"Kathleen O' Neal & Michael W. Gear - People 5 - People Of The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Neal Kathleen)

by butchering tools. But we also find sites where mammoths appear
merely to have died in large numbers--sites where there is no evidence
of hunting or butchering.

It is likely that a combination of factors led to the extinctions. The
struggling megafauna had undoubtedly been weakened by the dramatic
environmental changes and were dying of natural causes; diseases may
have attacked them, but their weakened state also made them easy prey
for human hunters. Megafauna populations would have sought out and
congregated in areas with reduced environmental stress; certainly the
coast of California would have been one of these places. The Tioga
glaciation of the Sierras would have provided the megafauna with a
welcome refuge, a place where the plants they favored and the animals
they ate still lived.

Human hunters would have followed. Although various species of
megafauna had lived in North America for a million years and had
certainly developed skills for combating environmental changes, they
had no skills with which to face such a ruthless and relentless
predator. While humans were probably not the exclusive cause of the
extinctions they did not "kill off" all the megafauna--they
undoubtedly contributed to their demise and may well have been "the
straw that broke the camel's back."

And, as always--witness the Paiute prophet, Wovoka, and the
establishment of the Ghost Dance in the 1870s, or the modern
environmental movement--when human beings begin to notice the dwindling
numbers of animals and inexplicable changes in the world, they become
confused and worried. In the times under discussion here, they would
probably have prayed for a return to the old days, to the "golden age"
of a paradise now lost. We call these "nativistic" movements. In this
book, Sunchaser's Mammoth Spirit Dance is such a movement.

The myths and rituals you will find in the following narration are
taken from a number of California and Arizona tribes. The Miwok
believed there was an opening on the horizon that led souls to the
Skyland. The "Dying God" theme is based upon the stories of the
Luiseno, who lived in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties.
Sunchaser's maze comes from the Pima and Papago peoples. The Talth
Lodge existed among the Yurok tribe of northern California until the
1940s.

Many plants were utilized for their medicinal properties, particularly
plants in the willow family such as cottonwood, poplar and aspen, which
contain the aspirin-like compound salicin--an analgesic and
anti-inflammatory. Finally, the Ant Ordeal and the visionary uses of
Datura, nightshade, morning glory and tobacco--were practiced by tribes
throughout California, Nevada and Arizona, but specifically by the
Kitanemuk, Luiseno, Tubatulabal, Chumash and Gabrielinos.