1. Was the megafauna an important resource for the human groups that lived in the Colombian Caribbean during the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene?
- Author
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Luján, Catalina María Zorro
- Subjects
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CARIBBEAN Americans , *ETHNOLOGY , *PLEISTOCENE-Holocene boundary , *HUNTER-gatherer societies , *HUMAN geography , *STATISTICAL research , *GROUND penetrating radar - Abstract
The role of the megafauna in the subsistence of human groups who came to America and specifically to Colombia has been a subject of intense debate. So far, it seems that in the tropics the first Americans did not have subsistence systems specialized in hunting these kind of animals. For that reason, it may be possible to think that the answer to the question proposed in the title is negative. However, it is necessary to clarify that this tentative answer has no archaeological support due to lack of research on the Paleoindian period in the Colombian Caribbean. This lack of research is not related to the unattractiveness of the area. In fact, because of its geographical location at the southern end of the corridor that connects the north and the south of the continent, and of the great ecological diversity that characterizes it today, as well as at the time referred to in this article, the Colombian Caribbean is a highly interesting region for researches aimed to clarify the processes of settlement of America and to improve the understanding of the ways of life of the first human groups that occupied the continent. The discretion of the traces left by these nomadic groups and the difficulty of accessing the stratigraphic levels containing the materials of the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene, have been, probably, the main factors that have discouraged the attempts to deepen the understanding of processes that took place in that region at those periods. Therefore, if the aim is to study the Paleoindian period and in particular the relationships established between the megafauna and the human groups it is necessary to develop a methodology to locate on the one hand human settlement patterns showing land use and, on the other, the remains of the Pleistocene-Holocene fauna. The execution of a Systematic Regional Survey is proposed as a first methodological alternative as it allows documenting the sectors of a particular area in order to understand the patterns of its occupation. Because of the depth of the Pleistocene levels, surface collecting or shovel probes, frecuently used during the realization of the surveys, are not an option. In these conditions, a GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) could be employed to detect evidence buried in the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013