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Transcript
0:01 · foreign [Music]
0:14 · the northern Atlantic Coast is a remote and Barren land
0:20 · locked in ice for much of the year and surrounded by bitterly cold Seas
0:25 · [Music]
0:35 · it is almost unimaginable that ancient peoples could have survived in this
0:40 · desolate region [Music] but a series of archaeological discoveries in the United States and
0:47 · Canada has uncovered startling new evidence that a previously unknown culture more
0:54 · advanced than anyone had believed possible flourished here near the edge of the Arctic Circle many thousands of
1:00 · years ago the discovery of this early civilization
1:06 · is changing our vision of ancient North America and challenging long-held
1:11 · assumptions about the development of Native American culture
1:18 · foreign begins just over a century ago with an
1:25 · accidental discovery on the coast of Maine it gradually unfolds into one of the
1:30 · great quests of American archeology the search for the lost red paint people
1:47 · in 1882 Augustus Hamlin the mayor of Bangor Maine was guided to a region near
1:53 · the mouth of the Penobscot River by Foster super a local farmer Soper had told the mayor about a place
2:00 · where blood colored pools were rising out of the Earth
2:06 · Hamlin was a doctor and a geologist but he was also an amateur Anthropologist a so-called antiquarian
2:14 · who believed in theories about the past that scientists would later consider implausible
2:22 · this part of the main Coast had generated Legends for hundreds of years as far back as the 16th century European
2:29 · explorers had recorded an Indian myth about a fabled place called norumbega
2:34 · which they interpreted to be a city overflowing with riches
2:40 · [Music] this map of 1569 placed Norm Vega near
2:47 · the mouth of the Penobscot River Hamlin had searched but he never found a trace
2:53 · of a lost city [Music]
2:58 · he did find accounts of unexplained Stone ruins discovered by the settlers who first cleared the dense forest along
3:04 · the Penobscot River like other antiquarians of his time Hamlin believed that these were the
3:11 · ruins of structures built by Europeans who arrived in the New World before Columbus he suggested that they might be the
3:18 · remains of Finland The Lost Colony of the Vikings [Music]
3:32 · the stone ruins of the Northeast were not the only archaeological Mysteries which interested the antiquarians
3:39 · there were also hundreds of prehistoric mounds and Earthworks like these located in the Ohio Valley
3:46 · as early as the 1700s amateur scientists had been digging up these mysterious
3:52 · man-made Hills and discovering the spectacular remains of an ancient culture
3:58 · these elaborate burials and artifacts indicated that the mound builders were more advanced than the known Indian
4:04 · tribes of the region 19th century antiquarians explained this by developing The Theory of A Lost
4:11 · Civilization which existed in America before the Indian and then mysteriously
4:18 · vanished the earliest Mounds were simple circular
4:24 · forms but later examples evolved into precise geometric designs built on a vast scale
4:33 · the geometry and surveying skills needed to construct these ritual Landscapes seemed to be unknown among the Native
4:40 · Americans because they were ancient Mounds
4:46 · throughout Europe other Scholars who did not believe in the theory of lost races suggested that the American Mounds were
4:52 · built by colonists from a more highly developed cultures of the old world they believed in the theory of diffusion
4:59 · that early voyagers brought the mound building tradition across the Atlantic
5:05 · eventually both of these antiquarian theories would be abandoned as the new discipline of scientific archeology
5:12 · developed by the mid-20th century professional anthropologists would firmly deny that
5:18 · ancient people navigated across the ocean and they would dismiss as well the idea of lost races
5:26 · but here in the landscape forming the heart of the old norambega myth Hamlin the antiquarian was about to make a
5:33 · discovery which would eventually change scientific beliefs though its real significance was not
5:39 · understood for a hundred years what he found here was the first evidence of a completely unknown ancient race of
5:47 · skilled seafaring people who once lived along the Atlantic coast
5:58 · as a geologist Hamlin realized he was looking at a high grade of red ocher iron oxide
6:08 · the ocher had been turned up by the plow and the red pools were formed when it mixed with a night rain
6:16 · buried in the ocher Hamlin found artifacts made of polished Stone
6:23 · he knew that Native American peoples used red ocher for war paint and for their rituals but what surprised him was
6:31 · the quality and the Perfection of the polished artifacts the stone woodworking tools were honed
6:37 · to a sharpness rivaling a metal blade and they were far superior to the artifacts found at Indian sites in Maine
6:45 · Hamlin brought the tools to the Peabody Museum at Harvard and the search for the mysterious red paint people was taken up
6:52 · by professional archaeologist Charles C Willoughby
6:57 · when Willoughby investigated Hamlin's site he discovered a mound at the water's edge and began a dig that has
7:03 · been called the first scientific excavation in America willoughby's careful measurements and
7:09 · drawings revealed that the artifacts had been buried in ritual patterns he suspected that they were the remains
7:16 · of ancient Graves but he found no skeletons to confirm his theory
7:21 · he suggested that the graves were so old that the bones had long ago disintegrated in the acidic New England
7:27 · soil he built this scale model to be displayed at the 1893 world's Colombian
7:33 · exhibition in Chicago [Music] along with Willoughby another
7:39 · archaeologist was presenting his work in the Hall of anthropology Warren K Moorhead became famous when he
7:46 · displayed his discoveries of the Ohio mound builder treasure at the exhibition he was a self-taught archaeologist who's
7:53 · less than careful excavation Methods made him a Maverick in the profession's eye
7:58 · but his uncanny nose for spectacular discoveries made his name a household word
8:05 · Moorhead was searching for the origins of the mound builders and he soon became interested in willoughby's site in Maine
8:13 · with a team of excavators he called the force Moorhead set out on an expedition
8:18 · up the rivers of Maine to investigate willoughby's claims of boneless cemeteries
8:26 · these recently discovered hand-tinted glass slides were used to illustrate his
8:31 · popular lectures when Moorhead got involved in Maine
8:38 · archeology he elevated the Quest for the red paint people to high adventure
8:43 · foreign Moorhead was impressed by the quality of
8:48 · the tools the workmanship of the polished Stone led him to believe that the red paint
8:54 · people had a highly evolved culture he sent examples back to museums in the
9:00 · midwest to be shown alongside the artifacts of the mountain builders
9:05 · by the turn of the century he had excavated several mounds and ritual sites both in the hills and along the
9:11 · coast of Maine Moorhead wrote that in all his explorations he had never examined sites
9:17 · appearing so old but like Willoughby he never found a skeleton or a village
9:23 · without this evidence there was no way to determine who these people were how they lived or where they came from
9:31 · but he did note that some of the tools were made from a type of stone not found anywhere in Maine or New England
9:39 · Moore had daringly suggested that its source would someday be located in the far north and he claimed this was
9:45 · evidence of long-distance trade his prediction was born out 80 years
9:51 · later when archaeologists discovered the source of this unusual stone in Rama Bay
9:56 · Northern Labrador 1500 nautical miles from the coast of Maine
10:03 · the stone is now called Rama chert it's beautiful translucence and sugary
10:09 · texture make it highly distinctive [Music] the church has been found in artifact
10:16 · collections as far south as New Jersey and West along the Saint Lawrence River into Vermont
10:22 · the Rama Bay Quarry was the only place in the world where this type of church could be found
10:27 · confirming moorhead's idea of a link between the red paints and the far north
10:33 · at the time moorhead's academic colleagues considered his claims to be too Sensational
10:39 · some simply dismissed the idea of an advanced prehistoric culture and others
10:44 · thought that the red paints actually might have been a group of marauding Eskimo from the north
10:49 · eventually moorhead's career was destroyed
10:57 · not surprisingly the next generation of professional anthropologists avoided the question and the Mystery of the red
11:04 · paint culture was temporarily forgotten
11:09 · it was not until the 1930s that another major Discovery occurred in Maine
11:15 · this one was found by chance under an Indian shell Heap on the edge of Blue Hill Bay
11:21 · these heaps are the discarded remains of shellfish built up by generations of tribes who returned year after year to
11:28 · harvest the ocean creatures they have been found in many places along the Atlantic coast
11:34 · on Blue Hill Bay red ocher began eroding from the bottom of a heap known as the Nevin site
11:42 · it was brought to the attention of archaeologist Douglas Byers
11:47 · the layers of crushed shell formed a calcium-rich mixture that neutralized the acidic soil
11:54 · at the bottom buyers found the badly disintegrated remains of full skeletons
11:59 · covered in red ocher just as Moorhead and Willoughby had predicted
12:05 · buyers also found bone artifacts with surprisingly beautiful decorations engraved into the surface
12:13 · no one had expected to find such precise geometric designs among the red paints
12:19 · but the most surprising discoveries at the Nevin site were toggling harpoons and the remains of swordfish a deep
12:27 · water ocean species these artifacts were the first clue that the red paint people might be a
12:33 · seafaring race
12:39 · of American apology resisted this idea there seemed to be no historical
12:45 · evidence for ocean navigation among the Indians but then the next major red paint
12:51 · discovery in Maine occurred on a remote island in Penobscot Bay in the late 1960s Dr Bruce bork of the
12:59 · Maine State Museum investigated a shell Heap on North Haven island near the bottom he found the remains of a red
13:05 · paint Fishing Station well ten years ago we didn't really understand much about the lifestyle of
13:12 · the people who left these cemeteries then in 1971 I began excavations at the
13:18 · Turner Farm site and got down near the bottom of this deep shell Heap to a series of strata that related to a
13:26 · village of what I call the Moorhead phase people who left these cemeteries
13:31 · Dr bork and his crew had a tool which had been unavailable to early archaeologists they used radiocarbon
13:38 · dating to determine that the red paint occupation of the island occurred over four thousand years ago
13:45 · this surprisingly early date indicated that the red paint culture predated the mound builder civilizations of the
13:52 · Midwest by more than 2 000 years and we were surprised to find
13:58 · that most of the bone or great deal of the bone related to Maritime activity
14:05 · specifically cod fish was very abundant and and very surprisingly swordfish was
14:11 · tremendously abundant now both these animals swordfish and cod fish are deep water animals
14:20 · people of the Moorhead phase were very skilled at going out and and traveling the several miles
14:26 · necessary to get to the ideal hunting and fishing places for these two species
14:33 · which are so prominent in the red paint Graves suggest to us a great Skillet working
14:38 · wood and when you combine the evidence we have here for dependence on deep water marine species with a parent
14:46 · importance or skill in woodworking the sense then is that these people were Maritime Hunters who made very competent
14:55 · sea craft the boats that these people use were seaworthy they were rugged probably large dog canoes perhaps not
15:01 · too different from those we know from the northwest coast during the historic period
15:07 · the sea peoples of the Pacific Northwest have recently become a model to help anthropologists visualize the way of
15:14 · life of the red paint people this rare footage of Northwest Coast Indians was produced at the turn of the
15:20 · century by photographer Edward Curtis
15:27 · Curtis worked with equal people and the famous Indian ethnographer George hunt
15:32 · to build and photograph examples of their traditional boats and houses
15:42 · thank you here George hunt demonstrates the woodworking tools of the northwest coast
15:48 · that are similar in shape and function to the tools found in the red paint burials of Maine
15:54 · although the red paints predated these northwest coast people by thousands of years the similarity of their tools
16:01 · suggests how advanced the red paint culture must have been This Island village located 200 miles
16:08 · off the coast of British Columbia was abandoned a century ago and has already
16:13 · begun to disintegrate if these wooden structures had been built four thousand years ago by now
16:19 · they would have disappeared Without a Trace like the sea peoples of the Pacific Northwest the red paint people of the
16:27 · Northeast built their Villages at the water's edge unfortunately for archaeologists the
16:33 · edge of the ocean is one of the most abrasive environments known and there is very little left of the red paint way of
16:39 · life
16:46 · at the same time as Dr bork's work in Maine there was an accidental Discovery at the edge of an island in the Canadian
16:52 · maritimes is a fishing community in Northwestern Newfoundland
16:57 · in 1968 construction began for a new movie theater on the outskirts of town
17:03 · a bulldozer cut through a patch of red ocher and the work was stopped as Dr James tuck from Memorial University and
17:10 · St John's was called in
17:16 · I came up to see the question it was something that we'd been looking for for
17:21 · a long time because it's apparently the remains of a
17:27 · burial cult that we're interested in finally archaeologists had found
17:33 · skeletons which were preserved well enough to identify enabling Dr tuck to give the red paint
17:38 · people a new scientific name the maritime archaic
17:43 · eventually it turned out to be a site that I guess people had been looking for for a hundred years there were red paint
17:49 · cemeteries in Maine but almost never had there been any bone preserved when we first found the human bones we asked
17:56 · ourselves questions like are these people Eskimos or or were they Indians it sounds almost silly now 15 years
18:02 · later but those were questions that were very real and important then Jim Anderson a physical Anthropologist
18:09 · who studied the bones immediately after they'd come from the field was able to distinguish that these people were in
18:14 · fact racially American Indians North American Indians rather than Europeans or Eskimos I think the European question
18:22 · is is hardly important at all doesn't bear discussing but there are biological traits in the skulls and else and
18:30 · intracranial skeletons of these people that allow physical anthropologists to distinguish between people we recognize
18:36 · as Eskimos and those we'd recognize as Indians the site proved to be over 4 000 years
18:43 · old about the same age as the sites in Maine when I first saw them I couldn't believe
18:48 · they were as old as they were the preservation was almost beyond belief they looked fresh and new and covered
18:55 · with red ocher when we completed our analysis of the port of soil material we had for the
19:01 · first time a real good look at the sophisticated sea mammal hunting technology or sea hunting technology
19:07 · that these people had their weapons included toggling harpoons and Barbed harpoons
19:14 · these were used to Harpoon sea mammals the polished slate and Bone Lance points
19:19 · were probably used to dispatch sea mammals seals and walrus and so forth there were specialized fish Spears
19:27 · things called leisters and a very sophisticated and well-developed
19:33 · technology for exploiting the resources of the Gulf of St Lawrence I think that the analogy is probably
19:39 · pretty good between East and West so they certainly had a boating technology of which we know a great deal on the
19:46 · west coast but very little here because of preservation you get the impression though from
19:51 · looking at the collections from both areas that British Columbia material is much more
19:57 · Rich say in terms of wood technology I bet though if you found the maritime
20:02 · archaic site with the same kind of preservation as you find in British Columbia it'd really be a surprise knock
20:08 · your socks off some of the stuff they had if the Native American cultures of the
20:15 · northwest coast are any guide the spiritual beliefs of the maritime archaic were shaped by powerful forces
20:22 · in the natural environment anthropologists use the term Shamanism
20:27 · to describe the religion of hunting cultures around the northern globe Shamanism is not so much a formalized
20:33 · religion but a way of relating to the spirits of nature to the shaman each particular object
20:40 · animal and place has a spiritual identity and the shaman communicates with these forces through a State of
20:46 · Trance often experienced alone in the wilderness
20:52 · this altered state of consciousness is brought on by starvation physical exertion or psychoactive substances
21:00 · the ritual is often accompanied by drumming chanting and dancing the shaman gains intuition and uses it
21:07 · to guide the community curing illness and ensuring success in hunting and War
21:13 · these spiritual techniques have existed for thousands of years and have been documented into modern times this 16th
21:20 · century European print of a sorcerer in a trance was one of the first visual records of native life on the Atlantic
21:26 · coast 400 years later Anthropologist Franz Boaz documented a similar event when he
21:32 · filmed this northwest coast Shaman for his study of ritual gestures [Music]
21:39 · Edward Curtis in his filmwork dramatized the Shaman's ritual with the help of George hunt he
21:46 · recreated a sacred place in the wilderness the Indian selects the skulls of certain
21:52 · ancestors who will share in the experience the dancing May last a few hours or a
21:58 · few days but it is followed by a trance-like sleep in which the shaman speaks with the spirits of the natural
22:04 · world at some point in history that natural world and its spiritual realm expanded
22:11 · when people began to communicate with the animal spirits of the sea
22:17 · a good example of that might be the killer whale Effigy that was found on the chest of a young adult male it's
22:24 · it's probably speculation but we know that others see mammal Hunters have had killer whale cults
22:30 · why not the people at puertoire communication with the spirits of the
22:36 · sea was a major step for these ancient cultures which had been dominated by land Spirits for countless millennia
22:44 · the recognition of these new and Powerful spiritual forces released people from their bondage to the land
22:50 · and opened up a wider world of Maritime travel and trade
22:55 · for these traditional cultures we can imagine that navigation was a ritual where the shaman pilot consulted the
23:02 · winds the waves the animals and the Stars
23:10 · along with the whales several artifacts from the burials at Porter schwa indicate that water birds were also
23:15 · important to the maritime archaic the birds habits and migration patterns
23:21 · would have been especially important for piloting and navigation the image of the water bird here carved
23:27 · on a comb was a common motif Dr tuck also found burials covered with
23:32 · the beaks of a species known as the great awk these flightless penguin-like birds once
23:39 · traveled in huge flocks which swam across the ocean from their home in Iceland to the shores of North America
23:46 · they spread out in a mass which extended from miles across the surface of the ocean as they moved slowly along their
23:53 · migration route from labradora to the Carolinas the species was so easy for Sailors to
23:59 · hunt that it became extinct in 1844 perhaps by following the slow-moving Ox
24:06 · the maritime archaic first explored the remote shores of Northern Labrador
24:27 · Dr William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian institution has himself been exploring
24:32 · the coast of Labrador searching for the northern limits of the maritime archaic
24:37 · if remains of the red paint people could be found here it would confirm that the maritime archaic were skilled
24:44 · long-distance Navigators in 1980 on the desolate beaches of nuliac Cove Dr
24:51 · fitzhu found what it eluded every other researcher for a hundred years the remains of red paint house
24:58 · foundations newly Act is the largest settlement location that we have found and I expect
25:05 · it's very near the northern limit of this culture
25:11 · the reason that they were able to live so far north in a area that's pretty
25:16 · harsh with very rigorous Winters an ice cover on the sea for eight months of the year at least is because of a very
25:23 · intensive Maritime adaptation it's a type of adaptation which probably
25:28 · extended with variations into New England but yet there was a homogeneity to the style of Life a kind of a
25:36 · similarity certainly in the ceremonial cultures to some extent an artifact forms which bound this entire area of
25:43 · the Northeast all the way from North of the forest Fringe down into the temperate zones
25:48 · and it's a been a puzzle for archaeologists because they could not
25:54 · understand the complexity the burial ceremonialism the rather elaborate artifact types
26:00 · in terms of a northern typical Northern Indian way of life something
26:06 · characterized by Algonquin Culture by Montana Scotty Indians and the Indians
26:11 · we know ethnographically from this area who traveled in small bands who hunted
26:16 · uh Caribou but never got into this intense kind of Life which we see
26:22 · indicated by the maritime archaic foreign
26:38 · off the hills up here and they tend to follow each other frequently so that there's a trail which
26:44 · develops you can see beaten into the ground here and these things will last for a long long time you'll get
26:51 · projectile points primarily and broken frequently in this case here we've found
26:57 · one that's right in the Caribou Trail just as it's dropped for four thousand years it's been right there
27:03 · and I don't know how many Caribou have ever stepped on that but certainly more than one the Smithsonian crew began by Excavating
27:11 · a small Stone Mound which was the first clue that the red paint people had occupied the site
27:20 · but probably extends up out of the pit over here weighs
27:27 · the archaeological team set up their Camp below the Beach Terrace where the maritime archaic had once lived
27:34 · the ancient settlement was preserved because geological forces raised the beach away from the Ocean's erosive Edge
27:41 · thousands of years ago thank you when the melting Glacier receded from
27:47 · the ocean at the end of the last ice age perhaps ten thousand years ago a river channel was formed
27:53 · relieved from the great weight of the ice the landmass rose out of the sea and a beach developed at the mouth of the
27:59 · channel at some point after the maritime archaic first settled on the beach continued
28:05 · geological uplift raised the Terrace above sea level and the channel was blocked forming a pond
28:10 · [Music] scientists now had their first chance to
28:16 · see how the maritime archaic lived before the Discovery at newly act practically everything known about the
28:22 · red paint culture had been learned from their burials of the Dead the first place where people could live
28:29 · was up on the side of the pond where they raised Beaches come down from the
28:35 · hillside to the level of the pond when we first visited the site I was
28:40 · attracted by a number of Boulder lines features in the earth which can be seen here
28:46 · uh they're roughly two parallel raised ridges of beach stones
28:52 · about two meters apart stretching away from us and they seem to be unnatural not the
28:59 · normal kind of geological features which would form as a Beech Ridge and when we started looking at these
29:05 · things we began finding evidence of human activity in in throughout the
29:10 · interior of these two Boulder lines and such things as flakes of
29:17 · Ramen shirt uh pieces of slate with a bulb of
29:23 · percussion where they've been snapped off the original block [Applause] fragments of artifacts like the stem
29:30 · from a maritime archaic stem point and one of the problems we have is the
29:36 · the shape and size of this particular feature now the probability is that these raised
29:43 · ridges isolate living areas within this house we can see as we come down the
29:49 · inside of the structure ridges here
29:54 · here and two more till we get to the the end
30:00 · the Smithsonian crew found the remains of 26 multi-roomed structures some
30:07 · measuring 90 meters in length the radiocarbon dates indicate that over
30:12 · 4 000 years ago large groups of people were living in well-organized communities here at the edge of the
30:18 · Arctic along the front of the ancient Beach
30:23 · Terrace the Smithsonian crew also began to excavate a foundation that was near a
30:29 · mysterious upright Stone
30:36 · this is a typical deposit containing firecrack Rock
30:41 · chips of amateur fragments of tool making activity pieces
30:47 · of broken tools that have been burned in the fire charcoal Flex red ocher
30:54 · this whole arrangement of artifacts is a little interesting because of this big Stone here which may have been a
31:01 · structural feature of the house or a seat or have served some other purpose but it is interesting that the material
31:08 · is is distributed in a cluster around this this large Rock
31:15 · [Music] like the small standing Stone Dr fitzhu found on the beach at nuliac there are
31:22 · other Stone monuments in Labrador that also remain an archaeological mystery
31:28 · bound primarily along the coast these Stone Pinnacles may have had both a spiritual and a practical purpose
31:39 · some are single slabs propped into vertical position and others are Cairns built up with
31:45 · smaller boulders [Music] the Eskimo refer to these monuments as
31:52 · anukshuks their Traditions say that the stone markers point the way to settlements
31:58 · boat Pilots can navigate along the coast by using a simple technique of alignments and angles to identify their
32:04 · positions offshore these basic principles of geometry may
32:10 · have been developed thousands of years ago by the first cultures adapting to the Sea
32:16 · the technique is still useful today especially in the far north where Modern navigational instruments are not always
32:22 · trustworthy [Music]
32:30 · here we have a grinding slab of some sort probably for polishing ground slate
32:36 · axes and gouges implements such as stemmed projectile
32:41 · points and knives they had a whole variety of stem points from large to small perhaps some for
32:48 · hunting birds others for sea mammals and in addition a very distinctive artifact
32:55 · uh soapstone plummets which are found in large numbers in southern Labrador
33:01 · Maritime archaic sites and seem to be restricted to the 4 000 year old time period
33:07 · plummets have often been found in red paint burials and they were probably used as fishing weights but the smallest
33:14 · examples are often beautifully crafted sometimes decorated and may have been used for other purposes
33:21 · this engraved pendant from nuliac is a rare discovery a complex geometric design along with
33:28 · other markings indicate a high level of intellectual development among the maritime archaic over 4 000 years ago
33:36 · [Music]
33:45 · has encouraged fresh comparisons with the ancient sea peoples of Northern Europe
33:54 · the shores of Scandinavia have supported Maritime cultures for thousands of years this fact has been recognized by
34:01 · European archaeologists for decades in Norway Professor Paul siemensen of
34:06 · the Tromso museum has studied the remains of cultures that once lived above the Arctic Circle
34:12 · at the very beginning of human habitation after the Ice Age up here
34:17 · people came along the coast simply because the whole of the Inland still
34:22 · were coward by the ash sheets it's impossible to imagine people
34:29 · walking up along the Norwegian Coast because of the fjords and because of the
34:34 · ice so it's absolutely necessary that they had a boat and were in some way adapted
34:44 · to the Sea like the house Foundations at newly act the remains of these Stone Age dwellings
34:51 · at barangar Fjord were also raised above the present Shoreline by geological forces
34:57 · the site was discovered in the 1930s and Professor siemensen began his excavation
35:03 · of the structures in the early 1950s on some Dwelling Places you have fish
35:10 · bones of deep sea fishes and on the same places you have very large and heavy
35:15 · sinking Stones meaning that they could fish up to perhaps 100 120 meters deep
35:23 · in North America use of the plummet vanished with the mound builders but in
35:28 · Europe it evolved as a Mariner's tool this 16th century print shows how the
35:33 · weight attached to a line was used to determine the water's depth eventually the plummet became a basic
35:40 · element of navigational and astronomical instruments along with the sea hunting equipment
35:45 · Professor siemensen's crew also recovered beautiful tools made out of polished slate
35:51 · during the excavations of the 30s Norwegian Anthropologist gutorm yessing was the first to recognize that the
35:58 · tools were very similar to examples from North America he wrote nowhere on the globe are there
36:04 · to be found remains as closely related as those of Norway and the coast of Maine
36:11 · during World War II yessing retreated to his office to work on a theory suggesting that these cultural
36:18 · developments spread in the far north by diffusion foreign
36:24 · tools led yessing to believe that there had once been a single circumpolar culture that originated in central
36:30 · Russia and diffused across the land masses to the coasts of Europe and the Eastern shores of North America
36:37 · because you must remember that he was a devoted divisionists
36:45 · a man who sought that one thing can only be invented one time and from there this
36:53 · place spread out over
37:00 · if people living one in New England and the other in Norway made two things
37:06 · quite alike we are inclined to say they had had invented them independent
37:14 · but if people are living very near each hour and then are making things quite alike we say that one must have learned
37:21 · it from the other but we don't know for sure
37:27 · more important than tools yessing identified what he believed to be deeper connections between the spiritual
37:33 · beliefs in both hemispheres for example this engraved bone from
37:38 · Norway has a geometric design created by mapping out an alignment of dots and then connecting them to form a straight
37:45 · line this same technique of aligned dots was also used to engrave the decorations on
37:51 · the bone daggers found at the Nevin site on the coast of Maine
37:57 · these traits which are very very alike are not only traits for practical
38:04 · purpose but they are ornamentation they are patterns they are spiritual things
38:15 · along with the artwork yessing carefully studied the spiritual traditions of Northern cultures
38:21 · this archival footage of a Lapis Shaman was filmed in the Norwegian Arctic it shows a ritual involving a standing
38:29 · Stone which may be thousands of years old [Music]
38:41 · yesing understood that similar tool shapes might be coincidence but he believed the deep-rooted
38:47 · shamanistic Traditions so similar around the globe could only have been the result of diffusion
38:54 · [Music] at first yessing's theory of land
39:01 · diffusion was widely hailed by his colleagues it seemed to finally explain the
39:06 · extraordinary similarities which existed among the circumpolar cultures but appealing as the theory was there
39:13 · was no proof to back it up during the 1950s archaeologists working
39:20 · in central Russia and western Canada could not find any evidence that a circumpolar culture had diffused across
39:25 · the central land masses eventually his theory was put on the top
39:30 · shelf to collect dust but yessing never gave up his idea of land diffusion according to Professor siemensen yessing
39:38 · never considered the possibility that ancient peoples could have been skilled Mariners
39:43 · I have never seen the word Malaysian adaptation in his papers I don't think
39:49 · that just this perspective was a part of his acting Concepts
39:57 · to me that still is a lot of sense in his
40:03 · theories I'll not speak about the circumpolar Stone Age I'll not speak about a
40:08 · circumpola culture at all but a sir compola connections and Communications
40:16 · from People to People surely exist and some cultural traits
40:23 · will be transmitted over very very long East-West distances in the Arctic
40:30 · [Music] like the trade patterns along the coast
40:35 · of North America there were extensive networks which linked the people of Norway with others see adapted cultures
40:41 · to the South artifacts have been found in Norway that were manufactured here on the coast of
40:47 · Denmark in 1975 at a site called vedberg
40:53 · archaeologists from the Danish national museum discovered the remains of a sea adapted culture that was once part of
40:59 · this Trade Network thousands of years ago there was a channel where these yellow flowers now
41:06 · bloom on the Hills that surrounded the water they discovered 19 burials
41:14 · neocarbon dates indicated that the graves were over 7 000 years old
41:20 · three thousand years older than the maritime archaic sites found in North America
41:28 · some of the burials may have been ritual sacrifices this woman wore a large necklace of
41:33 · teeth to her grave a small child perhaps her own was placed at her side
41:39 · [Music] when the woman and child were first discovered they were covered with red
41:45 · ocher a round polished Stone lay near the woman's fractured skull
41:51 · and a knife blade rested at the midsection of the infant in all these areas we find the Red Oak
42:00 · that of course has been opened a lot of speculation what what the meaning of the
42:05 · Red Oak how that would be understood
42:10 · the use of red ocher goes back at least 75 000 years into early Neanderthal times but the existence of red ocher
42:17 · cemeteries is especially prominent among sea going peoples like the maritime archaic burials in
42:24 · North America the red ocher cemeteries of Europe are found along the shore in 1927 here on the island of tebiak
42:31 · just off the coast of Brittany French archaeologists Martin Sanchez pequart
42:36 · discovered red paint burials near the bottom of a shell Heap like veg the teviac cemetery proved to
42:43 · be over 7 000 years old and the burial rituals were similar but what was unusual about teviac was
42:51 · that several of the burials had been placed in small stone structures beneath the shell Mounds
42:57 · the piccarts believed that these might have been early examples of the mysterious Stone megaliths left
43:02 · throughout northern Europe and the British Isles by an unknown ancient people
43:08 · the megalith Builders of Europe like the mound builders of America were often considered a lost Race by 19th century
43:15 · antiquarians the picwords suggested that the red paint people of teviac were the
43:20 · ancestors of the megalith builders at the time their idea was considered too radical most anthropologists believe
43:26 · that the chambered mounds and alignments of Standing Stones had been built by Neolithic farming peoples of a much more
43:32 · recent time period but further north along the rocky coasts of Western Sweden conditions made it
43:39 · necessary for the ancient inhabitants to live primarily by fishing not farming
43:47 · Cambridge University archaeologist Graham Clark has studied these ancient Maritime peoples his research also
43:53 · suggests that the early megalith Builders were a sea-going culture and it's interesting that among quite a
44:01 · number of maritime sedentary dwellers
44:06 · we find the appearance of quite elaborate tombs
44:12 · something which until recently we'd always thought of as being a special
44:17 · feature of Neolithic man IL thick and later societies
44:23 · for example we have a stone cans in the maritime archaic context
44:30 · oh Labrador dating from several thousand years before Christ
44:36 · [Applause] one of the first things that attracted
44:42 · me to this site was the boulder constructions in a roughly circular arrangement
44:48 · this uh was suspected as a burial and we've now opened up the center of the
44:54 · burial feature revealing a pit about two meters in diameter filled with dark humus stained
45:02 · Earth flakes of ramen shirt bits of mica and other signs of cultural activity
45:08 · it's ocher stain a little bit of ocher stain down here you can be beginning to get down onto the bottom
45:14 · so I suspect maybe we get down below this layer of slabs we might we might come down on top of the the feature have
45:21 · there been any uh flakes or charcoals or anything like that there's flakes mixed
45:27 · in the burial fill but no charcoal yet so how much deeper
45:33 · good luck boy and over here east side of the mound there is a
45:41 · [Applause] Crypt of some sort uh chamber built out of stones
45:47 · in a rather unusual way for maritime archaic culture we've never seen anything like this before it is very
45:54 · unusual in this lintel Stone on top of these carefully chosen Flat Rocks
46:00 · and of course it's um an interesting fact that if you plot the distribution of
46:07 · magnificent terms on a map you will find a large proportion of them on or very
46:12 · close to the coast this in the past was interpreted in
46:18 · terms of diffusion which is equally possible that such magnetic structures were built by people
46:26 · whose economy was based fundamentally on fishing not on farming
46:35 · just as antiquarians once believed that the stone ruins in America came from the old world
46:40 · anthropologists also once believed that the megalithic tradition in Europe spread by diffusion from the Middle East
46:48 · for antiquarians and scientists alike the stone ruins along the Atlantic coast have remained a provocative problem in
46:54 · human prehistory but Professor Clark's work suggests that a new understanding of these early Maritime cultures may
47:02 · offer answers in the future over seven thousand years ago these
47:07 · early sea-going people may have been the first highly evolved civilization to inhabit the European Coast
47:14 · across the Atlantic where the awareness of an ancient Maritime culture along the northeast coast is a brand new idea
47:21 · the phenomenon of the red paint people may also help to explain the antiquarian mysteries of the new world
47:29 · as researchers discover more about the maritime archaic they are beginning to realize that these early sea peoples may
47:35 · have left a legacy with far-ranging effects on the development of Indian cultures in the Northeast
47:42 · scientists are unsure of where the maritime archaic tradition began but the
47:47 · earliest evidence has been found here on the coast of Labrador when the French fishermen settled here
47:54 · in the 17th century they named this Bay lancamort the Bay of death
47:59 · the name gradually changed to Lance Amour the Bay of love
48:05 · ironically the primary attraction of Lancer more today is this burial mound
48:11 · excavated by Dr James tuck and Professor Robert McGee the site proved to be one of the most important Maritime archaic
48:17 · discoveries in North America when we first came we saw only a corner of it that had been exposed by this road
48:24 · construction and subsequent erosion we excavated the mound in quadrants and
48:30 · in near the center there was a rectangular Stone cyst made of upright Stones we were a little disappointed
48:37 · because there was no skeleton or any artifacts in there a little bit of red ocher but
48:43 · when we dug below the cyst just to make sure there was nothing there we were really surprised to find the skeleton of
48:49 · a child about 12 or 13 years old buried face down head to the West we don't know
48:55 · it was a male or female because it was too young to be able to tell it's an unusual burial especially for so
49:02 · much time and effort and expense to have been lavished on a young child
49:08 · it might be that these are not quite so much or not entirely for the disposal of the
49:14 · dead but represent as well renewal rights for the community holding the
49:20 · the community together a large flat Rock lay across the burial
49:25 · and ritual fires had been set due north and south the charcoal samples were radiocarbon
49:31 · dated to about 7 500 years ago making this the earliest known Maritime archaic
49:38 · burial site in North America the almost identical dates in both Europe and America were a surprise to
49:45 · scientists previous theories about cultural development from the antiquarians to yessing were based on
49:52 · the assumption that diffusion had to originate among the more advanced races of Europe
49:58 · but this new evidence suggests that cultural development may have been parallel on both sides of the Atlantic
50:04 · over seven thousand years ago the evidence also compels diffusionists to
50:09 · ask whether these ancient ceremonial Traditions were once carried from North
50:15 · America to the shores of Europe along the prevailing Northern route of the Gulf Stream
50:21 · the Lancer more burial is also an important clue to the mystery of the mound builders in North America
50:27 · it predates the Mounds of the Midwest by more than five thousand years I suppose you could consider this the
50:34 · start of a mound tradition in the new world this burial and the ones at brador
50:39 · and elsewhere are more than seven thousand years old I think therefore that the they're the
50:45 · oldest burial mounds certainly in this part of the world maybe in most of North America
50:51 · the artifacts themselves included toggling Harpoon of a design we've never
50:57 · seen before since and since it's 7 500 years old it's if not the oldest one of
51:03 · the oldest toggling harpoons that's ever been found so these guys were pretty sophisticated sea mantle Hunters
51:11 · from the time of Lance Amore the red paint people flourished for about four thousand more years
51:17 · then without explanation the traces of their culture vanish from the archaeological record
51:23 · most of the artifacts we have seen were never intended for our eyes but of all their Remains the most intriguing are
51:29 · those which they wanted us to see the ritual monuments they left in the Landscapes of the Northeast
51:36 · Dr Fitzhugh believes that these ancient people the first to live on these subarctic coasts have left us a glimpse
51:43 · of an early ritual tradition as it appeared in the New World one of the interesting features of the
51:50 · maritime archaic in Labrador at least is the association between ceremonial sites
51:56 · burial sites and eminence imminent prominent locations and it seemed as though people were selecting these
52:03 · locations for qualities of the land high hills sweeping Vistas magnificent
52:10 · scenery as well as conditions that were suitable for Excavating burials Sandy Terraces and things like that
52:17 · the early Maritime archaic Mounds seemed to be individual structures with single burials in them on these prominent
52:24 · locations they're always at the front of The Terraces very near the sea very near the
52:29 · most sweeping Panorama that you can get the ballet Brack situation is probably
52:36 · the most dramatic I've seen but we have located a maybe 10 or 12 Maritime
52:41 · archaic burial areas and all of them have these characteristics they're not putting the ceremonial sites back in
52:48 · under the hills hiding them away it's as though the individual is buried you know wanted to be placed in such a position
52:55 · so that he could see out across the sea and I think the people were interested
53:00 · in this kind of a concept of beauty and Landscape mixed with mountains and
53:06 · waterfalls and everything else there's a lot of that in Labrador but the sites
53:11 · that they choose to live in are really rather special that way you don't find that with other cultures either with the
53:17 · Eskimo cultures or the other Indian cultures
53:23 · the discovery of the maritime archaic represents one of the rare instances when antiquarian mystery and scientific
53:30 · exploration have merged together they have revealed an unknown chapter in the ancient history of North
53:37 · America [Music]
54:01 · foreign
54:10 · [Music]
54:37 · [Applause]
54:51 · thank you
55:12 · thank you