America Before

by Graham Hancock

  The evidence clearly indicates that the lowland tropical forests were not extensively replaced by savanna vegetation during the glacial periods, but rather that the forests dominated throughout.2

  In the following year, 2001, a study published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology concluded:

  In the later Pleistocene the whole of the Amazon lowlands were under closed-canopy forest throughout all stages of a glacial cycle, contrary to the biogeographical consensus of the last thirty years.3

  A 2003 study published in the journal Geology reinforced this view:

  The current tropical rainforest vegetation has been a permanent and dominant feature of the Amazon River watershed over the past 70 k.y. Specifically, we found no evidence for the development of large savannas that had been previously postulated as indicators of increased glacial aridity in Amazonia.4

  A further study, published in November 2004 in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, investigated the Hill of Six Lakes in the Northwest Brazilian Amazon and concluded:

  The data indicate the continuous presence of mesic forest throughout the last ice age. … Even during lowstand episodes, pollen is well preserved and provides a clear signal of uninterrupted forest cover.5

  But now let’s jump forward to 2013, when a follow-up study of the Hill of Six Lakes, published in Quaternary Sciences Reviews, lamented the great length of time that “Six Lakes was erroneously used as an emblematic locality to illustrate the permanence of the rainforest in the Amazon basin”6 because:

  all of the proxies seem to indicate that the present-day vegetation dates back to the middle-late Holocene, around 6 cal ka BP.7

  And a year later, in July 2014, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reduced the inception of the present-day forest cover of some parts of the Amazon to just 2,000 years ago or less. Focusing on southern Amazonia, the study concluded that:

  the inhabitants exploited a naturally open savanna landscape that they maintained around their settlement despite the climatically driven rainforest expansion that began ~2,000 years ago across the region.8

  Last, in Quaternary Science Reviews of October 1, 2017, Professor Diana Fontes and Professor Renato Cordeiro published a study titled “Paleoenvironmental Dynamics in South Amazonia, Brazil, during the Last 35,000 Years Inferred from Pollen and Geochemical Records of Lago do Saci.” Their conclusion, although they state that “the rainforest always existed in this region,” is that it underwent “expansion and regression” over time.9

  There are many other papers I could cite reflecting the shifting consensus, but I’m sure the reader has got my point by now. When leading scientific authorities are in such a state of disagreement that prevailing paradigms abruptly change every decade or two, we cannot be at all sure of the solidity and merits of the current paradigm—according to which the Amazon rainforest in its present form is less than 8,000 years old, and in some areas less than 2,000 years old.

  Reviewing the literature, I felt that the conclusion of Fontes and Cordeiro, that there was always rainforest in the area they studied but that it was subject to periodic expansions and contractions, might help to explain why consensus on this subject has been so elusive. The Amazon basin is, after all, a vast and diverse region encompassing more than 7 million square kilometers, of which approximately 5.5 million square kilometers are presently covered by rainforest.10 The figures only become meaningful by comparison. The whole of India, with a total area of 2.97 million km2, is less than half the size of the Amazon basin, but Australia, at 7.68 million km2 is bigger, as are China (9.38 million km2), Canada (9.09 million km2), the United States (9.15 million km2), and Europe (10.18 million km2).11 All in all, then, it’s fair to say that what the Amazon confronts us with is a truly gigantic landmass, on a scale similar to many of the world’s largest countries and regions, extending for thousands of kilometers from north to south and thousands of kilometers from east to west. It’s unrealistic to suppose that, across such enormous distances over great expanses of time, the climate and environment in all areas would always remain the same. Of course there would be significant variations among the different regions and from epoch to epoch, and thus a danger of overenthusiastic extrapolation from particular instances to general conclusions.

  On March 12, 2018, therefore, I contacted Renato Cordeiro about the whole issue of the shifting consensus and what conclusions I might legitimately draw from it. “I must confess,” I told him, “that expert opinion on the Ice Age Amazon is very confusing and contradictory! I want to try to sort out the facts for my readers, as those facts are understood now, if they are indeed subject to any kind of consensus today.”12

  Professor Cordeiro teaches geoeconomics at Brazil’s Universidad Federal Fluminense. His rather technical reply, set out in full in the note, essentially restated the conclusions of his 2017 paper, that the Amazon basin has always contained rainforests, that the gallery forests along the rivers remained “relatively well preserved” even in drier periods, but that in other areas tree cover has undergone considerable fluctuation over time.13

  It was as close as I was able to get to some kind of answer to what I had thought would be a simple question, namely, what sort of climate, environment, vegetation, and trees characterized the Amazon during the Ice Age? The scholars did not agree among themselves and many different pictures had been painted, but perhaps this was largely because of the immensity of the region and the complex, constantly changing, and often contradictory nature of the data.

  Indeed, there is only one thing I have been able to find that all the involved scientists appear to be in complete agreement on, and this is that the region was significantly cooler during the Ice Age—5 or 6 degrees C cooler—than it is now.14 The year-round average temperature of the Amazon rainforest today is 80 degrees F (26.6 degrees C) so, if anything, a reduction of 5 degrees to 21.6 degrees C/75 degrees F would have been a bonus for prospective settlers.

  So … forests? Savanna? A mixture of both? Like so much else about the ancient Amazon, it seems there is no certain answer.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man’s Recorded History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

  2. Plato, Timaeus and Critias (Penguin Books, 1977), 131.

  3. Ibid., 37.

  4. See, for example, Lewis Spence, Atlantis in America (Ernest Benn, 1925); Frank Joseph, Atlantis in Wisconsin: New Revelations about the Sunken City (Galde Press, 1995); Ivor Zapp and George Erikson, Atlantis in America: Navigators of the Ancient World (Adventures Unlimited Press, 1998).

  PART I

  1: AN ENCHANTED REALM

  1. “Around 12,000 years ago” is, of course, an approximation, a ballpark figure that I will use throughout to allow for margins of error in the data that are constantly being adjusted in the light of ongoing research. From the point of view of my argument, 1,000 years in either direction makes no difference—that is, the point is that the Americas have been isolated from the rest of the world for a VERY long time and my position does not alter whether that time is 13,000 years, 12,000 years, or 11,000 years. Recent work suggests that the Bering land bridge may not have been fully inundated until around 11,000 years ago. See M. Jakobsson et al., “Post-Glacial Flooding of the Bering Land Bridge Dated to 11 cal ka BP Based on New Geophysical and Sediment Records,” Climate of the Past 13, no. 8 (2017), 991. Also see p. 105 of B. M. Pelto et al, “Oceanographic and Climatic Change in the Bering Sea, Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene,” Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 33, no. 1 (2018), 93–111.

  2. Robert V. Fletcher et al, “Serpent Mound: A Fort Ancient Icon?” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 21 (Spring 1996), 105.

  3. Keith A. Milam, “A Revised Diameter for Serpent Mound Impact Crater in Southern Ohio,” Ohio Journal of Science (Ohio Academy of Science) 110, no. 3 (June 2010), 34–43; see also William F. Romain, “LiDAR Views of the Serp
ent Mound Impact Crater,” Current Research in Ohio Archaeology (2011), www.ohioarchaeology.org.

  4. See, for example, C. Bull, C. E. Corbato, and J. C. Zahn, “Gravity Survey of the Serpent Mound Area, Southern Ohio,” Ohio Journal of Science 67, no. 6 (1967), 359.

  5. Mark C. Hansen, “Return to Sunken Mountain: The Serpent Mound Cryptoexplosion Structure,” Ohio Geology (Winter 1994), 1–7.

  6. Richard W. Carlton et al., “Discovery of Microscopic Evidence for Shock Metamorphism at the Serpent Mound Structure, South-central Ohio: Confirmation of an Origin by Impact,” Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters 162, issues 1–4 (October 1998), 184. Also see, for example, Andrew Schedl, “Applications of Twin Analysis to Studying Meteorite Impact Structures,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 244 (2006), 530–540, and geologist Mark Baranoski cited in Bill Meyer, “Unearthing Clues at Serpent Mound: Geologists Find Evidence of a Meteor Crash Near Prehistoric Monument in Adams County,” Plain Dealer, April 12, 2009, online here: http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2009/04/unearthing_clues_at_serpent_mo.html.

  7. Hansen, “Return to Sunken Mountain,” 4. See also p. 1.

  8. See, for example, Schedl, “Applications of Twin Analysis to Studying Meteorite Impact Structures,” 530.

  9. See, for example, Romain, “LiDAR Views of the Serpent Mound Impact Crater,” 4.

  10. Mark Baranoski cited in Bill Meyer, “Unearthing Clues at Serpent Mound: Geologists Find Evidence of a Meteor Crash Near Prehistoric Monument in Adams County,” Plain Dealer, April 12, 2009, http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2009/04/unearthing_clues_at_serpent_mo.html.

  11. Raymond Anderson, cited in ibid.

  12. See, for example, D. R. Watts et al., “The Serpent Mound Magnetic Anomaly: Fingerprint of a Meteorite Impact?” Online Journal for E&P Geoscientists 90930 (1998), http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/abstracts/html/1998/eastern/abstracts/1776a.htm.

  13. William Romain, “Terrestrial Observations of the Serpent Mound,” Ohio Archaeologist 38, no. 2 (Spring 1988), 15–16.

  14. Hansen, “Return to Sunken Mountain,” 2.

  15. Ross Hamilton, The Mystery of the Serpent Mound (North Atlantic Books, 2001).

  16. The steps have since been removed. Personal communication from Ross Hamilton, August 24, 2018.

  17. Robert C. Glotzhober and Bradley T. Lepper, Serpent Mound: Ohio’s Enigmatic Effigy Mound (Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, 1994), 3.

  18. Charles C. Willoughby, “The Serpent Mound of Adams County, Ohio,” American Anthropologist, New Series 21, no. 2 (April–June 1919), 157–158.

  19. Herman Bender, “The Spirit of Manitou Across America,” Archaeology Experiences Spirituality? ed. Dragos Gheorghiu (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 143.

  20. Ibid., 143–144.

  21. In 1900 Harvard’s Peabody Museum, which had formerly managed the Serpent Mound site, deeded it to the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society (more recently the Ohio Historical Society, now the Ohio History Connection), http://worldheritageohio.org/serpent-mound/. In its 2015 Historic Site Management Plan for Serpent Mound, the following statement is made by the Ohio History Connection on pp. 41–42: “There is debate as to the number of solar, lunar, and planetary alignments that were intended by the original architects of Serpent Mound. Until there is additional study and agreement regarding these other possible alignments, trees will not be moved or trimmed to accommodate viewing them. Tree shade is critical for visitors’ enjoyment of the site.”

  22. Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1848, reprinted and republished by the Smithsonian, with an introduction by David J. Meltzer, in 1998), 97.

  23. Ibid., 97.

  24. Ibid., 97–98.

  25. Ibid., 98.

  2: A JOURNEY IN TIME

  1. J. T. Faith and T. A. Surovell, “Synchronous Extinction of North America’s Pleistocene Mammals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 49 (2009), 20641–20645. See p. 20641: “Results favor an extinction mechanism that is capable of wiping out up to 35 genera across a continent in a geologic instant.” Faith and Surovell give dates in uncalibrated radiocarbon years (rather than in calendar years) as occupying a broader range between roughly 12,000 and 10,000 radiocarbon years before the present. Please note that “radiocarbon years” and actual calendar years drift further apart the farther back in time we go, hence the introduction of techniques of calibration.

  2. Ibid. See also R. B. Firestone et al., “Evidence for an Extraterrestrial Impact 12,900 Years Ago That Contributed to the Megafaunal Extinctions and the Younger Dryas Cooling,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 41 (October 9, 2007), 16016.

  3. M. P. Pearson, “The Sarsen Stones of Stonehenge,” Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 127, no. 3 (2016), 363–369, esp. 364.

  4. M. Pitts, “Stonehenge Special,” in British Archaeology (Council for British Archaeology) (2018), 10–12, https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/62211/spread/1.

  5. Ibid.

  6. The Sphinx/yardang theory was first proposed by Farouk El-Baz, research professor and director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, in “Gifts of the Nile,” Archaeology 54, no. 2 (March/April 2001), 42–45. See also Ted A. Maxwell of the Smithsonian Institution, “Inspired by Nature,” Archaeology (November/December 2001), 6.

  7. El-Baz, “Gifts of the Nile,” 45.

  8. Clarke Hardman Jr. and Marjorie H. Hardman, “The Great Serpent and the Sun,” Ohio Archaeologist 37, no. 3 (Fall 1987), 34–39.

  9. Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1848, reprinted and republished by the Smithsonian, with an introduction by David J. Meltzer, in 1998), 97.

  10. Hardman and Hardman, “The Great Serpent and the Sun,” 35.

  11. William F. Romain, “Serpent Mound Revisited,” Ohio Archaeologist 37, no. 4 (Winter 1987), 5.

  12. The Astronomical Almanac (2018), “Glossary: Obliquity”: http://asa.usno.navy.mil/SecM/Glossary.html#_O.

  13. J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, and N. J. Shackleton, “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” Science 194, no. 4270 (December 10, 1976), 1125.

  14. Anthony F. Aveni, Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico (University of Texas Press, 1980), 103.

  15. Romain, “Serpent Mound Revisited,” 5. Based on Anthony F. Aveni, “Astronomical Tables Intended for Use in Astro-archaeological Studies,” American Antiquity 37 (4), (1972), 531–540, and assuming 1-degree horizon elevation and observation of the center of the sun.

  16. Robert Fletcher and Terry Cameron, “Serpent Mound: A New Look at an Old Snake-in-the-Grass,” Ohio Archaeologist 38, no. 1 (Winter 1988).

  17. Romain, “Serpent Mound Revisited,” 5.

  18. William F. Romain, Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands (University of Akron Press, 2000), 247.

  19. Ibid., 248.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Robert V. Fletcher et al., “Serpent Mound: A Fort Ancient Icon?” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 21(Spring 1996), 105.

  22. Ibid., 105–143.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. The process is reflected in uncritical coverage given to the new dates in the archaeological press. See, for example, Jessica E. Saraceni, “Redating Serpent Mound,” Archaeology 49, no. 5 (November/December 1996), https://archive.archaeology.org/9611/newsbriefs/serpentmound.html.

  26. See, for example, Bill Meyer, “Unearthing Clues at Serpent Mound: Geologists Find Evidence of a Meteor Crash Near Prehistoric Monument in Adams County,” Plain Dealer, April 12, 2009: “Lepper has new evidence of the mound’s age. Originally it was thought to have been built sometime between 800 BC and AD 100. That estimate was moved up after two pieces of charcoal recently collected at the mound were subjected to radiocarbon dating. ‘It came out to around 1070 A.D,�
� Lepper said.” http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2009/04/unearthing_clues_at_serpent_mo.html.

  27. See image of Serpent Mound visitors’ information plaque, by “Stetshep,” filed on Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpent_Mound_Plaque.jpg.

  28. Fletcher et al., “Serpent Mound: A Fort Ancient Icon?” 105.

  29. Ibid., 115.

  30. Ibid., 122.

  31. Ibid., 124–125.

  32. Ibid., 132.

  33. Ibid., 133.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Cited in Saraceni, “Redating Serpent Mound.”

  36. Cited in Meyer, “Unearthing Clues at Serpent Mound.”

  37. William F. Romain, “LiDAR Views of the Serpent Mound Impact Crater,” Current Research in Ohio Archaeology 2011(www.ohioarchaeology.org), 1.

  38. Edward W. Herrmann et al., “A New Multistage Construction Chronology for the Great Serpent Mound, USA,” Journal of Archaeological Science 50 (October 2014), 119.

  39. Ibid., 121.

  40. Ibid., 122.

  41. Bradley T. Lepper, “On the Age of Serpent Mound: A Reply to Romain and Colleagues,” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 43, no. 1 (February 2018), 62–75. And in the same issue, pp. 76–88, see William F. Romain and Edward W. Herrmann, “Rejoinder to Lepper Concerning Serpent Mound.”

  42. See, for example, ancient American snake symbolism documented in R. H. Hall, An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual (University of Illinois Press, 1997), 92: “In the ritual language of the Winnebago Medicine Rite we know that reincarnation was referred to as ‘skin shedding.’ This is easy to understand from the example of serpents that shed their skin periodically and emerge symbolically reborn. It is but one short step to actually shedding the skin of a sacrificial victim to represent rebirth in the manner of Xipe Totec.” See also S. Linda and D. Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (William Morrow, 1990), 359. The Mayan serpent similarly served as a symbol of birth and renewal.