by Peter Watson
Vega, Lope de, 524
vegeculture, 105, 107, 112, 114 see also root and tuber crops
vegetarianism, 351
Vegatation Goddess, 163
Velikovsky, Immanuel, 155
Venezuela, xxvii, 206, 218
Venice, 451
Arsenal, 454
Venus, 155, 374, 395, 421, 422, 435–6, 469, 473, 474
Venus figurines, 77, 119–21, 123, 133, 136
Venus of Monruz, 121
Veracruz, 216, 230, 301, 306, 423, 429, 433
Verrano, John W., 429
vetch, 125, 130
vicuna, 148, 313, 512, 539
Vietnam, 32, 39
Vikings, 157
vilca, 37
Vindha Hills, 34
violence, 160, 413–34, 482–5 see also human sacrifice
Viracocha, 490
Viracocha Inca, 488
virility, 131–2
Virola, 204, 317
Vishnu, 98, 292
Vision Serpent, 391, 394, 416, 417, 419, 471
Vitebsky, Piers, 50, 52
Vitoria, Francisco de, 526, 530
volcanic winter, 24, 25, 31
volcanoes/volcanic activity, 24–5, 40, 92–5, 121, 154, 160, 161, 180, 234, 235, 236, 371, 388, 390, 435, 443, 475–6, 484–5, 504–5, 512, 513, 514, 517
Volga, 463
Voltaire, 534
Vritra, 328
Waber craters, 156, 157
Wacheqsa River, 319
Wadi an-Natuf, 130
wagons, 280, 281
Waika, 204
Waira-jirca, 311
Wales, 158
Wang, Sijia, 9, 10, 13, 17, 65
Wangi, 44
wapiti, 65, 71, 75
warfare, 280, 281–3, 285, 296, 298–9, 325, 335, 336, 338, 358–60, 362, 395, 400, 402, 420, 422, 432–3, 436, 437, 442, 443, 471, 477, 478, 484, 486, 494, 502, 509, 515, 517
Warka, 268
Warren, Peter, 161
warring brothers, myth of, 44, 45
warring states, period of the, 337–8, 339
Washington, 201
water buffalo, 111
water cults, 306
water lilies, 428
water mill, 455
Waters, Michael R., 70, 71, 73
watery chaos myths, 38–9, 43
Watlings Island, xxviii
Wayne, Robert K., 122, 133
weapons, 296, 338, 359 see also names of weapons
weather see climate/weather
Weatherford, Jack, 378, 379
weaving, 143, 148, 311–12, 454
Weiss, Gerald, 209, 210
West Indies, 107
West Virginia, 241
wheat, 105, 106, 108, 109, 115, 125, 126, 173
Wheatley, Paul, 255, 262, 263, 264
wheel, 112, 141, 142, 181, 280, 281, 285, 455, 509
White, Randall, 120
Whitehead, A.N., 444, 446, 459
Whittington, Michael, 423, 428
whooping cough, 542
Wilbert, Johannes, 218
wildfires, 75, 76
Windover, 242
wine, 113, 172, 173–4, 178, 507
Winnebago, 42
Winter, Marcus, 484
Wisconsin, 218, 239, 408
Wisconsin stage of glaciation, 57
witchcraft, 211
wolves, 60, 66, 67, 405
Woman, 131, 149, 154
wool, 140, 143, 144, 145, 289, 290, 381, 385, 455, 456, 465, 501, 511
Woolley, Leonard, 25, 33, 159
word of god, 43, 44, 46
World Tree, 222, 284, 390, 391, 393, 396, 413, 435
Wrangham, Robert, 235
Wright, Ronald, 530
writing, 100–1, 113, 255, 272–6, 357, 366, 367, 368, 437–40 see also alphabet
Xenophanes, 347, 377
Xenophon, 375
Xerxes, 362
Xia dynasty, 89
Xibalba, 200, 390, 426
Xipe Totec, 475, 479, 483, 514
Xochicalco, 470, 472
Xochipala, 205
Xochipilli, 199
Xolotl, 439
yagé/yajé, 177, 197–8, 210–11, 212
Yahweh, 340, 341–2, 343, 344, 350
yaks, 111
yams, 115
Yamuna River, 35, 36
Yang, Master, 339
Yangshao culture, 88
Yangtze (Chiang Jiang) delta, 31, 104
Yangtze River, 103
Yangtze Valley, 114
Yao, 335
yaravecs, 215
Yaxchilan, 196, 233, 416–17, 418, 419
Yax K’uk Mo’, 396
Yax Moch Xoc, 394
Y-chromosome, 3, 4, 5, 8
yeast, 113
yellow fever, 542
Yellow River Valley/region, 88–9, 114, 333, 335
Yemen, 24
Yenesian language, 11
Yin, 33
yoga, 329, 330, 339
yoke, 292
Younger Dryas, 39–40, 88
Yscayingos, 532
Yucatán Peninsula, 232, 390, 395, 396, 428 see also Maya
yucca, 107
Yucunũ, 484
‘Yuga’ theory, 35
Yukon, 15, 16
Yupanqui (later known as Pachakuti), 488, 490, 492
Yupik language, 50
Zagros mountains, 124, 290
Zan˜a Valley, 321
Zapotec civilisation, xxxi, 218–19, 397, 398, 399–400, 434, 437, 502, 513
Zarathustra, 176, 324
Zea mays see maize/corn
zebras, 142
zebu cattle, 291
Zeno, 347
Zeus, 99, 346, 347
Zhou dynasty, 334, 335, 336
Zhuangzi, 339
ziggurats, 266
Ziusudra, 160
zone of turbulence, 294–6, 459–63
Zoroaster, 327
Zoroastrianism, 176–7
Zunĩ, 203, 207
Zurich, 280
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER WATSON has been a senior editor at the London Sunday Times, a New York correspondent of the London Times, a columnist for the London Observer, and a contributor to the New York Times. He has published three exposés on the world of art and antiquities, and is the author of several books of cultural and intellectual history. From 1997 to 2007 he was a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He lives in London.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
When two dates are given for a publication, the first refers to the hardback edition, the second to the paperback edition. Unless otherwise stated, pagination refers to the paperback edition.
INTRODUCTION: 15000 BC–AD 1500: A UNIQUE PERIOD IN HUMAN HISTORY
1 B.W. Ife, editor and translator, Christopher Columbus: Journal of the First Voyage: 1492, Warminster: Arts & Phillips, 1990, p. 13.
2 Ife, Op. cit., p. 15.
3 Ibid, p. 25.
4 Ibid, p. 27.
5 Ibid, p. 246 n.
6 Ibid, p. xxi.
7 Ibid, p. xxiv.
CHAPTER 1: FROM AFRICA TO ALASKA: THE GREAT JOURNEY AS REVEALED IN THE GENES, LANGUAGE AND THE STONES
1 S.J. Armitage et al., ‘The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans in Arabia’, Science, Vol. 331, pp. 453– 456, 28 January 2011; Michael D. Petraglia, ‘Archaeology: Trailblazers across Africa’, Nature, Vol. 470, pp. 50–51, 3 February 2011; Brenna M. Henn et al., ‘Characterizing the Time Dependency of Human Mitochondrial DNA Mutation Rate Estimates’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2008, pp. 217–230; Geoff Bailey, ‘World Prehistory from the Margins: The Role of Coastlines in Human Evolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in History and Archaology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 2004), pp. 39–50. P.M. Masters and N.C. Flemming
(editors), Quaternary Coastlines and Marine Archaeology: Towards the Prehistory of Landbridges and Continental Shelves, London and New York: Academic Press, 1983, passim.
2 Brian M. Fagan, The Journey from Eden: The Peopling of Our World, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1990, pp. 234–235. Spencer Wells, Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project, Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 2007, p. 93. Ted Goebel, ‘The “Microblade Adaptation” and Recolonisation of Siberia during the Late Upper Pleistocene’, Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 12, Issue 1, January 2002,pp. 117–131.
3 Wells, Op. cit., p. 96.
4 Ibid, p. 100.
5 Ibid, p. 99.
6 Sijia Wang et al., ‘Genetic variation and the population structure of Native Americans’, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.0030185. Also: personal communication. Ugo A. Perego at al., ‘The initial peopling of the Americas: A growing number of founding mitochondrial genomes from Beringia’, Genome Research, Vol. 20, 2010, pp. 1174–1179. Brenna M. Henn et al., Op. cit.
7 Douglas Wallace, James Neel et al., ‘Mitochondrial DNA “clock” for the Amerinds and its implications for timing their entry into North America’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1994; 91 (3), pp. 1158–1162.
8 Brian Fagan, The Journey from Eden, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1990, p. 198.
9 Fagan, Op. cit., p. 205.
10 John Hemming, Tree of Rivers: the story of the Amazon, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008, p. 278.
11 Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: An ecological history of North America and its peoples, London: William Heinemann, 2001, p. 231–232. James Kari and Ben A. Potter (editors), The Dene-Yeniseian Connection, Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, New Series, Vol. 5, Nos. 1–2, 2010.
12 Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, London, Duckworth, 2007, p. 99.
13 Wade, Op. cit., pp. 151–152. On the circumstances of men without wives siring children: Peter Bellwood, personal communication.
14 Brian Fagan, The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987, p. 122.
15 Fagan, The Great Journey, Op. cit., p. 127.
16 Ibid, p. 125.
17 Merritt Ruhlen, The Origins of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue, New York: John Wiley, 1994, p. 295.
18 Ruhlen, Op. cit., map 7, p. 90, and map 8, p. 108. Nelson Fagundes et al, ‘Genetic, geographic, and linguistic variation among South American Indians: possible sex influence’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 117, 2002,pp. 68–78.
19 Ibid, pp. 134–137.
20 Johanna Nichols, Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 9–10.
21 Nichols, Op. cit., p. 298.
22 Ibid, p. 330.
CHAPTER 2: FROM AFRICA TO ALASKA: THE DISASTERS OF DEEP TIME AS REVEALED BY MYTHS, RELIGION AND THE ROCKS
1 John Savino and Marie D. Jones, Supervolcano: The Catastrophic Event that Changed the Course of Human History, Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page, 2007, p. 123.
2 Savino and Jones, Op. cit., p. 123.
3 Ibid, p. 125.
4 Jelle Zeitlinga de Boer and Donald Theodor Sanders, Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-reaching Effects of Major Eruptions, Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003,pp. 155–56.
5 Savino and Jones, Op. cit., p. 125.
6 Ibid, pp. 132 and 144. See also: Michael D. Petraglia et al., ‘Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian Subcontinent Before and After the Toba super-eruption’, Science, Vol. 317, 6 July 2007,pp. 114–116.
7 Michael Petraglia et al., Op. cit. See also: Kate Ravilious, ‘Exodus on the Exploding Earth’, New Scientist, 17 April 2010,pp. 28–33.
8 Savino and Jones, Op. cit., p. 47.
9 Stephen Oppenheimer, Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of South East Asia, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998, p. 17.
10 Oppenheimer, Op. cit., p. 18.
11 Ibid, p. 19.
12 Ibid, p. 20. Peter Bellwood, First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005,pp. 130 and 133.
13 Ibid, p. 21.
14 Ibid, p. 24.
15 Ibid, p. 32.
16 Ibid, p. 33.
17 Ibid, p. 35.
18 Ibid, p. 39.
19 Ibid, p. 62.
20 Ibid, p. 63.
21 Ibid. p. 64.
22 Ibid, p. 76.
23 Ibid, p. 77. For criticisms of Oppenheimer, see: Peter Bellwood, ‘Some Thoughts on Understanding the Human Colonisation of the Pacific’, People and Culture in Oceania, Vol. 16, 2000,pp. 5–17, especially note 5.
24 Oppenheimer, Op. cit., p. 77. Geoff Bailey, ‘World Prehistory from the Margin’, Op. cit., p. 43.
25 Ibid, p. 83.
26 David Frawley and Navaratna Rajaram, Hidden Horizons: Unearthing 10,000 Years of Indian Culture, Shahibaug, Amdavad-4: Swaminarayan Aksharpith, 2006, p. 61.
27 Frawley and Rajaram, Op. cit., p. 65.
28 Georg Feuerstein et al., In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Wheaton, Illinois and Chennai, India: Quest Books, 2001, p. 91.
29 Oppenheimer, Op. cit., p. 317.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid, plate 1, facing p. 208.
33 Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956, p. 167.
34 Oppenheimer, Op. cit., p. 359.
35 Ibid, p. 373.
36 Stephen Belcher, African Myths of Origin, London: Penguin Books, 2005, especially part 1.
CHAPTER 3: SIBERIA AND THE SOURCES OF SHAMANISM
1 Ronald Hutton, Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination, Hambledon, UK and New York: 2001.
2 Piers Vitebsky, The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul: Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon, London: Duncan Blair, 2001, p. 86.
3 Vitebsky, Op. cit., p. 11.
4 Hutton, Op. cit., p. 59.
5 Ibid, p. 61.
6 Ibid, p. 74.
7 Hutton, p. 51.
8 Vitebsky, Op. cit., p. 11.
9 Hutton, Op. cit., pp. 11–12.
10 Ibid, p. 13.
11 Ibid, p. 26.
12 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970,pp. 24 and 29.
13 Vitebsky, Op. cit., p. 30.
14 Ibid, p. 32.
15 Hutton, Op. cit., p. 107. See also: Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill, London: Routledge, 2000,pp. 61ff.
16 Vitebsky, Op. cit., p. 42.
17 Ibid, p. 45.
18 Peter Furst, Hallucinogens and Culture, San Francisco: Chandler & Sharp, 1988, p. 90.
19 Furst, Op. cit., p. 91–2
CHAPTER 4: INTO A LAND WITHOUT PEOPLE
1 Dan O’Neill, The Last Giant of Beringia: The Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge, New York: Westview, 2004, p. 6.
2 Henry Steele Commager, Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978.p. 106.
3 O’Neill, Op. cit., p. 8.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid, p. 11.
8 Ibid, p. 12.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid, p. 13.
11 Ibid, p. 14.
12 Ibid, p. 15.
13 Ibid, p. 17.
14 Ibid, p. 64.
15 Ibid, p. 65.
16 J. Louis Giddings, Ancient Men of the Arctic, London: Secker & Warburg, 1968.
17 O’Neill, Op. cit., p. 112.
18 Ibid, p. 114.
19 Ibid, pp. 121–122.
20 Jeff Hecht, ‘Out of Asia’, New Scientist, 23 March 2002, p. 12.
21 Ibid, p. 122.
22 Ibid, p. 123.
23 Ibid, p. 139.
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24 O’Neill, Op. cit., p. 141.
25 Ibid, pp. 145–147.
26 Ibid, p. 161. Renée Hetherington et al., ‘Climate, African and Beringian subaerial continental shelves, and migration of early peoples’, Quaternary International (2007), DOI:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.06.033.
27 Gary Haynes, The Early Settlement of North America: the Clovis Era, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 253.
28 Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000BC, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003, p. 242.
29 Valerius Geist, ‘Did large predators keep humans out of North America?’, in Julia Clutton-Brock (editor), The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism and Predation, London: Unwin Hyman, 1989,pp. 282–294.
30 Calvin Luther Martin, In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 88.
31 Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit: the 20,000 year history of American Indians, New York: Free Press, 2004, p. 37.
32 Anthony Sutcliffe, On the Track of Ice Age Mammals, London: British Museum Publications, 1986, p. 167.
33 Sutcliffe, Op. cit., p. 176.
34 Thomas Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory, New York: Basic Books, 2000, p. 112.
35 Timothy Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: an ecological history of North America, London: William Heinemann, 2001, p. 117. Tom D. Dillehay, ‘Probing Deeper into First American Studies’, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, 27 January 2009, pp. 971–978.
36 Flannery, Op. cit., pp. 192–205.
37 Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas, Op. cit., pp. 164–165.
38 Haynes, Op. cit., p. 91.
39 Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas, Op. cit., p. 110.
40 Haynes, Op. cit., p. 32.
41 Ibid., p. 91. Michael R. Waters et al., ‘Redefining the age of Clovis: Implications of the peopling of America’, Science, Vol. 315, No. 5815, 23 February 2007,pp. 1122–1126; Michael R. Waters et al., ‘The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas’, Science, Vol. 331, No. 6024, 25 March 2011, pp. 1599–1603; Jon M. Erlandson et al., ‘Paleoindian Seafaring, Maritime Technologies and Coastal Foraging on California’s Channel Islands’, Science, Vol. 331, No. 6021, 4 March 2011, p. 1122.
42 Flannery, Op. cit., p. 92.
43 Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas, Op. cit., p. 267.
44 Haynes, Op. cit., pp. 249–250.
45 Ibid, pp. 113 and 115.
46 Ibid, p. 112.
47 Ibid, p. 269.