die-hard myth from the times of “discovery” and “conquest,” to judge from a recent study conducted at the Institute for Social Research at University of Michigan. In it, experts state that 85% of Americans describe Columbus in a positive light and claim that he “discovered” America. Only 2% of the individuals surveyed said that Columbus could not have discovered a land that was already inhabited and, therefore, already discovered. Only 4% of those surveyed present Columbus as the man who brought diseases, death, and a grim future to Indigenous peoples.2 2 Mann (2005, 4). A couple of words about 1491, Mann’s book, and the first version of this chapter. His book, that addresses concerns that are similar to this chapter’s, and that even discusses some of the cases presented here (for example, Clovis and Cahokia), was published when this chapter was in print – hence the lack of references to 1491 in its first version.For a similar question about the educational system in Uruguay, see Verdesio (2001).
3 3 One of the most influential Native American intellectuals who opposed this narrative vehemently was Vine Deloria, Jr, who even made fun of it by titling the fourth chapter of his book Red Earth, White Lies (1997): “Low Bridge-Everybody Cross.” In the aforementioned book by Mann (2005), he tells the author: “There’s this perfect moment when the ice-free corridor magically appears just before the land bridge is covered by water … And the paleo-Indians, who are doing fine in Siberia, suddenly decide to sprint over to Alaska … And these are the same people who say traditional origin tales are improbable!” (2005, 163–164).
4 4 For a detailed discussion of these issues see the book by Dillehay (2000, XIII, passim). See also the earliest text that documents evidence about the coexistence of humans and species of the megafauna of the Pleistocene (a silex dart next to the remains of a Panochtus), by Florentino Ameghino 1918 [1880] vol. 2, 291).
5 5 BP means “before the present.” It is a way of measuring time without having to resort to Western religious markers such as the birth of Jesus Christ.
6 6 For a comprehensive discussion of the radiocarbon dates and the Clovis theory in general see the first chapter of Dillehay (2000).
7 7 Interestingly, one of the most vocal supporters of Clovis first, Tim Flannery, lives outside the US. However, he includes himself in the “Monte Verde skeptics” camp: “Although lacking a convincing explanation for the site, I am one of the Monte Verde (and thus pre-Clovis) skeptics, and from here on will write as if reports of a pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas result from dating or other interpretive error” (2001, 178). This is typical of the incredibly, unabashedly biased view – which includes very few arguments but very strong prejudices and pre-conceived ideas, as can be appreciated in the fragment quoted above–of the majority of (if not all) the Clovis-first supporters. He is one of the scholars who propose the Clovis fluted point as the first American innovation (182) and who suggests a parallel between said invention and other American cultural artifacts: “From Guatemala to the Dakotas, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast, the method of manufacture of Clovis points and other artefacts was uniform. Unless we count our own time, with its ubiquitous Coca-Cola cans and baseball caps, such cultural homogeneity has never been seen since in North America” (183).
8 8 Neo evolutionist conceptions (like the model developed by Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service) postulate a four-stage system for human societies: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states (1960). One of the reasons of its success, according to archaeologist Gavin Lucas, is that it offers a universal view of history in a unilinear, unidirectional sequence (2005, 13). In it, humankind seems to follow a single pattern of “progress” that goes from the simplest to the most complex forms of organization.
9 9 Major expert on early states, Norman Yoffee states that he, in his long career, has not been able to find a single case, either in the archaeological record or in the ethnohistorical one, where a chiefdom became a state – which is the kind of transformation expected by evolutionary narratives. On the contrary, in his research he has found that chiefdoms are invariably part of trajectories that are alternative to that of the state (2005, 31).
10 10 Even authors who, like Mann, are aware of the risks that the use of notions such as complexity entail, decide to use it anyway, albeit in a restricted sense (2005, 342). Maybe that explains his use of the expression “advanced” when he compares the degree of complexity or “civilization” achieved by different societies–say, the Maya and contemporary European societies (2005, 19).
11 11 For a detailed discussion of the place of indigeneity in Uruguay in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century, see Verdesio (2014, 2020a).
12 12 For a study on the new-age tourism attracted by Indigenous archaeological sites, see the classic ethnographic film by Jeffrey Himpele and Quetzil Castaneda (1997).
13 13 For a more detailed discussion of monumentality and some of the most influential studies on the subject produced by several disciplines, see Verdesio (2020b).
14 14 For an overview of the wide array of Andean cultures, see the books by Lumbreras (1989) and Moseley (2001). For research on Chavin de Huantar, see Burger (1995).
15 15 For a description of the difficult environmental conditions that peoples from the Puna, the Altiplano, the Coast, and the Amazon basin had to deal with, see Moseley (2001).
16 16 For an overview of the different stages (that is, arbitrary divisions proposed by archaeologists) in the history of human occupation of Mexico, see Coe (1994).
17 17 See the books by Emerson (1997) and by Pauketat and Emerson (1997), where the hypothesis that presents Cahokia as a paramount chiefdom is the point of departure of most of the analyses contained in those two volumes.
18 18 See also his ideas about this subject in a more recent book (2007).
19 19 This idea that America, before the arrival of Europeans, was a land whose nature was left undisturbed by human hands is shared by a significant number of modern-day scholars (Lentz 2000, 1).
20 20 There are estimates that establish the number of mounds and forest islands at 10,000 in the Bolivian Amazon (Erickson 2006, 257).
21 21 Erickson says: “The nature/culture dichotomy … and the anthropological concept of human adaptation have limited our understanding of the Amazonian environment” (2006, 265).
22 22 In the field of anthropology, a few hyphened ethnographies have emerged: collaborative, militant, engaged, and others (see Rodríguez 2019), while in the field of archaeology, there is a significant number of attempts at collaboration with Indigenous peoples (for a recent reflection on those cases, see Verdesio forthcoming 2021).
References
1 Acosta, José de. Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Trans. Frances López-Morillas. Ed. Jane E. Mangan. Introduction and commentary by Walter D. Mignolo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
2 Ameghino, Florentino. La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata. Vol. 2. Buenos Aires: La Cultura Argentina, 1918 [1880].
3 Bracco, Roberto. “Dataciones 14C en sitios con elevación,” Revista Antropología 1/1 (1990): 11–17.
4 ———. “Desarrollo cultural y evolución ambiental en la región Este del Uruguay,” in Ediciones del Quinto Centenario, Vol. I. Eds. Renzo Pi Hugarte. et al. Montevideo: Universidad de la República, 1992, 43–73.
5 Burger, Richard L. Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization. London: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
6 Byrd, Kathleen. The Poverty Point Culture. Local Manifestations, Subsistence Practices, and Trade
