The First Migrants

The Isthmus of Panama is the gateway to South America, but because of the dense vegetation and the swampy terrain of the region south of the Panama Canal, archaeologists have struggled to understand how the first human migrants to South America, usually envisioned as hunters of big game, managed to survive their journey through an environment perceived as inhospitable to hunters. The current archaeological evidence, however, not only attests clearly to the presence of humans in South America during the last few millenniums of the Pleistocene, but also to the presence of human settlers in the forests of Panama. These humans, whose ancestors had traversed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia and spread across North America and down through Mexico and Central America, had adapted their technologies and their economies to a wide variety of environments, and they capably exploited the resources of the forests and savannas that existed in Panama in the Late Pleistocene.

The earliest evidence of human presence in Panama, which dates to about 11 000 years ago, is not as early as the earliest evidence from southern South America. Monte Verde, for example, a site in south-central Chile, dates to 12 500 years ago. To explain this discrepancy, some archaeologists have suggested that the first migrants to the continent practiced a maritime economy and settled along the shore. Rising sea levels in the Holocene would have erased the evidence of their campsites, except in instances where the shoreline was elevated or, as in the case of Monte Verde, when they established campsites away from the coast. Alternatively, of course, it may be that the population density of the first humans in Panama was not sufficient to leave lasting evidence of their presence.

The earliest cultural remains from Panama are not as yet firmly anchored in time. They consist of fluted spear points in the North American Clovis tradition and fishtail-fluted or Magellan tradition of South America, as well as assemblages of waste flakes from the manufacture of such points. The spear points have not yet been found in excavated contexts, but rather as surface finds on the eroded shores of the tropical lakes. The conclusion that they date to about 11 000 years ago is based on their distinctive shapes and manufacturing technology which are closely similar to the dated Clovis and Magellan traditions. The flake assemblages, however, are from excavated contexts and are a current focus of archaeological research in Panama, research which very likely will yield reliable radiocarbon dates. Fishtail points, many of which are fluted, have been found elsewhere in northern South America, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad. Most of the finds are from undated surface contexts. The El Inga site in the northern highlands of Ecuador is a rare exception. El Inga, however, lacks reliable stratigraphic context and appears to have been a workshop where stone points were manufactured over several thousand years, using volcanic glass from a nearby outcrop. Obsidian hydration analysis of some of the fishtail points suggests a date in the range of 9000 years ago. None of these sites, including those from Panama, has yielded clues about the subsistence practices of the early migrants. The inference that they were big-game hunters is based on the extrapolation of evidence from Patagonia where fishtail points have been found in association with Pleistocene megafauna.

The only evidence of the hunting of megafauna in northern South America comes from the site of Taima Taima, situated in the Maracaibo Basin of Venezuela. At Taima Taima, the remains of a mastodon were excavated and found to be in association with a stone spear point. The animal had apparently become stuck in a bog and was dispatched by humans. The point belongs to the El Jobo tradition, which is distinctively different from that of the fluted-fishtail points and limited in its distribution to northern Venezuela. Stomach contents of the mastodon dated to about 14 000 years ago, slightly older than Monte Verde. Taima Taima is hardly strong support for the idea that the first settlers of northern South America were big-game hunters - in fact, quite the opposite. It would seem that the people occupying the Maracaibo Basin in the Late Pleistocene were opportunistic hunters, who took advantage of a trapped mastodon to have a rare feast or temporarily fill their larder, much like the historically recorded peoples of the southern Chilean coast who, on the rare occurrence of a beached whale, seized the opportunity to gather together in multifamily groupings and practice communal rituals. In the absence of further evidence, we can only speculate about their food economy, but it is possible that the El Jobo hunters were exploiting a broad range of plant and animal foods and that the use of spear points to kill game constituted only a small part of their economic activities.

Further evidence of broad-spectrum hunter-gatherers in northern South America during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene has been found in western Ecuador and highland Colombia. In Ecuador, the Las Vegas culture, which dates from the Late Pleistocene to the Mid-Holocene, is characterized by a simple stone-tool technology. Rather than spending the time and effort to manufacture finished stone tools or weapons, the Las Vegans used an expedient technology. They collected the locally abundant cobbles and nodules of stone, smashed them, and then picked out flakes that could be used as tools. Most of the flakes were almost certainly used to make more refined tools out of wood, bone, tooth, and cane, none of which has survived in the warm tropical climate. Modern-day hunter-gatherers of the Neotropics, however, make a range of tools from organic materials, including cane arrow points that are sharp enough to cut through the thick, elephant-like hide of a tapir.

Evidence of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene human occupation in Colombia comes principally from the region surrounding Bogotii, the middle Magdalena valley, and the highland region near Popayan, and also in the Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article. The Abriense complex, first discovered at El Abra cave in the Sabana de Bogota, exemplifies a stone tool technology similar to that of Las Vegas, in that the tools are stone flakes, expediently removed from cobbles and used without further modification. Again, the assumption is that they were used to produce more refined implements and weapons from organic materials. Tequendamiense, a second stone industry dating to the late Pleistocene, has also been discovered in the region of Bogotii. The Tequendamiense industry made use of stone material imported from the Magdalena Valley and, in contrast to Abriense technology, used bifacial retouch to shape and sharpen the edge of flakes. Among the rolling hills and valleys of the middle Magdalena Valley, the probable source of the Tequendamiense raw material, assemblages with stone projectile points have been found. The points are triangular with a stemmed base, and do not resemble either the El Jobo or the fishtail points. In the Ecuadorian highlands at El Inga yet another point type, a long narrow point with a bulbous stem, occurs in apparent association with some of the fishtail points. In the terminal Pleistocene, then, there seems to have been a diversity of stone-working technologies and styles in northern South America.

Evidence of subsistence is absent or minimal at these Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites. Las Vegas, however, which is represented by more than 30 sites in the Santa Elena region of Ecuador, has yielded remains of bone and shell. The people were hunting, fishing, and collecting a very broad range of food resources that included near-shore and shoreline sea life, as well as land game, including deer, peccaries, giant anteaters, and several species of small rodents and birds. A large number of wild plants were without doubt also exploited, and some plants were undergoing morphological changes indicative of domestication. Direct evidence of plant foods has not survived in the early archaeological record of southwestern Ecuador, but microscopic bits of silica, known as phytoliths, have been recovered and identified with respect to the plant genera (and sometimes species) from which they derived (see Phytolith Analysis). The large size of squash and bottle gourd phytoliths suggests that both plants were being intensively cultivated by humans and well on their way toward domestication. Squash was probably initially exploited for its tasty, nutritious seeds. The phytoliths also indicate that Calathea allouia, a tropical root crop commonly known as lleren, was also being cultivated. It seems, then, that as early as the terminal Pleistocene, populations in the tropical regions of northwest South America were practicing horticulture as a complementary adjunct to their broad-spectrum hunting, fishing, and collecting economy.