Posted on 03/12/2026 9:59:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
For around 700 years, Native people of the American Great Plains hunted bison at a site in central Montana that archaeologists call Bergstrom. Then, around 1,100 years ago, humans abandoned the site even though bison remained abundant in the area, according to a statement released by Frontiers. "The Bergstrom site presented a puzzle," paleoecologist John Wendt of New Mexico State University said. "Why would hunters stop using a site that had worked for so long?" In 2019, Wendt's team began digging and investigating three-foot-by-three-foot excavation pits to try to better understand the Bergstrom site's use and eventual disuse. Researchers collected animal bone and pollen samples, radiocarbon dated charcoal fragments, tracked herbivore paths, and reconstructed possible climate patterns. The Bergstrom site, they found, was an ideal hunting ground. During drought periods in the region, hunters reorganized from smaller, more mobile bands into larger groups that occupied sites for longer periods and built infrastructure. Some of these sites had natural advantages, such as cliffs for bison jumps and formations that aided in herding. "These larger operations were based on large kills and could produce surplus for trade and winter storage, but they also meant more dependence on specific resources like water, forage for larger herds, and fuel for processing fires," Wendt said. The repeated droughts at Bergstrom caused by climate fluctuations eventually shuttered the site, the researchers concluded. Although bison remained plentiful, water used to process the animals in a nearby creek reached unsustainable lows, and hunters appear to have moved on for good. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Frontiers in Conservation Science. To read more about prehistoric buffalo jumps and hunting culture near the Rocky Mountains, go to "Letter from Montana: The Buffalo Chasers."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
If it is, it would explain why they died out.
I am sure we don't know and will never know.
Because when they left home they didn't write.
:(
Bookmark
If the buffalo were plentiful it wasn’t overgrazing or brucellocis, so my next guess would be superstition. Maybe they fled because of a bad omen or a percieved “Get out of there!” from the Great Spirit.
Among a people with no record-keeping except pictographs, it would be hard to trace an event like that.
So many good theories!
What is obvious is that the neighborhood changed. Interpret as you will…
Several historians have addressed this.
Their universal conclusion is that for a hundred years the notion that the “Indians used all parts of the buffalo” was a myth.
Yes, they used all parts, but not at once. If they needed meat, they left the hides and bones and blood. If they needed bones or hides, they left the meat. Missionaries and scouts filed numerous reports of pre-white periods showing herds of buffalo left to rot.
You know who DID “use all parts of the buffalo?” White industrialists who couldn’t stand waste. They shipped the bones back to be ground up; hides to be turned into shoes and coats; blood for paint, and of course meat for RR employees.
Did the Indians drive SUVs and have a thriving Petro-Chemical industry? NO!
The global warming gang will not discuss climate fluctuations prior to the industrial revolution. Nor will, they discuss what causes the start and end of an ice age. It is actually due to long term cyclic changes in the orbital path of the earth. They know this and just plain damn lie about it.
Thanks LS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.