Re: Vine Deloria (Louis Proyect)

["Roland Chrisjohn" <rchrisjo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 10 Aug 2002 23:45:11 -0400
 nancybrumback@xxxxxx wrote:

> For about 8-10 years, I have been studying the human >impact on the environment. The question of the extinction >of the large mammals on the american continent has been >controversial. I hoped I would find something that would >reinforce my first "take" on the question -- that it was >climatic changes that killed them off, not the Paleo >Indians, especially since I have seen fewer and fewer >aarguments for the latter since I started researching this.

Ancient drought lasted 3 millennia, by LORNA THACKERAY of 
The Billings (Montana) Gazette, November, 2001

     Around 11,200 years ago in what is now Carter 
County, the first Montanans made their living by 
slaughtering giant bison, now extinct. They left their 
tools and butchered animal bones for archaeologists to 
discover at what is now called the Mill Iron Site. The 
earliest Montanans go as far back in prehistory as 
Paleo-Indians almost anywhere in the Great Plains. They 
appeared as the last ice age began to recede and thrived 
here, following large herds that fed on abundant 
vegetation. Evidence of their presence can be found in 
distinctive spear points and tools scattered in various 
layers of time all over Eastern Montana prairies. Then 
about 8,000 to 7,500 years ago, something happened. In the 
archaeological record, evidence of human habitation 
disappears, and it doesn?t reappear for another 3,000 
years. "We just don't find sites of that age out on the 
plains in Montana," said archaeologist Steve Aaberg of 
Billings. "I can?t think of one site from that period." 
Scientists think that what depopulated Eastern Montana and 
much of the Great Plains was drought ? drought more severe 
than we can imagine today and of much longer duration. 
Sand dunes formed in parts of Montana during that long 
age. Much of the West became desert. The era is known 
today at the "altithermal." Analysis of pollen samples 
from the time suggests that vegetation changed to more 
drought-resistant plants and sagebrush, Aaberg said. 
Responding to the inhospitable conditions, the human 
population disappeared from the plains. "The 
archaeological record tells us there were lots of sites of 
that (altithermal) age once you get into the foothills and 
mountains," Aaberg said. "They were a much more attractive 
place to live then. Maybe some of the big river valleys, 
too, although we haven?t seen any evidence of that in 
Montana." The Black Hills of South Dakota and the Cypress 
Hills in Canada have sites from that age, indicating that 
people displaced by the climate change may have found 
refuge there. Aaberg said archaeologists like to think 
that some of Eastern Montana's island mountain ranges 
could have served the same purpose, but so far no evidence 
has turned up. "What we think happened was the grass cover 
was so reduced, the bison population were reduced and 
people basically left the plains," he said. There probably 
were periods during the altithermal when the weather 
broke, allowing for a few years or decades of green 
vegetation. But the bottom line is that the drought 
persisted over the Great Plains for three millennia.

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