Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert, joined today by Sarah Downy. Hey. Sarah, Hey, Katie,
Speaker 1: Since you're the Green editor, I thought this was a
Speaker 1: good question for you. Did climate change create a mysterious
Speaker 1: civilization five thousand years ago? We think it did, and
Speaker 1: we think that because of some fish bones we found
Speaker 1: in a desert. Yeah, so let's start with what they
Speaker 1: did find. In two thousand one, archaeologists in the Norte
Speaker 1: Chico region of Peru found fish bones in a desert
Speaker 1: along with these giant stone mountains, but not that giant.
Speaker 1: If you were just going on the size of the
Speaker 1: mounds alone, they don't seem super impressive. They're no more
Speaker 1: than eighty five ft tall. But still there's something important
Speaker 1: out them. And what would that be, Sah. They're really
Speaker 1: really old, being older than the Pyramids, old older than
Speaker 1: the Pyramids, much older than any of the Incan or
Speaker 1: Mayan pyramids too, at least by a thousand years. So
Speaker 1: it could be that we've found the first complex civilization
Speaker 1: in the America's period. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what these archaeologists found and why it matters.
Speaker 1: So we've got these massive man made structures, not too massive,
Speaker 1: but you know, massive seashells and fish bones in the
Speaker 1: middle of a desert. Some anthropomorphic figurines which were found
Speaker 1: in the city, and circular plazas and houses built from adobe, wooden, poles, cane,
Speaker 1: and mud. But the seashells and fish bones are the
Speaker 1: big part of the mystery here. We're really far away
Speaker 1: from water, there's no vegetation. It's ten miles from the ocean.
Speaker 1: So how did they get there? Right? And why would
Speaker 1: there be a civilization around a place where there is
Speaker 1: no water and no vegetation and we are calls it
Speaker 1: a moonscape. That is a good and if you look
Speaker 1: at pictures, if you if you look up north to
Speaker 1: Chico online, you'll see it does not look like it's
Speaker 1: part of this world. The theory goes that fishermen on
Speaker 1: the coast of Peru survived on the sea and they
Speaker 1: were hunter gatherers. And I think of hunter gatherers, I
Speaker 1: usually think of people picking berries, but or caveman hunting
Speaker 1: mammoth well exactly, but you can also be the kind
Speaker 1: of hunter gatherer that gathers up clams and muscles on
Speaker 1: the seaside of Peru. But in three thousand BC, their
Speaker 1: whole lifestyle changed, and that's because the El Nino regular
Speaker 1: weather event started to shift up a little. El Nino
Speaker 1: brings heavy rains and warms up the ocean around South America,
Speaker 1: and it's a cyclical event. It usually is tied to
Speaker 1: the hurricane season and happens every couple of years. But
Speaker 1: when the El Neno cycles started picking up, it started
Speaker 1: to really mess with the climate of North Chico or
Speaker 1: the coastal area right there. There was a lot more
Speaker 1: rain and the ocean temperature went up, which was the
Speaker 1: kicker because all the cold water fish left and the
Speaker 1: clams and muscles died, and there was also a lot
Speaker 1: of rain and flooding. So they decided to move inland,
Speaker 1: being the enterprising hunter gatherers that they were. But that
Speaker 1: changed everything. So climate change had made this area, the
Speaker 1: Nartichico area, into something more fertile because there was so
Speaker 1: much more rain. Yeah, and it was easy to irrigate.
Speaker 1: People actually still have simple irrigation systems in the area.
Speaker 1: So they learned how to irrigate. They started cultivating crops
Speaker 1: like squash, cotton, beans, and avocados, and they traded them
Speaker 1: for fish like anchovies with the coastal people, and so
Speaker 1: that's how we ended up with fish bones in the
Speaker 1: middle of the desert. Mystery once solved. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a symbiotic relationship between the fisherman who remained at the
Speaker 1: coast and the people living in these centralized cities. Because
Speaker 1: they were growing cotton weaving nuts, they could trade those
Speaker 1: to the fishermen they in return would get fish, and
Speaker 1: it all worked out and it was the start of
Speaker 1: civilization in the Americas, which is a pretty big accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Were these little hunter gatherers in Peru. So they've got
Speaker 1: flourishing trade and they start building and because of this
Speaker 1: kind of food production and trade, they need all more
Speaker 1: centralized society, so they all start building houses and developing
Speaker 1: a government and possibly even developing an organized religion, which
Speaker 1: is why we ended up with those little anthropomorphic figurines.
Speaker 1: Not to mention building these mounds, which are they're actually
Speaker 1: described as birthday cakes. Yeah, big stone birthday ye kind
Speaker 1: of like the side of that. Uh. They covered them
Speaker 1: in plaster and would paint them colors and probably had
Speaker 1: a religion and we're had all the hallmarks of civilization
Speaker 1: except a few, right, right, They didn't The things that
Speaker 1: the archaeologists didn't find where perhaps more significant almost They
Speaker 1: didn't find pottery. They didn't find weapons or art or
Speaker 1: dependency on a staple grain crop. The lack of ceramics
Speaker 1: seems especially odd to me that you could have the
Speaker 1: technology to build these enormous mounds. They actually wove baskets
Speaker 1: out of reads to carry these huge loads of rocks
Speaker 1: and plaster to cover them, and it took a lot
Speaker 1: of energy, and they were constantly remodeling and replastering things.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like they just built them and that
Speaker 1: was the end of it. It was an ongoing labor
Speaker 1: of love. It seems like ceramics would be born from that.
Speaker 1: But they haven't found a single shard of pottery anywhere.
Speaker 1: And because of that, some people say you wouldn't consider
Speaker 1: it a civilization at all, because ceramics is one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of a civilization, as well as urbanization, you know,
Speaker 1: having urban centers, which this one maybe did and maybe didn't.
Speaker 1: It had meeting they did, which is part of the
Speaker 1: reason for those those sunken plazas. Um They also might
Speaker 1: have had a proto writing system called quiepoo, which is
Speaker 1: it looks like not on strings basically could have just
Speaker 1: been a mnemonic device, but something some kind of rudimentary
Speaker 1: writing perhaps, And they might have also had music. Several
Speaker 1: flutes have been found. And we have a great quote
Speaker 1: from Professor Winifred Creamer, who is an anthropologist at Northern
Speaker 1: Illinois University, and she said, the people who built the
Speaker 1: first of these structures had no model to go by,
Speaker 1: no precedent to use in building a monument. It's a
Speaker 1: bit like deciding to build a functioning spaceship in your
Speaker 1: backyard and succeeding. I like that. I love that because, seriously,
Speaker 1: think about it, you had absolutely no model. This is
Speaker 1: the very start of civilization, seeing the pyramids and seeing
Speaker 1: the Incan in mind pyramids. So these little hills don't
Speaker 1: look like much to our eyes, but imagine if you'd
Speaker 1: never seen something like that. And the other cool thing
Speaker 1: is that, of course this is the exact place where
Speaker 1: we stopped being hunter gatherers and started forming into societies.
Speaker 1: And the civilization may have spawned other Andean cultures, and
Speaker 1: it seems like some of those traditions went out across
Speaker 1: South America as well, definitely, but like most civilizations, this
Speaker 1: did not last forever. They were around for about a
Speaker 1: thousand years before there was another shift in climate that
Speaker 1: made irrigation too difficult, so they might have abandoned their
Speaker 1: little complex of cities, but they did adapt, so presumably
Speaker 1: these people lived on to start up new civilizations or
Speaker 1: at least new communities. Right, And they're not the only
Speaker 1: civilization that was affected by this sort of climate shift.
Speaker 1: Some people say that China's Tang dynasty, which fell in
Speaker 1: nine oh seven a d may have been also because
Speaker 1: of climate shift, which altered the monsoon season. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: around the same time, oddly enough, on the other side
Speaker 1: of the world, the Mayan civilization started to fall, and
Speaker 1: people have linked that to a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: By the end of the Mayan civilization, they were in
Speaker 1: big trouble for many reasons, but the point one comes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had some problems by then, but a series of
Speaker 1: droughts might have been what detimin. They were already maxed
Speaker 1: out for the food they could grow for the size
Speaker 1: of their population, and you have a drought for a
Speaker 1: few years and you don't know when it's going to end.
Speaker 1: That's it. When that was the point in agriculture based
Speaker 1: society in the face of those kinds of changes, has
Speaker 1: to adapt where it ends. So it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to think about in the face of water shortages, just
Speaker 1: the ways of civilization has to adapt to move on.
Speaker 1: And that's the final word from our green So if
Speaker 1: you'd like to check out the article did climate change
Speaker 1: create a mysterious civilization you five thousand years ago? And
Speaker 1: also check out the Stuffy Misston History Class blog and
Speaker 1: Sarah's Green blog, go to our homepage at www dot
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