Posted on 09/19/2005 6:25:49 PM PDT by SandRat
CARR CANYON - Public opinion polls show illegal immigration as the chief concern for most Arizonans, but the history of the land now known as Arizona is the history of migration, according to Dr. John Ware, executive director of the Amerind Foundation.
"We're a culture of migrants here," Ware told an audience of about 20 people Sunday afternoon at the Carr House Information Center.
Not only are we all migrants, we're all of African stock, Ware added.
What he described as "genetic markers" prove that modern humans evolved in Africa about 100,000 years ago and gradually spread around the planet, adapting in various ways to the new environments.
"We are all Africans," Ware declared.
Climatic changes in the Southern Hemisphere brought about by increasing glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere that altered ocean currents and nearly wiped out the early humans. They survived by moving - initially to what is now Australia. A second wave, about 40,000 years ago, went to Central Asia, in the region now known as Uzbekistan. From there, further waves of migration flowed out into Europe, Asia and the Western Hemisphere.
Lowered sea levels allowed ancient hunter-gatherers to cross what's now the Bering Strait from Asia to this continent some 14,000 to 16,000 years ago. Although the term "land bridge" is often used to describe that passage, Ware said the migration corridor was actually 1,500 to 1,700 kilometers wide.
"Alaska and Siberia were one," Ware said.
Eventually, the tough hunter-gatherers who survived passage between retreating glaciers in what's now Northwest Canada made their way as far south as what's now Tierra Fuego, at the southern tip of South America, reaching there about 500 years ago.
Some of the wanderers decided the San Pedro Valley was far enough to walk and settled in this region, which was full of large wildlife and water about 13,000 years ago.
Archeological digs at Murray Springs, northeast of Sierra Vista, the former Lehner Ranch in Hereford and in Greenbush Creek near Naco have produced the bones of ancient elephants and giant sloths, as well as butchering implements and fire rings, Ware noted.
Ware described them as the best Clovis sites on the continent.
The climate was much different then and much like the summit of Carr Peak today, with spruce, fir and pine trees, and lush grasslands. Giant condors, with wing spans of 25 to 35 feet, circled overhead and preyed on downed elephants.
Aggressive newcomers
The first recognized culture in this region is called the Clovis, named after the characteristic fluted-stone spear points found at Clovis, N.M. These Paleo-Indians found the climate to be salubrious and food was abundant. They maintained residence in the region until hit by a retreating wave of migration from the highlands of Mexico.
Women began farming in that region of Mexico about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. The population began to explode when the migrants settled down in farming villages to raise maize, beans and squash. Squeezed by other farming communities in other directions, migrants headed north about 3,000 years ago and eventually bumped into the Sobaipuri Indians inhabiting the San Pedro Valley.
The newcomers overwhelmed the indigenous Piman peoples, either "absorbing or annihilating them," Ware said.
About 1,000 years later, distinctive regional cultures were established throughout the San Pedro environs, which remained stable for about 1,500 years.
Environmental changes in the Southwest around the years 1200 to 1500 brought many changes to the entire Southwest region, leading to the abandonment of many villages because of drought.
Strangely, there is evidence of Hopi culture in the Cascobel region north of Benson dating to the 1300s. The Hopi now inhabit Northern Arizona.
By the time Coronado passed through the San Pedro Valley, around 1540, the area was largely unoccupied, Ware said. The native people had moved westward into the Santa Cruz Valley.
Into this void moved the Apaches, an Athabaskan people who had migrated southward from the Pacific Northwest and Canada, arriving in the Four Corners area sometime during the 1300s to 1500s. The nomadic Apaches continued moving southward, driving out other tribes, and eventually reaching the San Pedro region. The aggressive newcomers became dominant during the 1700s and 1800s.
"The Apaches had come to stay," Ware observed.
A Spanish attempt to secure the northern frontier of their empire in 1775 at the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terranate, east of what's now Sierra Vista, lasted only five years because of persistent Apache attacks.
It took the U.S. Cavalry, the railroads, miners and ranchers to wrest away control of the region during the late 1880s. The feisty Chiricahua Apache insurgents were shipped off to reservations in Florida and Oklahoma and never returned to their homeland, Ware said.
Today, migrants continue to flood into this region, some drawn by sunny weather and a dearth of snow while others sneak across the international border in search of jobs or drug profits in the U.S.
"Today, we have the legal migrants from Minnesota," Ware said.
If there were only 20 migrants, I'd be thrilled to death.
Another thing that predated history was the stronger males having their way with any female they wanted, willing or not.
There are many things that 'predate history'. It doesn't make them any more acceptable just because they do.
Looks like balls to the wall rationalization.
I think I'll sit this one out unless someone comes up with an interesting approach.
Stereotypical Liberal Anthropologist trying to rationalize in a "Non-Political and PC" way for open borders - I think?
Yep, you're right. I don't want to get into creationism vs. evolution here, so assuming these ancient migratory patterns are true; back then survival of the human race and development of culture depended on migration. Today, not at all. Allowing unrestricted immigration will be the death knell of America.
I would guard the border well, deny the illegals access to the US, and return all illegal wanna=be migrants with their very own AK-47 with which to overturn the corrupt Mexican government.
After a few years of that, perhaps the Mexican Government would change enough that their people would want to stay?
Perhaps we could even arrange for them to have some range time before they are returned.
Even the Self-Sanctimonius Europeans are waking up albeit slowly to that realization.
What a stupid guy. Of course we are all related. We are all migrants of one type or another. Objections to the Mexican tsunami migration to the U.S. has nothing to do with the fact that they are Mexican. It has to do with the fact that no culture can absorbe that many people that fast whether they are Mexican or Candadians.
This guy does not deserve a platform. Send him back to school to lear the whole picture rather that a PC bunch of illogical "facts"
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