Category Archives: NORTH AMERICA

BELIZE, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Jadeite tool discovered in ancient underwater salt works

Jadeite tool discovered in ancient underwater salt works

In the enigmatic culture of the Maya people, Jade took up a special place, crafted into elaborate trinkets rich with ancient meaning and lore.

But this precious stone was not meant for decorative or ornamental finery. Jade – in the form of its mineral variety, jadeite – also seems to have had its uses in the toil of manual labour, even among the grinding backdrop of long-ago salt works.

Such an unbelievably well-preserved jadeite gouge tool and its handle were discovered by scientists from the Louisiana State University on the grounds of what was once an ancient Mayan salt work in Belize.

Jadeite tool.

This rare find – preserved among the underwater remains of a salt works called Ek Way Nal – represents the first time such a jadeite object has been discovered with its associated handle (in this case made from Honduras rosewood).

But the fact it was found at a salt works at all is both unexpected and noteworthy, the researchers say.

“High-quality translucent jadeite is normally associated with ritual or ceremonial contexts in the Maya area,” the researchers, led by archaeologist and anthropologist Heather McKillop, explain in a new paper.

“The Ek Way Nal tool is made of exceptionally high-quality jadeite, which is surprising given its utilitarian context.”

Ek Way Nal is one of 110 sites comprising the Paynes Creek Salt Works: the submerged remnants of an ancient salt industry in southern Belize, where salt was produced by evaporating brine in boiling pots over fires.

Dozens of thatched wooden kitchens made up the salt works, built during the Classic Maya period (300–900 CE), but later abandoned when sea level rise flooded the coastal lagoon region.

Producing salt wouldn’t have been easy work, which is why it seems strange that such a high-quality jadeite object was found here, the researchers say.

“During the Classic Period, the use of high-quality translucent jadeite was typically reserved for unique and elaborate jadeite plaques, figurines, and earplugs (earrings) for royalty and other elites,” the team explains.

“Highly crafted jadeite objects were destined for use in dynastic Maya ceremonies, as gifts to other leaders to solidify alliances, or as burial offerings to accompany dynastic and other elites.”

Or, it appears, sometimes rare and valuable jadeite was shaped into chisels, forming the glittering green blade of a salt worker’s tool. While the mineral might seem out of place in this steamy, briny context, McKillop says it shows how the ancient Maya salt trade was going places – until it was washed under the waves.

The tool’s wooden handle.

“The salt workers were successful entrepreneurs who were able to obtain high-quality tools for their craft through the production and distribution of a basic biological necessity: salt,” says McKillop.

“Salt was in demand for the Maya diet. We have discovered that it was also a storable form of wealth and an important preservative for fish and meat.”

While we can’t be sure how the jadeite gouge would have been used, the researchers say it was probably not used on very hard materials, like stone or wood, although an analysis of its worn appearance suggests it was employed as a working tool.

“The use of jadeite as a utilitarian tool in a salt works indicates that even exotic materials, which often require expertise to fashion into tools, were selected for their hardness,” the authors write.

“Although the gouge was probably not employed in working wood or hard materials, it may have been used in other activities at the salt works, such as scraping salt, cutting and scraping fish or meat, or cleaning calabash gourds.”

Not exactly glamorous pursuits then, but it makes for yet another ancient relic that can help us discover the world of the ancient Maya, and learn their story through the objects that once defined them.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Cave Full of Untouched Maya Artifacts Found at Chichén Itzá

Cave Full of Untouched Maya Artifacts Found at Chichén Itzá

In Mexico, archeologists found some 200 Mayan artifacts that seem to have been untouched for 1,000 years. In a cave of ruins in the ancient Mayan City of Chichen Itza on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, objects were discovered.

The discovery has been revealed at a press conference in Mexico City by the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History. The lead researcher on the project is Mexican archaeologist Guillermo de Anda. He called the cave a “scientific treasure.”

He said the artifacts appear to date back to around A.D. 1000. “What we found there was incredible and completely untouched,” he added.

Pre-columbian artifacts sit in a cave at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico

The findings included bone pieces and burnt offering materials. In addition, incense burners, vases, plates, and other objects were discovered. Some items included the likeness of Tlaloc, the rain god of central Mexico.

The Mayans also had their own rain god, called Chaac. But experts believe the Mayans may have imported Tlaloc from other pre-Hispanic cultures.

The cave where the objects were found is part of a cave system known as Balamku or “Jaguar God.” The cave is about three kilometers east of the main pyramid of Kukulkan, which sits at the center of Chichen Itza.

The stone city is described by the United Nations as “one of the greatest Mayan centers of the Yucatán Peninsula.”

The cave sits about 24 meters underground, with areas connected by passages. De Anda said some of the passages were so narrow that researchers had to crawl in or pull themselves through.

Pre-columbian artifacts sit in a cave at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico

He added that his team had so far explored about 460 meters of the cave, and is unsure how far it stretches. The team plans to continue exploring the cave. Artifacts found will not be removed, but studied inside, he said.

The team accidentally found the artifacts while exploring Chichen Itza in an effort to learn more about its underground water system.

A series of sinkhole lakes, known as cenotes, can be seen on parts of the surface. But the archaeologists are exploring other water sites below pyramids, temples, and other buildings.

Water was always central to the city. Its name in Maya means “at the mouth of the well of the Water Wizards.”

The cave had been discovered by local people 50 years ago, but was not fully explored, de Anda said. He hopes the new discovery will help scientists better understand the history, lives, and beliefs of people who lived in Chichen Itza.

He said archaeologists believe there may be another undiscovered cave hidden under the pyramid of Kukulkan that could be connected to the latest find.

“Let’s hope this leads us there,” de Anda said. “That is part of the reason why we are entering these sites, to find a connection to the cenote under the (Kukulkan).”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Ancient Maya kingdom with pyramid discovered in southern Mexico

Ancient Maya kingdom with pyramid discovered in southern Mexico

Since exploring for over a quarter of a century, archeologists have at last discovered the site of Sak Tz’i, a Maya kingdom that’s referenced in sculptures and inscriptions from across the ancient Maya world. But it wasn’t archaeologists who made the find.

A local man discovered a 2- by 4-foot (0.6 by 1.2 meters) tablet near Lacanja Tzeltal, a community in Chiapas, Mexico.

The tablet’s inscriptions are a treasure trove of mythology, poetry, and history that reflect the typical Maya practice of weaving together myth and reality.

A drawing (left) and a digital 3D model (right) of a stone slab found at the newly discovered kingdom.

Various sections of the tablet contain inscriptions that recount a mythical water serpent, various unnamed gods, a mythic flood, and accounts of the births, lives, and battles of ancient rulers, according to a news statement from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. 

Sak Tz’i’ sat on what’s now the border between Mexico and Guatemala, and it probably wasn’t an especially powerful kingdom, Charles Golden, an associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, said in the statement. 

Despite being surrounded by stronger neighbors, evidence suggests that the kingdom’s capital city was occupied for more than a millennium after being settled in 750 B.C.

The kingdom’s longevity may be due to the fortifications that surrounded its capital city. The researchers found evidence that the city was protected by a stream with a steep ravine on one side and defensive masonry walls on the other. 

The team members added that the kingdom may have benefitted from forming strategic peace deals with its more powerful neighbors.

Even though this kingdom never achieved great power, “Sak Tz’i’ was a formidable enemy and an important ally to those greater kingdoms, as evidenced by the frequency by which it appears in texts at those sites,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

That said, the kingdom experienced conflict, both with its neighbors and from nature, the archaeological record suggests. For instance, there’s a figure of a dancing ruler carved into the bottom of the tablet.

This ruler is dressed like the god Yopaat, who is associated with violent tropical storms. The figure holds a lightning-bolt ax in his right hand and a stone weapon used in ritual combat in his left hand. 

What’s more, the researchers found another sculpture at the site that appears to tell of a fire that destroyed part of the city during a violent conflict with one of its neighbors.

University of Pennsylvania student Whittaker Schroder (left) and Brown University bioarchaeologist Andrew Scherer (right) excavate the remains of the Maya ball court.

Since excavation began in the summer, the researchers have identified several structures that offer insight into political, religious, and commercial life in the kingdom. These include the remains of pyramids, a royal palace, and a ball court. 

One of the capital’s most striking features, the ruins of a pyramid that once stood 45 feet (14 m) tall, is surrounded by structures that might have served as houses for elites and religious rituals, the researchers said.

The pyramid also has a number of stelae (carved stone slabs) around it, including one showing the soles of nobles’ feet facing outward toward the viewer, “an unusual depiction otherwise featured only on a few Maya vases,” the researchers wrote in the study.

In addition, the researchers uncovered a 1.5-acre (0.6 hectares) courtyard called the Plaza Muk’ ul Ton, or Monuments Plaza, where people gathered for religious and political ceremonies.  The discovery marks a major step forward in the study of the ancient Maya world.

The researchers hope further analysis of the site’s architecture and detailed inscriptions will offer new insight into the politics, economy, rituals, and warfare of the Maya civilization’s western regions.  Going forward, the archaeologists plan to use lidar — or light detection and ranging — a tool that uses lasers and can be mounted on an airplane or drone to discover architecture and topography hidden under the dense jungle canopy.

The team is especially interested in how kingdoms such as Sak Tz’i’ managed to survive for so long, despite apparently never becoming as powerful as rival kingdoms in the region.  

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

An ancient crystal skull was found many years ago in an archeological site in Southern Mexico

An ancient crystal skull was found many years ago in an archeological site in Southern Mexico.

A crystal skull was discovered in an archeological site called Monte Alban in Southern Mexico a number of years ago called Pancho. The location where he was found was once populated by the Zapotec people.

In the Valley of Oaxaca in the south of Mesoamerica, Zapoteca was an indigenous Pre-Columbian civilization. Evidence shows that their civilization goes back at least 2500 years.

The Zapotecas were the second oldest civilization in Mesoamerica. Only the Olmecs were older. Even the Mayas flourished later in what is known as the Classic Period.

The Zapotecas left evidence at the ancient city of Monte Alban in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Alban was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of what we know today as the current state of Oaxaca. 

Pancho was carved from one piece of clear quartz crystal. Quartz crystal can be found all over the world and the crystal that was used to create Pancho is probably millions of years old.

An ancient crystal skull was found many years ago in an archeological site in Southern Mexico.

He stands about 6.5″ tall and weighs about 15 pounds. Pancho is hollow. Most of the other ancient crystal skulls have human characteristics. Pancho does not.

The most interesting distinction is the fact that Pancho has two rows of teeth with 9 teeth in each row. His head is horizontally flat in the back and he has an elongated looking jaw. Some of the dirt that was on him and inside of him when he was found in the ground still clings on to Pancho.

Who carved Pancho and how was he carved? The answer to these questions remains a mystery. Modern scientists claim that the Pre-Hispanic peoples of Mesoamerica did not have the tools or the technology to carve Pancho and the other crystal skulls so smoothly.

Without modern tools, it would have taken more than 300 years hand polishing the crystal day in and day out without rest to create such a smooth specimen. Could perhaps a more advanced civilization have brought Pancho to Monte Alban? Or did a more advanced culture bring the peoples of this area the tools to create Pancho and the other crystal skulls?

It is widely accepted in the metaphysical and spiritual community that the land of the Maya was a safe place for the survivors of Atlantis after the destruction of that continent.

The Atlanteans had learned to harness crystal energy and used it as part of their culture. Did the Atlanteans or even the Lemurians bring this technology or even the crystal skulls themselves to Mexico and Central America?

Some crystal skull researchers and experts even believe that Pancho and some of the other ancient crystal skulls could have come from outer space or from another dimension. This might explain Pancho’s strange appearance. 

It is very possible that these extraterrestrials placed the crystal skulls strategically in earth grids or landlines to activate the planet. These crystalline grids could perhaps navigate future visits by these aliens to our planet much like crop circles do today.

Assuming that our ancestors carved and created Pancho and the other ancient crystal skulls the question still remains: what was their purpose? Did our ancestors download information into the crystal that perhaps someday would be retrieved by future generations? Our ancestors were wise and knowledgeable.

They built the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, Macchu Picchu, and the statues on Easter Island. The Maya were able to calculate solar calendars, lunar calendars and even a calendar for the planet Venus. The Egyptians and the Sumerians were advanced in mathematics and understood the codes of the universe. The ancients also figured out that crystal could hold and store information. Much like our modern computers that utilize microchips to store information the ancients utilized the same technology.

They created their computers in the shape of a skull because they knew that the skull was a vessel for thought, knowledge, wisdom, and life. But how could the information be uploaded and downloaded? Twenty years ago the thought of connecting to the worldwide web wireless was impossible. Today, the idea that we can turn on and turn off our computers with our minds is not that far fetched.

Perhaps in a couple of years, we might even be able to connect to the Internet psychically, too. Did the ancients know this? Were they able to connect to the information in the crystal skulls through thought? This is the explanation for why Pancho and the rest of the ancient skulls were created.

It is very possible that Pancho and the other skulls are a web of knowledge and information much like our present Internet. Our ancestors knew that one day a future generation would be in desperate need of their ancient wisdom. Ancient Wisdom for a New Generation. 

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A Lowa teenager searching for Arrowheads finds a 30,000-year-old mastodon jawbone instead

A Lowa teenager searching for Arrowheads finds a 30,000-year-old mastodon jawbone instead

When hunting for arrowheads on an Iowa farm a teenager got a huge surprise. Instead of any arrowheads, the teen found a 30-inch jaw bone of a mastodon — a prehistoric hairy elephant, related to the mammoth. 

According to WHO-TV, a paleontology unit at the University of Iowa (UI) retrieved the jaw bone and other associated bones over the weekend.

“A few weeks ago we were informed that someone had discovered a fossil on the property in the middle of a small field,” Tiffany Adrain, head of the UI Paleontology Repository told the media.

A University of Iowa paleontology team was on a farm in southern Iowa to pick up the bone of a prehistoric mastodon.​

Facts About Mastodons

Appearance

Unlike modern elephants, mastodons had much smaller ears and foreheads and were covered in a thick layer of brown hair. Hairs on their coats could grow up to 35 inches (90 centimeters) and the males’ tusks grew to about 8 feet (2.5 meters). Females did not have tusks.

From foot to shoulder, mastodons were between 8 and 10 feet (2.5 and 3 m) tall. They weighed between 4 and 6 tons (3,500 and 5,400 kilograms), according to the Illinois State Museum.

That isn’t much different from their modern counterparts. Modern elephants weigh 3 to 7 tons (2,722 to 6,350 kg) and range from 5 to 14 feet (1.5 to 4.3 m) tall, according to The Defenders of Wildlife. 

Habitat

Though mastodons appeared primarily in North and Central America, they eventually spread all over the world, in every continent except for Antarctica and Australia. They typically inhabited spruce woodlands around valleys and swamps, according to Cochise College. 

Extinction

Mastodons went extinct around 10,000 years ago. There are many theories as to why. Most of these theories boil down to climate change and/or human hunting, according to Simon Fraser University.

Some scientists think that the Earth warmed up from the Ice Age too quickly for the mastodon to adapt or that humans hunted them to extinction.  

Others, like researchers Bruce Rothschild of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Richard Laub of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York, have a different theory.

They found that 52 percent of the 113 mastodons they studied had signs of tuberculosis. This led the researchers to think that a tuberculosis pandemic contributed to their extinction.

Though death by disease sounds like a cut-and-dry answer, “Extinction is usually not a one-phenomenon event,” Rothschild told Live Science.

It is likely that the disease didn’t kill off the animals directly, but made them weak. Coupled with the coming out of the Ice Age and fighting off humans, the species just couldn’t survive. 

Sculptures by artist Sergio de la Rosa show three elephant relatives, from left to right: the mastodon, the mammoth and the gomphothere.

Fossil discoveries 

The first mastodon fossils were found in 1705, according to the Oregon History Project, when a large tooth and bone fragments were found in the Hudson River Valley in New York.

Not long after, in 1807, Thomas Jefferson personally financed an expedition that was by led William Clark to excavate mastodon and mammoth fossils from the Big Bone Lick site in Kentucky.

There have been many mastodon fossil discoveries in the past few hundred years. Sometimes, they are found in unusual places. For example, on October 16, 1963, Marshal Erb was using a dragline to excavate a pond and found fossils that came to be known as the Perry Mastodon. In another instance in 2016, a sinkhole in Florida’s Aucilla River was declared an “archaeological gold mine” after an ancient human tool and mastodon bones are found inside.

“It was actually a high school student who had found the object, and the landowners contacted us and notified us [and] sent us photographs. Now we could tell right away it was a jaw bone of a mastodon,” she added.

The bone, which was then donated by the farmers to the UI Paleontology Repository, is believed to have belonged to a young mastodon that might have been 7-feet tall, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.

The couple who own the farm and donated the bones asked not to be named so that fossil hunters don’t trespass on their property. About 30 years ago, they had found other bones on their land that belonged to a woolly mammoth, WHOTV reported.

“I think people are finding stuff all the time,” Adrain told the Press-Citizen. “Maybe they are out canoeing or fishing on a bank. Farmers, in particular, on the land can spot things pretty easily.”

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Scientists uncover a 60,000-year-old forest underwater and think its preserved trees may help pioneer new medicines

Scientists uncover a 60,000-year-old forest underwater and think its preserved trees may help pioneer new medicines

Roughly 60,000 years ago, pre-historic human beings started to migrate from Africa and shared hunting places and cave residences with Neanderthal populations in what is today Europe. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a vast cypress tree forest carpeted riverbanks off the coast of Alabama in Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan ripped up the Gulf Coast and revealed the ancient forest, which was found 60 feet below the surface water of Mobile Bay, the ancient underwater forest of withering trees and the shipworms they produce is buried under invasive sediments and sea waters.

The Ancient Secrets of Modern Medicine

A recent Ben Raines documentary film produced by This is Alabama reveals how dive shop owner Chas Broughton first discovered evidence of the ancient forest and invited an environmental journalist and scientists from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) to assess his find.

The results were published on the NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research website, saying this ancient submerged forest has remained undisturbed for thousands of years and that it holds “the secret to the creation of new medicines .”

A report in Nature World News says Dr. Kristine DeLong from the Louisiana State University (LSU); marine scientist Robin Cobb from LSU; and Dr. Grant Harley, a dendrochronologist from the University of Southern Mississippi collected and analyzed tree samples to determine the type of marine environment in which the forest had been entombed, and what the climatological conditions were like when the forest was alive.

300 Ancient Animals Found Entombed in Submerged Forest

A sample of tree sap was recovered from within the bark of one tree, that when cut released resin strong enough to “permeate the air” and the tree’s fibers and growth rings were still visible.

Dr. Harley said the tree’s growth rings were narrower and were more uniform in size than those of modern cypress trees, indicating the environment was much colder than our current climate, and Dr. DeLong radiocarbon-dated the sample at 40,000-45,000 years old.

Collected from an ancient cypress forest submerged in Mobile Bay, this log contains hundreds of marine organisms that either burrow into the wood or live in burrows made by other organisms.

Last December, NOAA-funded an expedition of scientists from the University of Utah and Northeastern University, and marine and environmental sciences professor Brian Helmuth, who determined that the ancient trees were very well preserved under sediment layers that had prevented oxygenation and decomposition.

It was Francis Choi, a senior lab manager at Northeastern University Marine Science Center, who looked at organisms buried within the wood and discovered 300 ancient animals.

This dried specimen of Teredo navalis was extracted from the wood and the calcareous tunnel that originally surrounded it and curled into a circle during preservation. The two valves of the shell are the white structures at the anterior end; they are used to dig the tunnel in the wood.

The Anti-Viral Property of Ancient Shipworms

Sometimes called “termites of the sea,” shipworms are tiny marine bivalve mollusks(saltwater clams) with long, soft, naked bodies, and they are notorious for boring into wood immersed in sea water. As these worms bore their way into organic matter, what comes out the other end is converted into animal tissue.

In this study, one hundred bacterial strains from shipworms, many of which were novel, were dated to being at least 60,000 years old.

The team of scientists DNA-sequenced 12 of the strains, determining that they could be applied in the creation of new antibiotics for treatment against “parasites, pain and anti-cancer drugs, antimicrobial activity, and possibly anti-viral drugs”, according to University of Utah medicinal chemistry research professor Margo Haygood.

Ocean Genome Legacy Center Director Dan Distel removes a shipworm. The bacteria that shipworms create may lead to new life-saving medicines.

This is not the first time scientists have studied shipworms in a medical context, in 2017 a paper by Northeastern University scientists titled “’Unicorn’ shipworm could reveal clues about human medicine, bacterial infections” was published by Science Daily.

Researchers discovered a “dark slithering creature four feet long” dwelling in foul mud in a remote Philippines lagoon and this “giant shipworm”, with pinkish siphons at one end and an eyeless head at the other was said to have added to the scientific understanding of how “bacteria cause infections and, in turn, how we might adapt to tolerate, and even benefit from them.”

Modern Virus Halts Research on Ancient Anti-Virus

According to East Idaho News, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a stop to diving at the ancient forest site in the Gulf of Mexico, but Dr. Choi and his team plan to launch unmanned underwater robots to provide 3D visualizations of the forest and Dr. Haygood and her team plan to study more tree samples next year, which NOAA said might have applications in “textile, paper, food, renewable fuel, animal feed, and fine chemical production.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Archaeological Sites Investigated in Northern Alaska

Archaeological Sites Investigated in Northern Alaska

Archaeologist Jeff Rasic of the National Park Service has investigated archaeological sites at Howard’s Pass, a several miles–wide tundra plateau located in the mountains of northern Alaska’s Brooks Range.

A National Park Service climate-observing station in Howard Pass, a broad crossing of the Brooks Range between Alaska’s North Slope and the Noatak River drainage.

The sites date back some 11,000 years and include traces of houses, tent rings, food-storage pits, tool-making debris, and cairns that may have been used to help drive caribou into hunting traps. 

Jeff Rasic is an archaeologist for the National Park Service who has sifted through wet soil near Howard Pass. The pass, named for U.S. Navy explorer William Howard (who traversed it during an expedition on April 21, 1886), is more than 100 miles from the closest villages today, Ambler and Kobuk, both to the south.

Howard Pass was not so quiet over the past 11,000 years. In the area, archaeologists have found hundreds of house remains, tent rings, food-storage pits, scattered stone chips from tool makers and cairns that resembled humans to help drive caribou into traps.

“People took advantage of caribou, fish, muskox, berries, waterfowl — and in the earliest period, probably bison,” Rasic wrote about Howard Pass, a tundra bench several miles wide that caribou from the Western Arctic herd still click through during seasonal migrations.

This food-rich area has another side to its character. Howard Pass’s Inupiaq name is Akutuq, a word for a treat made of whipped animal fat, sugar, and berries. Natives gave the pass that name because the wind-tortured snow patterns there reminded them of akutuq.

National Park Service scientists in 2011 installed a rugged weather station at Howard Pass as one of 50 similar climate stations in hard-to-reach parklands across Alaska. The stations are battery and solar-powered and send their data in blips to orbiting satellites.

That information has included — on Feb. 21, 2013 — a wind-chill temperature of minus 96.9 degrees Fahrenheit. The air temperature that day was minus 45.5 degrees F. The wind blew at a sustained 54 miles per hour.

“This was not an isolated event,” Pam Sousanes of the National Park Service said of the Howard Pass windchill. “Similar conditions have been recorded in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.”

The average wind chill for Feb. 12-16, 2014, was minus 84.5 degrees F when the highest wind gust through the pass was 103 miles per hour. Wind chills of minus 70 or lower have been recorded each year.

This low spot in the western Brooks Range becomes a wind tunnel when there a great atmospheric-pressure difference that exists between Alaska’s North Slope and the rest of the state. Cold air from the north rips southward though the pass.

“The wind chill can be so severe as to freeze to death caribou caught there by a winter storm,” wrote Ernest Burch in the book “Alliance and Conflict: The World System of the Inupiaq Eskimos.” “After every bad blow, the Eskimos used to go into the pass to look for well-preserved caribou carcasses.”

Sousanes and her colleague Ken Hill have replaced the wind monitor on the Howard Pass station every year; the steel mast that holds it up is pocked by rocks and ice.

Minus 100 degrees does not seem to mesh with human occupation; nor does a place with no firewood.

However, not only is the pass loaded with archaeological sites, a few of them are winter dwellings, Rasic said, with half the living area underground and featuring cold-trap tunnels at the entrances.

Why might people have chosen a spot with such inhumane conditions?

“It’s a reliable place to harvest caribou, and there are lakes with fish,” Rasic said. “If you are someone trying to escape clouds of mosquitoes, winds aren’t necessarily bad. And maybe a windswept place is good for winter travel — hard and crusty, good to get around on.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Kansas Archaeologist Rediscovers Lost Native American City

Kansas Archaeologist Rediscovers Lost Native American City

A conqueror named Juan de Oñate led an expedition of 200 soldiers in 1601 into uncharted territories of what is today the state of Kansas.

Along with the soldiers and canons, the group was accompanied by a number of priests as well as adventurers who were attracted by the expedition’s final goal ― the legendary city of Quivira, whose streets were allegedly paved with gold.

Before Oñate chose to venture into the Great Plains, two other conquistadors ― Antonio Gutiérrez de Humana and Francisco Leyva de Bonilla ― already lost their lives there in 1594, while embarking on a similar quest.

Juan de Oñate, first Governor of New Spain.

But Oñate’s thirst for fame and riches, as well as an appetite for terror, led him and his posse deep into the unknown where he indeed discovered a large settlement, but it wasn’t exactly what he expected.

More than 400 years later, archaeologists from the Wichita State University flocked around a site which they believe was the place where Oñate found his Quivira, or Etzanoa, as it was known to the Native Americans.

Oñate’s 1605 “signature graffiti” on Inscription Rock, in El Morro National Monument.

Located in southern Kansas, at the confluence of the Walnut and the Arkansas rivers, it has been known for decades as a place of historical findings. Since 1959, both archaeologists and locals have discovered various artifacts belonging to the Wichita people.

Literally tons of objects belonging to an ancient civilization were collected after a road construction in 1994. Many of the objects are kept in private property, as it became common to find shards of pottery or pieces of arrowheads. However, never before was the connection made between these traces of settlement with the almost mythical city of Etzanoa ― discovered by Oñate’s expedition in 1601.

Trade beads found at a Wichita village site, c. 1740, collection of the Oklahoma History Center.
Protohistoric Wichita points found at Etzanoa.

The research was conducted under the supervision of Donald Blakeslee, a veteran archaeologist who became intrigued with finding the lost city in 2013, after new translations of various accounts of Spanish colonialists serving under Oñate during the Etzanoa expedition were made by scholars from UC Berkeley.

Together with the National Park Service, Blakeslee scanned the area with a magnetometer, enabling him to determine the variations in the earth’s magnetic field and locate remains of houses, cellars, and fireplaces belonging to a once vibrant settlement. Not far from the settlement’s location, in what is today a suburb of Arkansas City, traces of battle were also found, including three Spanish cannonballs, a horseshoe, and a number of other objects.

Protohistoric Wichita stone knives were recovered from the site by the Kansas State Historical Society.

Let’s head back to the year 1601 and the fate of Juan de Oñate’s expedition, to further unravel the story which led to this amazing discovery. After his vanguard came with reports that a large settlement lay ahead of them, the conquistador must have rubbed his hands in delight ― it was the chance to amass gold, and to convert the natives into Christianity, gaining favor from the Spanish Crown in return.

According to his scouts’ reports, the city seemed as though it stretched for miles. Large beehive-shaped houses with thatched roofs and fields of corn, squash, and beans overtook the horizon. Their estimate was that there must have been more than 20,000 people living there.

A sketch of a Wichita Indian village in the 19th century. The beehive-shaped grass-thatched houses surrounded by cornfields are characteristic and appear similar to those described by Coronado in 1541.
Esadowa (or Isadowa) was chief of the Wichita village adjacent to the Comanche camp attacked by Van Dorn in 1858. In 1861, Esadowa led his people north to Kansas, then in 1865 brought them back to the Indian Territory.

After they were approached by a friendly delegation bringing offerings, the Spanish took the welcoming committee as hostages, as they needed leverage while possibly facing an entire city in battle. As a response, Wichita warriors, who were calling for a fight with the invaders, put on their battle paint. Spanish soldiers named them Rayados ― due to tattoos and paint they wore on their faces and bodies.

Even though at one moment it looked as though they were going to face an army eager to fight, only a handful of people were found in the city as the conquistadors marched into it. The inhabitants of Etzanoa, perhaps familiar with the stories of vicious invaders and their firepower, decided it was safer to just evacuate the entire city for a while than to battle the treacherous Spaniards.

So when the conquistadors entered the city, it was already empty. They wandered the city for several days in their search for gold, counting more than 2,000 houses, all of which were big enough for 10 people.

Adam Ziegler holds an iron ball that he found with a metal detector. The ball, which was part of a cartridge load for a cannon, was the first piece of evidence that suggested the archaeologist had located the battlefield where the Spanish fought the Native Americans.

Once they decided to leave, however, they were met with a horde of 1,500 warriors belonging to the Escanxaques tribe, which rivaled the Wichita. Apparently, they were on a warpath, but instead of fighting their historical enemies, they ended up battling a small detachment of Spaniards who attempted to break through using cannons and muskets. By sheer luck alone, the conquistadors managed to withdraw from the battlefield, suffering heavy casualties.

Afterward, the accounts of their mishaps have often been discarded as exaggerated ramblings of adventurers who sought glory or support from the Spanish Crown. Modern historians dismissed the notion of a settlement of such scale, in part because of yet another expedition, this time under French leadership, that ventured into the same area around 100 years later, only to find what looked to them like untouched nature.

It is most likely that the settlement was abandoned and left to waste due to some sort of disease epidemic, which was the most common reason for the extinction of many other Native American cultures. Thanks to Blakeslee and his team, a real breakthrough is happening, as Etzanoa is estimated to be the second-largest ancient settlement in the United States, the first one being Cahokia in Illinois.

Researchers conducting a surface survey mark the locations of stone flakes, points, and tools with brightly colored flags.

The discovery is also reshaping the way that the history of Great Plains tribes is perceived. It was mostly believed that the tribes inhabiting North America lived in rural settlements or as nomads, as opposed to the vast cities of the Mayans and Incas in the south. However, the unearthing of Etzanoa goes to show that large urban areas existed and thrived as trade centers of civilizations long gone.

According to Jay Warren, an Arkansas City council member, plans are already put in motion to turn the site into a tourist attraction.

“We’re not talking about putting together a one-day wonder. We’re looking at creating something that could be great for the region, and for 50 years and more down the road. We’re talking with (Unified School District) 470 about how it could enhance education. And we think the site could also be a hands-on field training facility for archaeologists from all over the world.”