HUMAN SETTLEMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICA AND NORTHERNMOST SOUTH AMERICA (14,000–8000BP)

Abstract

A human presence in Central America, Colombia and Venezuela (outside ‘Amazonia’) before the Late Glacial Stage (≈14,000–10,000 BP) requires substantiation. In Venezuela, hunter-foragers who used elongate, thick bifacial projectile points preyed upon megamammals (e.g. gomphotheres) before the onset of a (≈12,000–11,000 BP) warming stage, particularly visible in highland Colombia (Guantiva Interstadial). Some archaeologists argue for a distinct pre-12,000 BP population centered on the Sabana de Bogotá (Colombia, ≈2500 m). Their ‘Abriense’ stone tool kit lacked bifacial reduction, and continued to be used well into the Holocene. In Central America, no human cultural remains yet pre-date the widespread, but poorly documented ‘Palaeoindian’ horizon. This coincides chronologically with the ≈11,000–10,000 BP cold stage equivalent to the Younger Dryas (in Colombia, ‘El Abra Stadial’). Makers of lanceolate (‘Clovis’) and stemmed (‘Fish-Tail’) fluted points, carefully trimmed scrapers, burins and perforators, ‘Paleoindians’ have also been identified in northwest South America. Palaeoenvironmental data suggest that they moved around in many different vegetation types. In general, these were unlike modern potential vegetation because temperatures and annual rainfall were still lower than those of today. Human material culture at the onset of the Holocene (10,500±700 BP depending on region) does not seem not to have changed as rapidly as climate and vegetation. But the disappearance of fluted projectile points and the Late Pleistocene megafauna may be causally related. Presently, it is difficult to distinguish widespread and short-lived diachronic changes in human culture, from culturally diverse populations living synchronously in different geographic areas. Some archaeologists argue that early Holocene forest expansion and foraging territory contraction were responsible for socioeconomic diversification and a gradual shift from mobile hunting and gathering to a more sylvan way of life. This emphasized the intensive collection and incipient domestication of forest products (e.g. palms and root crops), and the hunting of deer and rodents.