strangely the wheel never caught on otherwise. Perhaps without draft animals it wasn't that interesting... Things like wheelbarrows could have been useful, though. Wheelbarrows only appeared in 2nd century AD China, though, long after the charriot. That means this technology wasn't that obvious either.

[@steviegoodgravy8624]

Is it rare to find obsidian artifacts in the Mississippi/Arkansas delta?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

You don't much. The easiest way to get obsidian down there prior to the creation of the interstate was either to take a boat from the Rockies down the Missouri River and then down the Mississippi, or to bring it up the gulf from Mexico. It might have happened occasionally at ceremonial centers but otherwise it's more likely modern knappers or some other black silicate. Knox Flint has been mistaken for obsidian before.

[@missourimongoose8858]

The reason that guy prolly thinks horses were here is because of old journals which said the nez perce tribe had a massive herd of appoloosas which thanks to a little old lady that lives in New Zealand has tracked the appoloosas blood line to the eastern steppe around Russia meaning that population of horses came from trade with the Russians from Alaska most likely, I highly recommend watching the documentary about the lady who made the trip to Kazakhstan to get the DNA from there wild horses it's absolutely wild and she was in her 70s when she went lol

[@earthknight60]

On the subject of bow and arrow technology, Smithsonian Magazine has a good article on that titled **Evidence of Early Bow-and-Arrow Hunting Discovered in Sri Lanka*. Finds in Sri Lanka potentially push bow and arrow technology back to at minimum 48,000 years ago outside of Africa, and finds in southern Africa indicate bow and arrow use 64,000 years ago. This suggests that humans have had bow and arrow technology in their toolkits since around the time the last major wave of Homo sapiens moved out of Africa. That said, not all people used bow and arrows, so some populations likely had to rediscover it. Regarding anthroposols in North America north of Mexico, the Armstrong, et al 202i paper **Historical Indigenous Land-Use Explains Plant Functional Trait Diversity** is worth taking a look at (Smithsonian also has an article on this titled **Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia Tended ‘Forest Gardens’**). I don't know if soil studies were conducted though.

[@paulsmith5035]

Artifacts specifically toys that utilize the wheel and axel have been found in pre-columbian excavations. It proves they understood the wheel and axel to employ it for toys but didn't make the conceptual next step to ease their physical burden in construction of temples, homes, transporting people and produce. That is fascinating. Perhaps they had a spiritual reason for building sacred buildings with their own backs like a form penance or debt owed to a diety. They didn't enslave animals to do their labor which might have a spiritual basis as well. I think it merits deeper inquiry. It could also be a form of European cultural condescension used to justify invading and taking their land.😢 The earliest fossils of horses are found in the Americas which is where paleontologists believe horses originated. They spread from there to the Eurasian steppes and back to their point of origin with the arrival of the Spanish. Possibly the first species to circle the entire planet.😮

[@johnbiedron4921]

The small points may be for darts, as in blowgun. Some southeastern tribes used this technology. Present day Tsa La Gi ( Cherokee) have blowgun competitions.

[@smarttrout5562]

Blowgun points were thorns or needles from yucca or maybe the agave (gettin too old) also bone needle points. Stone points not used.

[@askforcorn]

Did you forget about the turkey or am I mistaken believing that i learned that they were domestiated and husbanded here a long time ago?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Turkey domestication was only just starting when colonization began from the little bit I've read about it.

[@askforcorn]

@@NathanaelFosaaen yeah I think I remember the idea is (or at least was) that there were two donestication events. First in the four corners ~2,000 bpe and again by the aztecs. That some of that stock accompanied returning Conquistadors to Spain. Anasazi. Idk but i know theres still a shitload running around mesa verde these days.

[@theotherartifactstoa776]

I get my information from archeological reports. I have never read a report newer than the 1930s that says anything about portable rock art. No illustrations and not one word written about it that I can find. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say the public doesn't get enough information. If an artifact doesn't fit the exact description of a thousand more artifacts it's never mentioned in any reports that I have read

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

The Duck River cache has stone turtle effigies, Moundville has the Rattlesnake Disc, Poverty Point has portable rock art all over the place, the Bannerstone tradition is a form of portable rock art in addition to its function with atlatls, and the hopewell made all kinds of stone effigies and effigy pipes. Polished stone gorgets are recovered and reported pretty often too. Then there's the Jaketown Tablet which was reported in the 80's that I know of. So again, there's plenty of portable rock art out there in the literature. These days we tend not to excavate at monumental sites quite so much, so naturally it's going to be less frequently recovered than it was 100 years ago, but it happens.

[@theotherartifactstoa776]

@@NathanaelFosaaen I agree but most of the collector community and amateur arrowhead hunters would not

[@rljatfrogpondschool7283]

@@theotherartifactstoa776 .....it's not easy the explain...rock art is mysterious...i think one of the problems is so many let their imagination go wild when seeing or finding their first rock art....go off making videos about their imaginings...to me.....................lowering the real study....and making lots of folks think we are a bunch of clowns .....Damian ...you stick to how you are doing it.........we will prevail

[@theotherartifactstoa776]

@@rljatfrogpondschool7283 watching this guy's videos assures me that the hobbyist community does not follow what the professionals have determined. You always hear these arrowhead collectors saying "I have a friend who is an archaeologist...." which is complete bullshit. Have you ever contacted an archaeologist? The first response, if any at all, that you get from these people will be a lecture about laws and ethics. They don't want regular people messing with this stuff and that's completely understandable. I don't see any of these people being friends with these treasure hunting jack asses who are making their job harder. If so, they aren't giving these people the information that they swear by whole heartedly. Only a handful of us understand that we don't have any idea what we are looking at. Personally, I'm offended by the know it all attitude of these arrowhead collectors. Imagine having an education on the topic and listening to these clowns. You'd have to make some type of comedy out of it or get pissed. One of the two. I don't think any of these people regularly hang out with the typical douche bag hobbyist artifact hunter/collector. We see a handful of these people on social media because they are basically screaming out "you guys are clueless and you are the very reason that ancient man is misunderstood"

[@rljatfrogpondschool7283]

@@theotherartifactstoa776 ....so what do we do

[@Eulemunin]

Feeding the algorithm

[@SunflowerHeather]

You Tube misses you Nathanael 🌻

[@pelewads]

From genetic research, new world dog species have almost gone extinct. Of the dog breeds today 99% are Eurasian, in origin. Llamas and alpacas didn't start being exported until the late 19th century.TURKEYS, however.. God how the Europeans loved turkeys. Yeah, that's about it. From a livestock point of view. S*** ton of edible plants though. New to your channel. Loving the information

[@marschlosser4540]

Wheeled toys are found in Central America. But, where would you use it in carts? Handcarts are common in Europe even before they used draft animals. They weren't practical here because the terrain is too difficult. Pack dogs fed themselves, and were considered somewhat sacred, dog being a Wolf, and Wolf is God. Dog is Wolf as Helper. You want weird, go to the Pocono Mtns, PA. They were the Witchlands. A valley leading to the river, west side of the Poconos, was called Demon's Road. Coming in from the west, the Eagle head statue faces west, a warning, and not east. Wicca do not go into the valley after dark. Too many spooks. Yeah, what an I say, it's home, or was for the Longhouse.

[@paulsmith5035]

A history teacher I had speculated our time period would be called the age of plastic & glass which will outlast it's makers. The Hitites were the first recorded use of the wheel for war chariots which was quickly adopted and improved upon by Egyptians et al. across the old world. Syphilitic skeletons have recently been exhumed in cemeteries in both Scotland and Italy that predate Columbus' voyage so it's an old world disease believed to have evolved as humans migrated from the tropical areas to arid zones where the pathogen could only survive in warm moist areas of our bodies thus becoming sexually transmitted. Not Gods punishment for sin.

[@lesjones5684]

Tony lama 😂😂

[@codewordslinkydog]

do you straighten your hair

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Irrelevant, but no.

[@jaysilverheals4445]

one thing you might want to mention months or years if you keep it in the back of your mind that many regular people do watch channels such as yours and as it pertains to various early man sites such as the Chikita cave in mexico that they find true artifacts on the top and then they may dig down thinking they are going back millions of years as if in africa where the various broken rocks or whatever "must be primitive" as if a clan of apes came over from africa and were makeing basic tools and learning to use fire. it comes up all the time. any old site people think that lets say 40,000 years ago THEY WERE APES. when of course they were making perfect tools and as intelligent as modern man. so then every conceivable rock they picture Lucy from africa must have made it. every rock then becomes "must be a core or hand ax being used by an ape"

[@paulsmith5035]

Human history time lines are confusing to most and difficult to even imagine in the astronomical scale. There are university graduates who believe humans and dinosaurs lived in the same time period. 😂 Hollywood entertainment has not really even attempted to be accurate when it fabricated stories about the past events in human history which adds to confusing the general public.

[@johnbeverly7236]

🍁

[@ked5081]

hey, how far back has the symbol of the heart been used ? the early love of us chimps, the evidence, us. enjoy valentine

[@stupidminotaur9735]

2 species of llama and alpaca. 4types of dogs. dog sledding and Chihuahua and a normal hunting dog and a wooly dog... 2-3 of animals similar to guinea pigs and them.. a couple species of rats also got domesticate . 1. 1 type of fox got domesticated as a dog which is very cool. and alot about controviel over weather or not chickens got here in the 1350 or 1550's also theres small cool evidence that nearthdals might have domesticated horses and dogs

[@stupidminotaur9735]

didnt link ar.atlatl channel.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Llamas and alpacas are south American. Dogs have already been talked about, but they'renot livestock either way. Guinea pigs are also south American. I've never seen any evidence about domesticated foxes in North America but please send me those references.

[@stupidminotaur9735]

@@NathanaelFosaaen in south america there was domesticated foxes that got turned into a dog like animals. there's this project called the silver fox project thats trying to recreate it. in the 1900's rancher killed off the last fox/dogs because of fears they would attack livestock..... the inca's d some rats/mice too they just rediscovered a thought to be extinct mice in moca picoe it was a pet for the incas....... oh they might have d turkey's the bird... the south america foxes have their own wiki on them not hard to find

[@stupidminotaur9735]

@@NathanaelFosaaen Fuegian dog... is the name of the domesticated fox south america

[@stupidminotaur9735]

ah ok the fox are actually more closely related to wolves than foxes

[@rowanpost6063]

Lol archeologist ghost stories. Noone is immune

[@lesjones5684]

Drink 🍺 more alcohol 🍷 😂😂

[@dominic3630]

☀️ ?Ř????ϻ

[@johnluke9207]

Not to get into a bunch of woo-woo crap, but, there's been so many Yeti & Big Foot folklore tales, is it plausible that prehistoric humans such as Denisovans or Homo Erectus may have even made the trek to North America? The Red Deer People in China lasted longer than imagined, for instance.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

As far as we can tell from the evidence we've got now, Homo sapiens is the only human species that ever made it to the Americas.

[@lesjones5684]

You look drunk 😂😂

[@gerrycoleman7290]

But horses were in North America after the end of the last ice age.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

They were extirpated in the early Holocene

[@gerrycoleman7290]

@@NathanaelFosaaen There are examples that say otherwise.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@gerrycoleman7290 citations, or it didn't happen.

[@j.stalin3672]

Yo ,, '' Archaeologist '' you really need to go to real school... where did you learn all that nonsense ?? In the out house 🏡

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Appalachian State University, University of Arkansas, University of Tennessee, and ten years as a professional field archaeologist.

[@angelsinthearchitecture7106]

I think this man is very knowledgeable in his field . How you learn all your knowledge J Stalin?