Posted on 12/02/2004 11:26:39 AM PST by blam
Contact: José Iriarte
iriartej@si.edu
202-786-2094 x8350
Smithsonian Institution
A complex agricultural society in Uruguay's La Plata basin, 4,800-4,200 years ago
A complex farming society developed in Uruguay around 4,800 to 4,200 years ago, much earlier that previously thought, Iriarte and his colleagues report in this week's Nature (December 2). Researchers had assumed that the large rivers system called the La Plata Basin was inhabited by simple groups of hunters and gatherers for much of the pre-Hispanic era.
Iriarte and coauthors excavated an extensive mound complex, called Los Ajos, in the wetlands of southeastern Uruguay. They found evidence of a circular community of households arranged around a central public plaza. Paleobotanical analyses of preserved starch grains and phytoliths –tiny plant fossils- show that Los Ajos' farmers adopted the earliest cultivars known in southern South America, including maize, squash, beans and tubers.
Over time, around 3,000 years ago, the mound complex architectural plan of Los Ajos exhibited sophisticated levels of engineering, planning, and cooperation revealing an earlier, new, and independent architectural tradition previously unknown from this region of southern South America. The formal and compact layout of the central part of the site (Inner Precinct) consists of seven imposing platform mounds surrounding a central plaza area.
Iriarte extracted a sediment core from nearby wetlands to reconstruct what the environment was like when this farming society arose. Combined analyses of preserved pollen and phytoliths indicated that, as in other regions of the world, the mid-Holocene was characterized by significant climatic and ecological changes associated with important cultural transformations. During this period, around 4,500 years ago, the climate was much drier than it is today and "Wetlands became biotic magnets for human habitation providing an abundant, reliable, and a resource-rich supply of foods and water. Furthermore, wetland margins offered an ideal place for the experimentation, adoption, and intensification of agriculture encouraging the Los Ajos' community to engage into horticulture", explains Iriarte, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.
At Los Ajos, cultural artifacts are spread out over 12 ha. suggesting the presence of a large resident population. Moreover, as Iriarte indicates "Los Ajos is far from a lonely isolated community in southeastern Uruguay. In the ten square kilometers surrounding Los Ajos alone there are ten other large and spatially complex mound sites. These were thriving societies that probably were integrated into regional networks of towns and villages". Iriarte believes that "this region was a locus of early population concentration in lowland South America."
### Reference: Iriarte, J., Holst, I, Marozzi, O., Listopad, C., Alonso, E., Rinderknecht, A., and Montana, J. 2004. Evidence for cultivar adoption and emerging complexity during the mid-Holocene in the La Plata basin. Nature, 2 December.
GGG Ping.
All of these groups from 3,000 years ago had major advancements...and this knowledge was lost during large-scale warfare...in the Americas, in Africa, in the Middle-East, in China, etc.
bttt
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Antediluvian.
IMO, natural catastrophies.
These old cities of 30-40 acres would barely be a park and city hall in a modern city. Amazing they could even have an economy, trade with neighboring cities being nearly nonexistent.
Maybe it's just me, but articles like this one without a map (location) and photos, is only a mild curiosity.
Apparently.
Apparently.
If they were so ADVANCED, how come they didn't find any tractors or combines?
Couldn't protectionism saved these people?
Going to check out some of the links posted.
Interesting. It seems like thousands of years ago, there were lots of advances and they are lost.
They needed CAFTA!!!
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