10 October 2002 
[This page printed from http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/AnthroForum2002.htm]
© [All Rights Reserved.] Placed on the WWW on October 4, 2002, for a presentation on October 10, 2002 (with visuals) at the Weekly Anthropology Forum at California State University, Chico. Today's paper draws upon a presentation made earlier this week, on October 6, for the monthly lecture series entitled "World Explorations" sponsored by The Museum of Anthropology, California State University, Chico. That presentation may be found at http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/WorldExplorationFall2002.htm. My appreciation goes to Ms. Debra Besnard and Mr. Stan Griffith and the "Digital Asset Management Project" in Special Collections in the Meriam Library for some of the digital imaging work they did on some of my slides used today.
I have been interested in something like this topic from at least 1967, and the web references for this paper includes a 1967 Honors Paper published in my final undergraduate year at Western Washington University (then Western Washington State College), Bellingham, Washington. I am not an archaeologist but a cultural anthropologist and I had read about these locations in books and journals and when the opportunity arose to visit them...I went! Human beings are amazing and anthropology is fun!
"Archaeology is a comparative science: to know one site is to know nothing; to know a thousand is to see some factors unifying all [stress added]." Paul MacKendrick, 1983, The Mute Stones Speak: The Story of Archaeology in Italy, second edition (NY: W.W. Norton & Co.), page 4.
"In the United States anthropology began in the 19th century when a number of dedicated amateurs went into the field to gain a better understanding of what many European Americans still regarded a 'primitive people.' Exemplifying their emphasis on firsthand observation is Frank Hamilton Cushing [1857-1900], who lived among the Zuni Indians for 4 years.... Among these founders of North American anthropology were a number of women whose work was highly influential among those who spoke out in the 19th century in favor of women's rights. One of these pioneering anthropologists was Matilda Cox Stevenson [1849-1915], who also did fieldwork among the Zuni. in 1885, she founded the Women's Anthropological Society, the first professional association for women scientists. Three years later, the Bureau of American Ethnology hired her, making her one of the first women in the United States to receive a full-time position in science [stress added]." William A. Haviland, 1999, Cultural Anthropology, 9th edition, page 7.
"A man [or a woman] who has once looked with the archaeological eye will never see quite normally. He will be wounded by what other men call trifles. It is possible to refine the sense of time until an old shoe in the bunch of grass or a pile of nineteenth-century beer bottles in an abandoned mining town tolls in one's head like a hall clock. This is the price one pays for learning to read time from the surfaces other than an illuminated dial. It is the melancholy secret of the artifact, the humanly touched thing [stress added]." Loren Eiseley, 1971, The Night Country (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons), page 81.
"In 1948, when this magazine [Archaeology] first appeared [and Charles F. Urbanowicz was six years old!], archaeologists believed humanity was little more than a quarter of a million years old. The earliest farmers came from Egypt's Fayum, perhaps 6,000 years ago. The Maya were peaceful, calendar-obsessed astronomers. Stonehenge was effectively undated. The first Native Americans were big-game hunters who roamed the plains. Archaeologists, meanwhile numbered in the hundreds, many of them amateurs or self-trained excavators, and most worked within the narrow confines of Europe, Southwestern Asia, and North America. Five decades later, we gaze out over an archaeological landscape transformed. The human past extends back more than 2.5 million years, farming is at least 10,000 years old, and the Maya are known to have been an aggressive, blood-thirsty people. The hundreds of archaeologists have become thousands, most professionally trained, conducting fieldwork in widely scattered parts of the world. And archaeology is concerned with every facet of the past, from our East African origins to the technological achievements of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in three major areas have redefined research during these years: computers and an awesome array of new scientific methods have allowed us to make discoveries unimaginable at mid-century; the explosive growth in the number of professionals and the rise of nationalism have made archaeology a global discipline; and theoretical advances have transformed the way we approach the business of discovery. Willard Libby's remarkable chronological method, developed in the late 1940s, won him a Nobel Prize [in Chemistry in 1960 ] and changed the course of archaeology. C-14 dating allowed the first relatively precise chronology for the past 40,000 years... People sometime ask me, 'Will archaeology survive in the twenty-first century?' If the dramatic discoveries and scientific achievements of the past 50 years are any guide, the answer must be a resounding yes [stress added]." Brian Fagan, 1998, 50 Years of Discovery: How Archaeology Has Reconfigured The Human Past. Archaeology, September/October, Vol. 51, No. 5, pages 33-34.
The visual impact of seeing various things cannot be denied. This is why I use a great deal of media in all of my classes and why I went to see various sites.
"No one has ever doubted that Columbus attained South America (although not until 1498), and he did trace along Central America in 1502. But no scholar of history has ever claimed that he did discover North America. His real contribution was to prove the reliability of the Atlantic trade winds, which had been discovered in previous decades by the Portuguese and others exploring for islands [stress added]." James R. Enterline, 2002, Erikson, Eskimos & Columbus: Medieval European Knowledge of America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), page 215.
"In 1589 the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta, who lived and traveled widely in South America, proposed that native Americans were descended from people who had migrated from Siberia. More than four hundred years later, Acosta's idea has held up pretty well. Perhaps 75 million people were living in North and South America when Columbus reached the New World in 1492. [stress added]." Steve Olson, 2002, Mapping Human History: Discovering The Past Through Our Genes (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.), page 195.
"Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] is very often cited as the 'father' of American archaeology, and he certainly attempted one of the first archaeological explanations of the question ["Who Got here First?"] when he wrote in his famous 'Notes on Virginia' (1787) about an Indian mound that he had excavated many years before. However, his strongest evidence to support his belief in an Asian origin (via the Bering Strait) of the Native Americans was from his study of Indian languages. He cited the diversity of these languages as proof that they had been here a long time [stress added]." Stephen William, 1992, Who Got To America First? Anthropology Explored: The Best Of Smithsonian Anthro Notes, 1998, edited by Ruth O. Selig and Marilyn R. London, pages 141-149, page 144.
"When Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492, he speculated that his fastest route to the gold and spices of the Orient was west by sea. After 33 days of sailing, Columbus was within sight of land and assumed he was approaching Asia. He had no idea that the Carribean island before him was the doorstep to two 'unknown' continents. Neither Columbus nor the islands inhabitants who greeted him could have predicted the global consequences of the encounter that began that day. Seeds of Change [video and 1991 book] commemorates the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage by focusing on the exchange of plants, animals, and peoples that resulted. Five 'seeds'--corn, potatoes, diseases, horses, and sugar--form the core of this exhibition which tells the story of 500 years of encounter and exchange" [stress added] (1991 Smithsonian Institution brochure).
"About 15 kilometres [~9.32 miles] north of St Louis (Missouri), Cahokia provides the most complete source of information on pre-Colombian civilizations in the regions of the Mississippi. It is a striking example of a pre-urban sedentary structure that allows for the study of a kind of social organisation about which no written traces exist."http://whc.unesco.org/sites/198.htm [Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site} 1982]
"John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1850) was a new York lawyer with a taste for politics who started traveling for his health. ... While in London in 1836, Stephens met Frederick Catherwood (1804-1852), a British architect and artist who had just returned from a lengthy sketching trip in the Near East. ... The two men became friends and prominent member's of New York's literary circle, where they heard rumours of unexplored temples in the Central American rain forest. In October 1839, they set out on a journey in search of rumoured jungle civilizations [stress added]." Brian M. Fagan [Editor], 1996, Eyewitness to Discovery: First-Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World's Greatest Archaeological Discoveries (Oxford University Press), page 334.
"Discovered" by Hiram Bingham [1875-1956], July 1911} "The ruins straddle a narrow ridge or saddle below the peak of Machu Picchu. On three sides the city is protected by the rapids of the Urubamba, roaring through the canyon 2000 feet below. On the fourth side the massif is approachable only along another razor-like spur of mountain. The eastern side of the ridge is impassable, and on the western side there is a footpath which runs along a narrow horizontal cleft in the precipice. A handful of men could defend it against an army. On the eastern and western side of the ridge are 1500 foot precipices, down which rocks could be rolled on to intruders [stress added]." Leonard Cottrell, 1957, Lost Cities (London: Pan Books), pages 202-203.
Although the last "archaeological dig" I was on was in the 1960s as an undergraduate at Western Washing State College (now Western Washington State University) I have always been interested in archaeology and archaeological implications and interpretations.
"Today, most thoughtful people would think that the idea of American history without American Indians was an absurdity. Yet for generations historians of the United States wrote the nation's story as if Indians did not exist, or at best historians marginalized native people as bit players in the great national drama. In U.S. history textbooks Indians emerged only in time to be swept aside by westering white Americans. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement and the growth of political activism among people of color, ethnic groups, and women resulted in a challenge to exclusively Anglocentric history [stress added]." Albert L. Hurtado and Peter Iverson, 2001, Major Problems In American Indian History (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.), page 1.
"Had we been able to visit the coast of California between 5000 and 400 years ago we would have seen a remarkable sight. We could have wandered into large, permanent villages, some perhaps consisting of a thousand or more people. There we would have found a ruling elite, a working class, ritual specialists and skilled craftsmen and women, as well as extensive evidence of trade. While this kind of society may seem familiar, the thing that made the Californias special was that nowhere around these towns would you have seen fields or pasture. All of this social complexity was generated in the absence of agriculture [stress added]." Tim Flannery, 2001, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America And Its People (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press), pages 239-240.
"Columbus changed forever the history of the planet. But he did so by connecting two worlds of equal maturity, not by 'discovering' a new one. Knowing this, some find it easy to dismiss European insistence on calling America the New World as nothing more than Eurocentric arrogance. Convinced that Europe was synonymous with civilization, colonizing Europeans failed to see anything of value in Indian civilizations. They regarded Indian people as 'primitive' and viewed the land as virgin wilderness. Like other human beings, they were blind to much of what lay before them and instead took in what they wanted to. In a very real sense, however, America did exists as a new world for Europeans. America was more than just a place; it was a second opportunity for humanity--a chance, after the bloodlettings and the pogroms, the plagues and the famines, the political and religious wars, the social and economic upheavals, for Europeans to get it right this time. In the beginning, the American dream was a European dream, and it exerted emotional and motivational power for generations" [stress added]." Colin G. Galloway, 1997, New Worlds For All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America, page 10.
"The lives of prehistoric people were structured around the requirements of hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants, along with the planting, tending, and harvesting of their crops." George R. Milner, 1998, The Cahokia Chiefdom: The Archaeology of a mississippian Society (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), page 65.
A sabbatical is a chance to re-new and recharge batteries and in Spring of 1997 my wife and I were able to drive across the United States and visit various locations of interest. One such location was Cahokia.
"Cahokia was the largest pre-Columbian town in North America--five times the size of its nearest competition. The site covers 5 square miles (13 square kilometers) of the rich floodplain known as the American Bottom, where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers joined forces near present-day St. Louis. This huge complex of Mississippian culture was surrounded by fertile soils and plentiful wildlife. There is ample evidence of large-scale construction projects, major residential areas, open plazas, protective palisade walls, elite burials, and exotic artifacts. But we do not know what Cahokia's inhabitants called it. The word 'Cahokia' comes from a subtribe of the Illini Indians who apparently came on the scene after the demise of Cahokian culture. Between A.D. 800 and 1350 a number of competing chiefdoms existed in the American Bottom, sometime, consolidating into a single paramount chiefdom, at other times splintering and warring with one another. At its peak, Cahokia was home to 10,000 to 15,000 people, and perhaps tens of thousands more lived on the surrounding floodplain [stress added]." David Hurst Thomas, 2000, Exploring Native North America (NY: Oxford University Press), page 152.
"The Spanish and French who first saw these hillocks found it difficult to believe them to be the deliberate creations of mankind. They were so much larger than any work of architecture known to them. The entire facade of the Palace of the Louvre, in Paris, can fit easily within the space surrounded by the D-shaped earthen rings at Povery Point, Louisiana, built at the same time as Stonehenge. The Papal Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, complete with its plaza and gardens, could be placed within the circular embankement at Watson Brake [Louisiana], which is probably at least a thousand years older than Poverty Point [stress added]." Roger G. Kennedy, 1996, Hidden Cities: The Discovery And Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (NY: Penguin), page 8.
"Cahokia is the largest archaeological site north of the Rio Grande [River] and the largest Middle Mississippian site in the united States. At its height it covered 8.4 km2 [3.24 square miles], had over 100 earthen mounds, and may have had a population of 25,000 people or more. For these reasons it has a special role in relation to theories concerning the cultural development of native North Americans, but the site also has wider theoretical significance [stress added]." Patricia J. O'Brien, 1991, Early State Economics: Cahokia, Capital of the Ramey State. Early State Economics: Political and Legal Anthropology Volume 8, Henri J.M. Claessen and Pieter van de Velde [Editors] (New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers), pages 143-175, page 143.
"Advances in zooarchaeological method and theory have led to the more accurate identification of cultural and taphonomic processes that contribute to the formation of faunal assemblages." Lucretia S. Kelly, 1997,Patterns of Faunal Exploitation at Cahokia. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press), pages 1-29, page 1.
"From a comparative or evolutionary perspective, Cahokia is an example of an elaborate nonstate political organization often called a 'complex chiefdom'..... Complex chiefdoms were centralized polities lacking formal bureaucracies in which social groups or sub-groups were hiuerarchically ranked. Power, inequality, kinship and cultural identitiy were negotiated among populations within and between complex chiefdoms." Timothy R. Pauketat and Thomas E. Emerson, 1997, Introduction: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press), pages 1-29, pages 3-4.
"Why Was Cahokia Abandoned? No other issue in scholarly circles is thornier than the question of Cahokia's abandonment. Why did the Mississippians leave this splendid constellation of mounds, buildings, plazas, council houses, lodges, palisades, and woodhenges behind them? Why does the site show no signs of human habitation from 1400 to about 1650, when Illini Indians moved into the area? Did circumstances foce the Mississippians to leave, or did they choose to take advantage of better resources in another place? Until new evidence is uncovered, we might content ourselves with a simple answer: we do not know why Cahokia was abandoned. But .... Climactic changes and environmental stress? ... Deforestation and an unintended suicide? ... Nutritional stress? ... Health and sanitation problems? ... Conflict? [stress added]." Sally A. Kitt Chappel, 2002, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (University of Chicago Press), pages 71-74.
In 1967, while an undergraduate, I had a short article published about "The Classical Maya" (web site indicated below) and was fortunate to be able to visit that part of the world April 1994 when I presented a paper entitled "The Gaming Heritage: A Natural For Some (And Problems For Others?)" at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Cancun, Mexico.
"This site is one of the most impressive testimonies to the Mayan-Toltec civilization of the Yucatan (10th to 15th centuries). It contains some of the most outstanding examples of Central American architecture, combining Mayan construction techniques and Toltec sculpted decoration."http://whc.unesco.org/sites/483.htm [Pre-Hispanic City of Chitchen-Itza} 1968]
"Chichén Itzá [on theYucatán Peninsula of Mexico], thrice founded (A.D. 432, 964, and 1185), was the greatest of the coastal Maya cities. On a plain so flat that its great pyramid can be seen for miles around, Chichén Itzá was joined by road to Izamal, thence to the seacoast at Polé, in direct line with Cozumel Island. Important in the history of the city are its two enormous natural wells, one of which was used for human sacrifice and the other as a source of water [stress added]." Victor W. Von Hagen, 1960, The World Of the Maya (NY: The New American Library), page 160.
"When Europeans first landed on the shores of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula early in the 16th century, the great Maya centers were alread faded relics -- timeworn, overgrown, and abandoned. And yet they still possessed a haunting beauty, enveloping all who came near in a flood of amazement. For there, deep within the tropical forests or clustered on the barren limestone tip of the peninsula, rose not one or two monuments, or even one or two settlements, but vast architectural complexes studded with palaces and pyramids, each structure and each setting a triumph of grace and power. The awe-inspiring remains of the 60 or so Maya 'cities' were simply the most visible and enduring evidence of a civilization spectacular in its learning and achievement. In addition to being master engineers and architects, the Maya were sophisticated mathematicians, accomplished astronomers, and meticulous historians, who refined a complex hieroglyphic system of writing for recording their past. In their art and architecture, they achieved a style that is intricate and as technically dazzling as it is visually impressive. The true dimensions of Maya civilization, however, were lost upon most Spanish, who in their haste to conquer and convert, failed to comprehend what lay before them. Not until the 19th century did the extent and grandeur of Maya culture begin to be fully explored and publicized, awakening a quickly captivated world to the fact that a high civilization on the order of ancient Egypt had flourished for nearly 1,000 years in the New World [stress added]." Joseph L. Gardner [Editor], 1986, Mysteries of the Ancient Americas: The New World Before Columbus (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.), page 144.
As with Cahokia and Chichén Itzá, I had known of Machu Pichu for years and when the opportunity arose July 1999 to visit both Machu Pichu (Perú) and the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) my wife and I went!
"Guidebooks have been known to exaggerate, but the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu truly are among the most awe-inspiring sights in South America. Clinging to a vertiginous hillside surrounded by severe drops and towering green mountains and bathed in a near-constant stream of sunshine, it is surpassed by few other settings [stress added]." Rolán Solís Hernández [Editor], 1998, Let's Go Perú & Ecuador (NY: St. Martin's Press), page 150.
"At 2,430 metres [7,972 feet] above sea level, on a mountain site of extraordinary beauty, in the middle of a tropical mountain forest, Machu Picchu was probably the most amazing urban creation of the Inca Empire at its height, with its giant walls, terraces and ramps, which appear as though they have been cut naturally in the continuous rock escarpments. The natural setting on the eastern slope of the Andes encompasses the upper Amazon basin with its rich diversity of species."http://whc.unesco.org/sites/274.htm [Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, Peru} 1983]
"The Inca empire was founded in Cusco around AD 1100 by the first Inca, Manco Capac, both a historic and mythic figure. Legend has it that after the creator god Wiraccocha relived the world from darkness by pulling the heavenly bodies out of Lake Tititicaca...he created the first Incas in the same place. ... more gullible people insist that the following story be told. Cusco was founded by a man named Manco Capac around AD 1100, but the incas were just one of many small Andean states vying for control. Things changed in 1438 when the soon-to-become ninth Inca Pachacuti [Quechua for "Transformer"] defeated the fierce Chanka people, opening a way for a massive expansion of the empire. Cusco [Qosco, or "navel of the world'] became the center of Inka Perú, the building ground of great palaces and temples, and an administrative and religious headquarters." Rolán Solís Hernández [Editor], 1998, Let's Go Perú & Ecuador (NY: St. Martin's Press), page 123.
"Nothing epitomizes Machu Picchu precarious situation better than the long-running debate over a proposed cable car system to carry most of the sites visitors from Aguas Calientes, the ramshackle town built around the site's train stop, up to the ruins. Since the mid-1990's, developers and the Peruvian government have said that the project, designed to replace a 30-minute bus ride, would improve access and encourage more people to visit the site. But many environmentalists and preservationists contend the cable car would further degrade the unique relationship between the ruins and their natural setting. ... [today] the cable car plan [is] on the back burner for now." Ted Rose, 2001, Good Morning In Peru's 'Lost City.' The New York Times, Sunday, January 7, 2001, pages 10 and 20, page 10.
"The pucará [fortress] of Sascahuamán is not only one of the greatest single structures ever built in preliterate America, but it is also unlike its counterparts in that we know the identity of its architects, who gave their names to the three gateways to the fortress. 'The first and principal one was Huallpu Rimanchi Inca, who designed the general plan . [citing Garcilasco de la Vega, born in Cuzco in 1535]. The fortress was built into a limestone outcrop 1,800 feet long, and formed of three tiers of walls rising to fifty feet high. The precise Inca records, as revealed in their quipus, state that '20,000 labourers, in continuous relays', worked for sixty-eight years to build Sascahuamán [stress added]." Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, 1976, The Royal Road of the Inca (London: Gordon Cremonesi Ltd), page 93.
"City from 2600 B.C. was ahead of its time. Researchers investigating a long-ignored Peruvian archaeological site say they have determined that it is the oldest city in the Americas, with a complex, highly structured society that flourished at the same time the pyramids were being built in Egypt. ... The 4,600 year old city....[stress added]." The Sacramento Bee, April 27, 2001.
"LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - The remains of a city thought to be the oldest in the Americas, buried under Peruvian soil since the era of Egypt's pyramids, could be destroyed by erosion and exposure to the elements if the world community does not rush to the rescue, archeologists said on Wednesday. Researchers believe that Caral, a complex of stone temples, altars and dwellings located in a desert valley 110 miles north of Lima, dates to before 2,600 B.C. -- around the same time the famed Giza pyramids were built in Egypt.``Nowhere in Peru or in the Americas -- in the Mexican hills or in Mayan lowlands -- is there a city this old. Peru predates (other sites) by 1,500 years,'' archeologist Ruth Shady, who has headed Caral's excavation since 1994, told reporters [stress added]." [See: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020206/sc/peru_archeology_dc_1.html]
"Inca Ruins found on Peruvian Peak. It exceeds 100 structures, includes pyramid. ... The settlement clings to the slopes of a rugged peak in the Andes Mountains where the Incas hid after the Spanis conquest. ... The Incas ruled Peru from the 1430s until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532.... The settlement is 290 miles southeast of Lima and about 24 miles southwest of Machu Picchu, Peru's most famous Inca ruins and its top tourist destination [stress added]." Craig Mauro, 2002, The San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2002, page A6.
"Deep in an inaccessible canyon in the most remote area of Peru, a British-American team has discovered what appears to be one of the last refuges of the Inca before their civilization was destroyed by the Spanish in 1572. ...[The site] Cota Coca is at about 6,000 feet. ... A report on the expedition is on the [Royal Geographical] society's Web site at www.rgs.org." Thomas H. Maugh II, 2002, Archaeologists find long-hidden inca settlement. The Sacramento Bee, June 9, 2002, page A18.
To repeat, I have been interested in topics like this since at least 1967 and will maintain my "book interests" and actual "travel interests" as long as I can. Human beings are amazing and anthropology is fun. In Spring 2003 I plan on making a presentation entitled "The Anthropology Forum: 1973->2003!" providing information about my changing interests (since I first came to CSU, Chico in 1973) and commenting on the twenty-two Anthropology Forums I have presented over this time period!
Some parallels that I mentioned today are also seen by others and consider the community of Chico, with approximately 66,800 in the "City" of Chico and some 99,375 individuals in the general area. On March 30, 2001, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that California is still the most populous state in the United States of America, with 33,871,648 residents [or ~12.05%] of the USA" and as The Wall Street Journal pointed out on August 29, 2001, "...California is not done growing. Over the next 20 years, another 15 million people will be born in, or move to, the Golden State [stress added]." It has been estimated that the population for California in the following years will be: 39,957,616 (in the year 2010), 45,448,627 (2020), and 58,731,006 (2040) (Chico Enterprise-Record, December 18, 1998, page 4A)" and by 2040, the state [of California] will have 58.7 million residents, a 75 percent increase, according to Department of Finance projections. The population in some counties could more than triple [stress added]" (Chico Enterprise-Record, May 2, 1999, page 1B).
"In 1950, the population of Chico was 12,722. The population more than doubled by 1980, to 26,601. During the past two decades, those numbers have increased to 64,581 in the City limits, and approximately 95,000 in the Chico Urban Area. Projections provided by the Butte County Association of Governments (BCAG) lists the population [of the city of Chico] at 75,879 in the year 2010, 85,364 in 2015, 90,035 in 2020, and 108,039 in the year 2025 [stress added]." Anon., 2002, Celebrate the Building Industry! Special Section ("Industrial Barbecue 2002") of The Chico Enterprise-Record, June 18, 2002, page 3.
"California's population continues to grow by more than 500,000 people a year. Such growth brings a host of challenges--how to provide enough affordable housing, adequate transportation, schools and jobs. In order to address these challenges, local cities and governments should be encouraged to work together and create regional growth management policies [stress added]." Elizabeth Klementowski, 2002, Flawed solution to an imaginary problem. The San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2002, page A19.
On Changes in California: "Almost 70,000 acres of California's open space was devoured by a growing population lured to the state by its booming economy from 1996 to 1998, according to a state report released Wednesday [October 11, 2000]. The urban sprawl is driven by California's influx of roughly 700,000 people a year [stress added]." Open space continues vanish act in state. (Associated Press) The Sacramento Bee, October 12, 2000, page A3.
On June 24, 2001, an article based on research from the University of California, Davis appeared in The Sacramento Bee (Alvin D. Sokolow," How Much State Farmland Is Disappearing?" pages L1 and L6). The research pointed out that 49,700 acres of California farmland disappears each year and since the campus of California State University, Chico (excluding the University farm) is 119 acres, approximately 417 Chico State campuses turn into various buildings every year! Consider, if you will, the following from Time of September 16, 2002 (in a section of articles entitled "The New Drought" dealing with North America today: too little rain and snow and record heat with devastating effects in parts of the United States):
"We are counting on Mother Nature to change [says Ken Beegles, Head of the Durango, Colorado, Offic e of the State Division of Water Resources]. But what if Mother Nature doesn't comply? Some 35 miles west of Duranko, in the Mesa Verde National Park, site of a fire in July , are the famous cliff dwellings of the Anasazi--or ancestral puebloans, as they are now known--whose civilization flourished there until the end of the 13th century, when the combination of a 30-year drought, a population explosion and oversue of natural resources forced them out. Durango is oblivious to the lessons of history. It plans to build enough houses to expand its population 160%, to 40,000. This growth will require more water, and...." [stress added]." Terry McCarthy [with Rita Healy/Marvel], 2002, Colorado. Time, September 16, pages 56-58, page 58.
Events such as these, gradual as they are, are cumulative across the United States: "U.S. chewing up farmland at its fastest-ever rate" was a headline in The Sacramento Bee on October 4, 2002, just as I was finishing this paper:
"The United States is losing two acres of mostly prime farmland every minute to development, the fastest decline in the country's history, a new study has found. That loss has been on the edge of the outer suburbs, where some of the country's best fruit and agricultual farms are being replaced by houses on large lots, linked by new roads, highways, and malls.... The problem has been growing for two decades. While the nation's population grew 17 percent from 1982 to 1997, the amount of land turned into urban areas increased 47 percent [stress added]." Elizabeth Becker, 2002, U.S. chewing up farmland at its fastest-ever rate. The Sacramento Bee, October 4, 2002, pages D1 + D6.
What of the future for all of us? Please see (if you wish) http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/aStoryof2027.html to read a "story" of Chico in the year 2027.
"Situated as it was in the center of the country, nineteenth-century Cahokia was a microcosm reflecting the changes in the wider world of the United States. In the aftermath of the epic undeclared war of the whites against the Indians, soldiers and warriors on both sides moved inexorably westward, one with the force of irresistable conquest, the other in tragic withdrawal. Many groups of Europeans and their descendants followed in the wake of the conflict [stress added]." Sally A. Kitt Chappel, 2002, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (University of Chicago Press), page 95.
"The importation to the Western Hemisphere of these six species of hoofed mammals--cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, asses, and horses--fundamentally changed the ecology of the hemisphere [stress added]." Deb Bennet and Robert S. Hoffman, 1991, Ranching in the New World. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis [Editors], Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), pages 90-111, page 110.
"The Voyage of the Beagle (1840) [by Charles Darwin]. Perhaps the most significant voyage since that of Columbus, leading to the formulation of the theory of evolution and to a new concept of history [stress added]." Arthur Waldhorn et al. [Editors], 1985, Good Reading: A Guide For Serious Readers, 22nd edition (NY: New American Library), page 228.
"Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find the same result. Nor is it the white man alone that acts as the destroyer; the Polynesian of Malay extraction has in parts of the East Indian archipelago, thus driven before him the dark-coloured native. The varieties of man seem to act on each other in the same way as different species of animals--the stronger always extirpating the weaker [stress added]." Charles R. Darwin [1809-1882], 1839, The Voyage of the Beagle (Chapter 19: "Australia"), 1972 Bantam paperback edition (with "Introduction" by Walter Sullivan), page 376.
"The unit of survival [or adaptation] is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. If, now, we correct the Darwinian unit of survival to include the environment and the interaction between organism and environment, a very strange and surprising identity emerges: the unit of survival turns out to be identical with the unit of mind" [italics in original; stress added]." Gregory Bateson [1904-1980], 1972, Steps To An Ecology of Mind (NY: Ballantine Books), page 483.
# # #
SOME VISUALS (Note: The visuals on the October 10, 2002 WWW page will be the same as the ones below.)
from: Friar Diego de Landa (1579), Yucatan Before
And After The Conquest, Translated With notes by William
Gates [Mexico: 1993 edition], page 22: Map of the
from: Friar Diego de Landa (1579), Yucatan Before And After The Conquest, Translated With notes by William Gates [Mexico: 1993 edition], page 22: Map of the Yucatán.
from: Gerardo Bustos, 1992, Yucatan And Its
Archaeological Sites (D.F. México: Monclem
Ediciones, S.A. de C.V.).
from: Gerardo Bustos, 1992, Yucatan And Its Archaeological Sites (D.F. México: Monclem Ediciones, S.A. de C.V.).
View of Machu Picchu, Perú @ approximately
8,000 feet [~2,438 meters].
View of Machu Picchu, Perú @ approximately 8,000 feet [~2,438 meters].
# # #
REFERENCES CITED (INCLUDING WEB SITES) (NOTE: Of necessity, some of the references below were not used today but were used for the October 6, 2002 "World Explorations" presentation. The "references cited" for both this paper, and the October 6 one, are therefore identical.)
Anon., 1999, Parque Histórico Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Xavier Alducin, 1984, Chichen Itza: A Practical Guide and Photo Album (Mexico: Ediciones Alducin, México, D.F.).
David G. Anderson, The Role of Cahokia in the Evolution of Southeastern Mississippian Society. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press), pages 248-268.
Claude Baudez and Sydney Picasso, 1987 [1992 English translation of] Lost Cities of the Maya (NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers).
Elizabeth Becker, 2002, U.S. chewing up farmland at its fastest-ever rate. The Sacramento Bee, October 4, 2002, pages D1 + D6.
Deb Bennet and Robert S. Hoffman, 1991, Ranching in the New World. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis [Editors], Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), pages 90-111.
Carmen Bernard, 1988 [1994 English translation], The Incas: People of the Sun (NY: Harry N. Abrams).
Gerardo Bustos, 1992, Yucatan And Its Archaeological Sites (D.F. México: Monclem Ediciones, S.A. de C.V.).
Sally A. Kitt Chappel, 2002, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (University of Chicago Press).
David Colbert [Editor], 1997, Eyewitness to America: 500 Years of America in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen (NY: Pantheon Books).
Leonard Cottrell, 1957, Lost Cities (London: Pan Books).
Charles R. Darwin [1809-1882], 1839, The Voyage of the Beagle (Chapter 19: "Australia"), 1972 Bantam paperback edition (with "Introduction" by Walter Sullivan).
Friar Diego de Landa (1579), Yucatan Before And After The Conquest, Translated With notes by William Gates [Mexico: 1993 edition].
Brian M. Fagan [Editor], 1996, Eyewitness to Discovery: First-Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World's Greatest Archaeological Discoveries (Oxford University Press).
Brian Fagan, 1998, 50 Years of Discovery: How Archaeology Has Reconfigured The Human Past. Archaeology, September/October, Vol. 51, No. 5, pages 33-34.
Tim Flannery, 2001, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America And Its People (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press).
Colin G. Galloway, 1997, New Worlds For All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.
Joseph L. Gardner [Editor], 1986, Mysteries of the Ancient Americas: The New World Before Columbus (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.).
Rolán Solís Hernández [Editor], 1998, Let's Go Perú & Ecuador (NY: St. Martin's Press).
Henry Hobhouse, 1985, Seeds of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind (NY: Harper & Row).
Albert L. Hurtado and Peter Iverson, 2001, Major Problems In American Indian History (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.).
Pierre Ivanoff, 1973, Monuments of Civilization: Maya (NY: Grosset & Dunlop).
Joyce Kelly, 1993, An Archaeological Guide to Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press).
Lucretia S. Kelly, 1997,Patterns of Faunal Exploitation at Cahokia. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press), pages 1-29.
Roger G. Kennedy, 1996, Hidden Cities: The Discovery And Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (NY: Penguin).
Jonathan Norton Leonard (and the editors of Time-Life Books), 1967, Ancient America (NY: Time-Life Books).
Thomas H. Maugh II, 2002, Archaeologists find long-hidden inca settlement. The Sacramento Bee, June 9, 2002, page A18.
Craig Mauro, 2002, The San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2002, page A6.
Terry McCarthy [with Rita Healy/Marvel], 2002, Colorado. Time, September 16, pages 56-58.
William H. McNeill, 1991, American Food Crops in the Old World. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis [Editors], Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press), pages 42-59.
George R. Milner, 1998, The Cahokia Chiefdom: The Archaeology of a Mississippian Society (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press).
Patricia J. O'Brien, 1991, Early State Economics: Cahokia, Capital of the Ramey State. Early State Economics: Political and Legal Anthropology Volume 8, Henri J.M. Claessen and Pieter van de Velde [Editors] (New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers), pages 143-175.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Thomas E. Emerson, 1997, Introduction: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World. Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press), pages 1-29.
Ted Rose, 2001, Good Morning In Peru's 'Lost City.' The New York Times, Sunday, January 7, 2001, pages 10 and 20, page 10.
David Hurst Thomas, 2000, Exploring Native North America (NY: Oxford University Press).
Victor W. Von Hagen, 1960, The World Of the Maya (NY: The New American Library).
Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, 1976, The Royal Road of the Inca (London: Gordon Cremonesi Ltd).
Stephen William, 1992, Who Got To America First? Anthropology Explored: The Best Of Smithsonian Anthro Notes, 1998, edited by Ruth O. Selig and Marilyn R. London.
Oscar Chara Zereceda, 1999, Machupicchu: An Inca University (Cusco-Perú: Imprenta del Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, Cusco).
APPROPRIATE WORLD WIDE WEB SITES
http://whc.unesco.org/heritage.htm [UNESCO World Heritage List]} "The 730 properties which the World Heritage Committee has inscribed on the World Heritage List (563 cultural, 144 natural and 23 mixed properties in 125 States Parties)."
http://whc.unesco.org/sites/198.htm [Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site} 1982]} "About 15 kilometres north of St Louis (Missouri), Cahokia provides the most complete source of information on pre-Colombian civilizations in the regions of the Mississippi. It is a striking example of a pre-urban sedentary structure that allows for the study of a kind of social organisation about which no written traces exist."
http://whc.unesco.org/sites/483.htm [Pre-Hispanic City of Chitchen-Itza} 1968]} "This site is one of the most impressive testimonies to the Mayan-Toltec civilization of the Yucatan (10th to 15th centuries). It contains some of the most outstanding examples of Central American architecture, combining Mayan construction techniques and Toltec sculpted decoration."
http://whc.unesco.org/sites/274.htm [Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, Peru} 1983]} "At 2,430 metres [7,972 feet] above sea level, on a mountain site of extraordinary beauty, in the middle of a tropical mountain forest, Machu Picchu was probably the most amazing urban creation of the Inca Empire at its height, with its giant walls, terraces and ramps, which appear as though they have been cut naturally in the continuous rock escarpments. The natural setting on the eastern slope of the Andes encompasses the upper Amazon basin with its rich diversity of species."
http://whc.unesco.org/sites/273.htm [City of Cuzco, Peru} 1983]} "Located in the Peruvian Andes, Cuzco developed, under the Inca ruler Pachacutec, into a complex urban centre with distinct religious and administrative functions. It was surrounded by clearly delineated areas for agricultural, artisan and industrial production. When the Spaniards conquered it in the 16th century, they maintained its structure but built Baroque churches and palaces over the ruins of the Indian city."
http://whc.unesco.org/sites/1bis.htm [Galapagos Islands} 1978, 2001]} "Situated in the Pacific Ocean some 1,000 km from the South American continent, these 19 islands and the surrounding marine reserve have been called a unique "living museum and showcase of evolution". Located at the confluence of three ocean currents, the Galápagos are a "melting pot" of marine species Ongoing seismic and volcanic activity reflects the processes that formed the islands. These processes, together with the extreme isolation of the islands, led to the development of unusual animal life &endash; such as the land iguana, the giant tortoise and the many types of finch &endash; that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution following his visit in 1835."
http://medicine.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/cahokia.html [Cahokia, Illinois]
http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/1492.exhibit/a-America/america.html [1492} What Came to be Called America Exhibit]
http://www.historylink101.com/1/mayan/mayan_research.htm [Mayan Research Page by History link 101]
http://www.rree.gob.pe/economia/comercio.htm [Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú]
http://homepages.which.net/~peru-embassy-uk/link.htm [Links to Perú]
http://ifip.com/Machupijchu1.htm [Machu Picchu]
http://www.machupicchu.org/library/ [The Machu Picchu Library]
http://www.travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html [US State Department - Services - Travel Warnings....]
http://www.cdc.gov/default.htm [Centers For Disease Control and Prevention]
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 1967, The Classical Maya. Honors Papers (Bellingham, WN), Volume 6: pages 26-31, [http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/1967UndergradMayaPaper.htm].
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 1997, Camping is Great But Nothing Beats Home: Across the USA in Pursuit of Educational Technology. Inside Chico State, September 26, page 2 [http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/inside/archive/97_09_25/tech.html] [or see: http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Camping1997Essay.html]
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2001a, Culture and Nature: Machu Pichu (Perú) and the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador), July 2000 [http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/WorldExplorationSpring2001.html].
Charles F. Urbanowicz & Sadie Urbanowicz, 2001b, Perú (Machu Picchu) and Galápagos Islands Visuals [http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/SoAmGIslands.html].
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2002, A "Story" (Vision of Nightmare?) of the Region in 2027 [http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/aStoryof2027.html]
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2003a, Some 'Sacred' Cities of America (Part II): Honolulu (Hawai'i), Las Vegas (Nevada), and Washington, D.C.). [For a presentation in Spring 2003 at the monthly lecture series entitled "World Explorations" sponsored by The Museum of Anthropology, California State University, Chico. It will eventually be located at: http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/WorldExplorationSpring2003.htm].
Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2003b, The Anthropology Forum: 1973->2003! [For a presentation in Spring 2003 at the Anthropology Forum at California State University, Chico. It will eventually be located at: http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/30YearsOfAnthroForums.html]
[~7,893 words]} 4 October 2002
to the Department of Anthropology;
to California State University, Chico.
[This page printed from http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/AnthroForum2002.htm]
Copyright © 2002; all rights reserved by Charles F. Urbanowicz
4 October 2002 by cfu