13.8 America: 200 to 101 b.c.  (Page 2/2)

We do not like to belabor a controversial point but is perhaps worth mentioning that Fell (Ref. 66 ) insists that Celt-Iberians were scattered throughout the eastern United States by this period and that coins found in quantity in Ohio were local copies of ancient bronze coins of Evia, an old Portuguese city. This entire question of European and/or North African visitors in America at a much earlier time than heretofore ever mentioned in classical histories is an interesting one. Although Fell and Thor Heyerdahl

In the southwestern United States where the corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado join, the so-called Basket-maker I period of the Anasazi Indian Culture was in progress but few details are available from this century. Farther south the San Pedro Culture, apparently a modification of the Cochise, continued to be viable. (Ref. 45 )

Mexico, central america, and the caribbean

In Mexico the Teotihuacan city-state continued to grow. The late Pre-Classic period of Central America continued with progressive population growth. The Maya in the Peten area subsisted on corn, beans and squash, as they cleared land by a slash and burn system. There were no large ceremonial centers as yet.

South america

The Vicus Culture flourished in northern Peru. At Lake Titicaca, on the border of present day Peru and Bolivia, on a bleak 13,000 feet plateau in the middle of the previously described Tiahuanaco Culture area there now was built abut 200 B.C. the definitive city of Tiahuanaco. Its remaining stones give evidence of a colossal style of building, with formidable mathematically ordered walls and imposing massive stone steps. A giant stone idol, 24 feet high, was excavated in 1932 by an American archeological team under W.C. Bennett. Another idol, only 8 feet tall but of a completely different style, although also of red sandstone, was found beside it. Shrunken human heads have been found, suggesting the bloody cult of head-hunting and/or human sacrifices. A Bolivian scholar, Ponce Sangines, believes this culture lasted from 200 B.C. to A.D. 1,200 with perhaps five buried cities, one often overlapping another in the archeological strata. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world and its largest island, the Island of the Sun, has hills with ancient crop-growing terraces and beneath its waters are high walls and paved paths. The lake, covering 3,200 square miles now is thought to have once reached the walls of the ancient city of Tiahuanaco, the runs of which now lie 25 miles away in Bolivia. The city may have been basically a religious or meeting center, as the large public buildings could hold thousands of people. There seems to have also been suburbs were craftsmen, weavers, smiths and farmers lived in mud-brick houses. Potatoes and corn were grown as they are even today. The stones which made up the large public buildings and walls appear to have been brought from quarries between 60 and 200 miles away and the method of transport brings up the same questions and possible answers that have been issued about the great stones of Stonehenge, the European megaliths and the statues of Easter Island. Some American prehistorians have suggested that the Tiahuanaco people simply fused together all the upper Andes societies that had been fragmented since the end of the Chavin Culture.

Heyerdahl (Ref. 95 ) quotes many of the very earliest Spanish chroniclers as they have recorded the natives' legends of the great pre-Inca past. In these there is the recurring theme suggesting immigrants from across the ocean. Lake Titicaca is given as a possible beginning point for Inga Viracocha or the composite Con-Tici-Viracocha, a bearded deity who "brought his people fro the sea." Legends among the Chimu have this same deity arriving by sea long the coast much farther north. One of the statues unearthed by W.C. Bennett in 1932 was that of Con-Tica-Viracocha in Tiahuanaco, complete with beard and long girdled robe, decorated with an horned serpent and two pumas, symbols of the Supreme God in both Mexico and Peru.

At about this same time of 200 B.C.

Meanwhile on the middle south coast the society which Engel (Ref. 62 ) calls Paracas II developed as a coastal society with limited architecture, some use of copper and gold and a very advanced state of weaving. All skulls were deformed to a pear-shape and many were trepanned. Some elements suggest that they came up the coast from Chile and their many identified weapons indicate terrific battles. The Nazcas were direct successors of the Paracas and they too remained a coastal tribe, although with a far different social system. The transition was apparently somewhat gradual and although the Nazca Society may have taken shape in this century, it did not blossom until long after. (Ref. 176 , 66 , 95 , 62 )

Forward to America: 100 to 0 B.C.

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