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THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA 0 to 100 A.D.
In the very far north the Dorset Arctic tradition continued to thrive. Some further remarks about the Indians on the western coast and islands of Canada seem in order. Their houses were large and rectangular with walls and roofs made of hand split boards. The roofs were gabled and there were no windows. The short front walls had small doors, usually highly decorated, sometimes with carvings, sometimes with paint. There were plaited amts on the dirt floors and no furniture. Houses could be as long as 70 feet. Social classes included a ruling aristocracy, commoners and slaves. Being basically a sea people they built sea-going canoes, some 170 feet long, 61/2 feet wide and 41/2 feet deep, which could accommodate 100 people. They navigated the open seas easily and as we shall note in a later chapter, some of their voyages undoubtedly went to the Hawaiian Islands were the people became Polynesians. The currents and winds alone sometimes carry large logs from northern Vancouver Island directly to Hawaii. The canoes were made of one-half of a large tree trunk and carried only a mat which could be used as a poor sail. For sea voyages two canoes could be tied together and a platform put over both. One man steered with a paddle in the stern and kneeling pairs of men paddled strongly. Three types of fish-hooks were used, none of which have ever been seen in Indonesia or Southeast Asia. These northwest Indians did not have pottery.

A.D. 101 to 200 (See below: "North America")

A.D. 201 to 400
For information concerning the Dorset Inuits of the far north, please see the 6th and 1st centuries B.C. and the 9th century C.E. For the northwest coastal Indians see the previous two or three centuries under this same category. Barry Fell insists that throughout the last pre-Christian and these early Christian centuries the New England Celts, which he has described, gradually migrated with their Indian wives and children across Canada westward eventually reaching British Columbia. He reports that much of the vocabulary and grammar of the Takhelne language of the Fraser Lakes area spoken yet today, is a Creole Celtic tongue related to Gaelic and derived from Godelic. In America he lists 54 words still used today by the Takhelne people along with the Godelic and Gaelic words and their much different English equivalents. The table is quite convincing, but why is this not even commented on elsewhere in the literature?

A.D. 401 to 500
At Ungava Bay, 750 miles north of Quebec City, there are rock walls dating to A.D. 500. Eskimo legend says they were built by a race of giants with a strange language - Vikings? Professor Fell and Libyan colleagues have found a 5th century inscription at Figiug Oasis, east Morocco, recording a flight of Christian monks to North America to escape the Vandals. The script was Libyan, the language Libyan Arabic. An early Christian inscription in Libyan Arabic dialect has allegedly also been found by Fell's associates at Oak Island, Nova Scotia.



THE UNITED STATES 0 to 100 A.D.
This was the beginning of the maximum expansion of the Hopewell Culture with secondary areas of influence in the so-called Marksville group near the Mississippi delta and the Santa Rosa groups at the base of the Florida peninsula. Their rather elaborate decorations (usually for the dead) included copper from Lake Superior, mica from the Appalachians, obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, alligator teeth and conch shells from Florida and the Gulf and stone from Minnesota and Wisconsin. At the risk of over-emphasizing the rather bizarre hypotheses of Barry Fell, we shall mention that he writes that the builders of the Hopewell mounds were mainly Libyans, assisted by Negroid Nubian crew members who left sculptures of heads and African animals along the Mississippi River system in Ohio, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas. He even suggest that Jewish refugees from the first Romano-Jewish war ended up in Kentucky and Tennessee.

In his most recent book Fell gives a translation from Plutarch which allegedly tells of how Greek North Africans (Late Carthaginians) sailed westward from Britain passing three island groups equidistant from one another (Orkneys, Shetlands and Faeros?), and then to Ogygia (Iceland?) five sailing days away and then on to the northern coast of a continent, Epeiros, that rims the ocean. South Greenland would fit the alleged distance and direction. Then, says Plutarch,2 if one sails south along the coast one will pass a frozen sea and come to a land where the Greeks settled and married with the native barbarians. (The Davis Strait between Labrador and Greenland becomes an impassable mass of floating ice during the summer season.) As for the place where the Greeks married, Plutarch says it was in the same latitude as the Caspian Sea, thus Nova Scotia and New England. It is in connection with this that Fell quotes Dr. Silas Rand3 who spent a lifetime in the last century among the Micmac and who wrote a Dictionary of the Micmac Language, as indicating a prevalence of Greek roots in their language. An illustrative list of over 50 such Greek roots are given by Fell along with the Micmac equivalents, implying a derivation from the Greek spoken in North Africa in Ptolemaic times, words that were a part of the everyday language of Libya and Egypt. This concept has been reported false by the Smithsonian institute.

Sometime during the Woodland Period maize had made its way from South America and/or Mexico to the southern United States and had spread from there even into New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Varieties of lint corn or popcorn appeared in the South.

In southern New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico the Mogollon people continued to live in their semi-subterranean pit-houses and appeared to have self governing villages under the leadership of civil and religious elders democratically selected. An important feature was a large ceremonial house known as the great kiva, three or four times the size of the usual dwellings. In southern Arizona and the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora the Hohokam people began extensive irrigation systems with dams on rivers and some canals 30 feet wide and 25 miles long. This society developed for over 1,000 years, but the exact date of its origin has long been debated, estimates varying from 300 B.C. to A.D. 500. At any rate, they made exquisite jewelry and pottery pyramids and used astronomy. This is another American culture which Barry Fell believes to be of Libyan origin carrying the tradition and navigational and astronomical knowledge of the Old World and which had arrived via Pacific travelers as manifested by the original maps made by the famous Maui.  The frontispiece on Fell’s latest book is a map supposedly drawn by Maui showing North America and the eastern Pacific, using the primary meridian as a line through Alexandria, Egypt (as used by Eratosthenes) with an international date line at 180 degrees, passing about 10 degrees east of Hawaii. It shows Hudson Bay and the isthmus of Panama and survives on rock drawings in Nevada. Fell says that additions to the original Libyan lettering have been made later in Kufic Arabic, showing that the map was still in use, probably for educational purposes as late as A.D. 750. It is his contention that petroglyphs and writings from Nevada and California, carefully recorded and filed at the University of California and other places, could not be previously interpreted because the nature of the writing (Arabic) was not recognized. The difficulty in all this is that current authorities including southwest museum directors and southwest anthropology professors in recent publications make no mention of these concepts whatsoever.

A.D. 101 to 200 (North America)
In the far north there was very little change from the previous centuries. About the central and eastern United States there is some disagreement. Brian Fagan, the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, writes that there was continued Hopewell expansion with increased cultural development even up until the 5th century C.E., but the Encyclopedia of Archeology states that there was a rapid decline of the Hopewell at about A.D. 200. We know that the southeastern United States was inhabited but we have available only very limited information at this early period. Fell describes finding of what he believes to be Hebrew shekels dating from the Second Revolt of A.D. 132 in various parts of Kentucky and a nearby district of Arkansas.

A.D. 201 to 300
The Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi cultures continued to develop in the southwestern United States. The Mogollon people learned to grind and polish small stone slabs to make useful articles such as paint palettes, dishes and stone smoking pipes for tobacco. Their spear points were used with a rude throwing stick called the atlatl, an ancient weapon of the Americas.

Sometime in these early Christian centuries the "Effigy Mound" Culture developed in the upper Mississippi Valley as a regional variation of the Hopewell Culture. There the Indians built gigantic mounds in the form of animals - panthers, lizards, deer, bears and birds. Most of the mounds had burials, often at critical parts of the figure such as at the heart, hip or knee. Although probably of religious significance, no one really knows what these Minnesota and Wisconsin mounds actually mean. The southeast Indians will be discussed at much length in later chapters.

In the southwest the Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi peoples continued their development. A more detailed look at their cultures will be given in later centuries, corresponding to the time of the heights of their development.

A.D. 301 to 400
It is apparent that Indian people inhabited most of the American continent throughout all these early Christian centuries. Most American chiefdoms were agricultural (Hopewell, Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi) but along the northwest coast there were unusually rich fishing grounds with whales and seals which supported large villages and a complex ceremonial life. In the southwest it was near the end of the Early Basket Maker period of the Anasazi. In their excavated graves, along with the baskets have been found skeletal remains of these ancient people, buried dressed in string aprons and loin cloths made of hair, furs and feathers. No clay vessels or fired pottery have been found.

A.D. 401 to 500
In this century the Hopewell trading networks broke down for some unknown reason and the Hopewell influence declined sharply. It is possible that a population explosion strained the limits of the economic system and the breakdown resulted. But along the Mississippi the Mound Builders appeared, and these were the antecedents of the Choctaws Chickasaw, Natches and others. Perhaps the greatest Indian monument of all time was constructed near Chillicothe, Ohio. This Great Serpent Mound, representing a serpent with open jaws clasping an egg, is 1,254 feet long, winding along hilltops with a coiled tail. It does not appear to have any connection with the effigy mounds farther north. See also America in the 3rd century C.E.

In the southwest this was the Basket Maker III or Late Basketmaker period of the Anasazi Indians who were using fired earthenware pottery, the technique probably learned from the Mogollons to the south. The water supply for their crops had become inconsistent drought alternating with floods, but the Anasazi solved this problem by special terracing and the building of small dams with irrigation channels. One water-way in southwestern Colorado, however, was four miles long. These people had become skillful builders, using stone and beginning to construct complex homes which we now call pueblos.

Once again we must report some almost unbelievable, unconfirmed statements of Barry Fell. In his latest book  he writes that mathematical notation was revolutionized in this century when Nevada voyagers brought back the decimal system from India. Since European decimal ciphers were not used until the 11th century, this, if true, would place American mathematicians far ahead of their Mediterranean contemporaries. The decimal system required a new type of abacus, to the base ten, and such has allegedly been found in Indiana and is now in the Epigraphic Museum. Abaci from Nevada have previously been mistaken for gaming boards, according to this same author. It is very difficult to accept all these concepts at face value at this time without more corroboration, but Fell does present his evidence in a convincing manner and who knows but what time may yet prove him right?

The pioneering phase of the Hohokam ended about A.D. 500. Interchange with Mexico had continued through the centuries and now the bloody, Mexican ball game associated with religious ritual was introduced. Platform mounds similar to those in Mexico were also erected for use of dancers and musicians. A favorite design on Hohokam pottery was the snake, often shown being attacked by a bird (feathered serpent motive). After the end of this century the Hohokam began to spread out from the desert valleys, moving up the rivers north and northeast.

The Mogollon Culture farther to the east continued as previously and it is apparent in the literature that not all writers separate this from the Hohokam and/or Anasazi cultures, but in some respects it is definitely unique.

A.D. 501 to 600
The Mississippian Culture of Mound Builders, which now replaced the decaying Hopewell Culture, flowered along the Mississippi River and other river systems of the south.

Archaeologists do not agree about its origin. Some attribute it to the migration of ideas from Mexico or Central America and it is true that some of the sophisticated art does resemble Middle American. But even more of the art seems to have had roots in Adena or Hopewell and current thinking treats the Mississippian as an indigenous culture, an outgrowth of the Hopewell blended with late arriving Mexican elements. The characteristic feature of the culture is the pyramidal mound serving as a foundation for a temple or a chief's house. Some centers were very small but others were gigantic, as Cahokia at East St. Louis, Illinois, where there were more than 85 mounds and a village area that extended for six miles along the Ohio River. One of the largest of the mounds was about 100 feet high and its base covered 16 acres. The immensity of the labor involved, without the use of wheels or beasts of burden, is almost unbelievable. The entire enterprise may have taken several hundreds of years. The Mississippian population was dense in that at least 383 villages bordered the Mississippi River in the short distance of about 700 miles between points of entrance of the Ohio and Red rivers respectively and there were thousands of other villages up and down the other parts of the river system.

If we are to believe Professor Fell Libyan science and mathematics continued to flourish in the southwest. The Hohokam continued their colonizing migrations, beginning their colonial period sometime after 550, spreading artifacts over most of Arizona and taking with them their customs, including the sacred ball-game. Farther northeast the Anasazi or Pueblo Builders, continued advancement with better pottery designs and increased trade, importing abalone shells and turquoise. From a source still unknown they obtained the bow and arrow and they developed the hafted ax. Agriculture increased with the cultivation of better corn, squash and beans, which added protein to their diet. Their population then soared and their settlements spread so that they even had pit houses in the cliffs of the Grand Canyon.

Who were the Ancestral Pueblo People (Anasazi)? They are the ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians now living in New Mexico and Arizona. They settled and farmed in the Four Corners region between about AD 1 and AD 1300, producing fine baskets, pottery, cloth, ornaments and tools. Their architectural achievements included cliff dwellings and pueblos (apartment-house style villages). As the population grew and spread out, communities exchanged goods through an elaborate trade network. Regional differences developed as communities adapted to their surroundings in slightly different ways. We recognize several distinct branches of the culture, including Northern San Juan, Chaco, Kayenta, Virgin, and Rio Grande.

Archaeology in Mesa Verde Country The Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) occupied the area from approximately A.D. 1 to A.D. 1300 and left remarkable remnants of their civilization throughout the region.

"Anasazi" is a Navajo word meaning "Ancient Ones." They are thought to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, inhabited the Four Corners country of southern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and northern Arizona from about A.D. 200 to A.D. 1300, leaving a heavy accumulation of house remains and debris.

Anasazi, Desert People Before about A. D. 500, Anasazi Basketmaker groups – probably extended families – took their shelter in caves and rock overhangs – "rock shelters" – within canyon walls, preferably facing the south so they could capitalize on warmth from the sun during the winter. Occasionally, like the early Mogollon and Hohokam peoples, the early Basketmakers lived in small semi-sedentary hamlets in open areas. They left many clues to their occupations in the northern part of the Anasazi range, from Utah to Colorado, especially in the vicinity of Durango.

The Anasazi The Anasazi are the most romanticized and the most studied of the prehistoric Southwestern cultures. They seem to have lived in the most beautiful locations and left thousands of stone houses, cliff dwellings and goods behind.

Mogollon (Possibly Ancestral to Hopis & Zunis) 0 A. D. to 1500 A. D. Several Mogollon groups clustered within roughly 100 miles east and west of the New Mexico and Arizona border and extended some unknown distance southward into Chihuahua and Sonora. These westernmost groups – with their signature brownware ceramics – give definition to the Mogollon culture, but another group, closely related culturally and called the Jornado Mogollon, spanned another two hundred miles eastward, almost to the Great Plains, and some unknown distance southward, into Chihuahua. The Mogollon groups, widely separated in different environments, progressed at different rates through three basic phases of cultural development.

Hohokam (Possibly Ancestral to Pimas) 100 B. C. to 1300 A. D. The Hohokam peoples occupied a wide area of south-central Arizona from roughly Flagstaff south to the Mexican border. They are thought to have originally migrated north out of Mexico around 300 BC to become the most skillful irrigation farmers the Southwest ever knew. The ingenious Hohokam developed an elaborate irrigation network using only stone instruments and organized labor. Before modern development obliterated this system, their predecessors commonly referred to them as the Canal Builders

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