Cultural historians call this period “Paleoindian” and Marxist archeologists refer to it as “Hunters of Great Mammals in a Appropriating Way of Life” (Cruxent and Rouse 1982; Sanoja and Vargas 1979). The peopling of Venezuelan territory constitutes some of the earliest human occupations on the whole American continent and comprises unique technological arrangements and developments. During the Late Pleistocene, human groups, possibly coming from the north, arrived and occupied the northwestern Venezuelan coast. Sites such as Taima-Taima, Muaco, and El Jobo in the coastal region of Venezuela’s Falcon State are emblematic in the debate regarding the antiquity of the initial peopling of the
Americas. Conservative estimates assume that these populations arrived to the area at least 13,000 BP (Oschenius and Gruhn 1979).
A general theory proposes that the first inhabitants of the continent arrived from Asia via the Bering Strait. These groups were specialized hunters of the great Pleistocene mammals who migrated following their main source of sustenance. Arriving at the North American Great Plains, they specialized in mastodon hunting and developed a stone projectile technology known as the Clovis Tradition, dated to 10,800 to 11,200 radiocarbon years, from which the rest of the continent was populated, as diverse technological variations developed.
Venezuelan sites challenge this theory. First, the percussion technology characteristic of north coastal Venezuela, known as Joboid, is formally different from Clovis, which makes it unlikely that a Clovis origin can account for all of the earliest American cultures. Second, some of the Taima-Taima dates are earlier than Clovis dates from North America, putting significant doubt on the accepted population model. Third, the early South American dates may evidence multiple early population waves following different entry routes and bearing distinctive cultures (Oliver and Alexander 2003).
The ancient Falcon inhabitants coexisted with extinct megafauna such as mastodonts (Haplomastodon), megatheres (Ermotherium), glyptodonts (Glyptodon), and toxodonts (Toxodon), mammals that provided their fundamental sustenance. At Taima-Taima, El Jobo Complex projectile points have been found associated with these fossils, and date between 12,980 and 14,200 years BP. The Joboid series lithic instruments, named after alluvial terraces on the Pedregal River, reveal the evolutionary and distinctive technological sequence of artifact variations and transformations for the first Venezuelan hunters. The series comprises four consecutive complexes, with different artifacts made primarily on quartzitic sandstone, elaborated by percussion, and related to different hunting strategies. The first, Camare, dating to ca. 22,000-20,000 years BP, includes large bifacial polyvalent knives, scrapers and choppers, probably used in direct body-to-body hunting by hunt teams that cornered the animal and banged and stubbed the prey with hafted artifacts or long, sharpened sticks. The second, Las Lagunas, ca. 20,000-16,000 years BP, presents smaller triangular and elongated bifacial instruments, hafted in spears, utilized in a semi-direct hunting strategy. It is followed by El Jobo, ca. 16,000-9000 years BP. The distinctive Joboid projectile points are long narrow lanceolate lenticular section bifacial points, to be used with a spear thrower, which provided higher precision and speed for piercing the animal skin and allowed individual long distance hunting of megafauna or smaller and faster species such as deer and large rodents. Finally, in Las Casitas, ca. 9000-5000 years BP, while other instruments continued in use, the peduncular arrow point with occasional retouched edges appeared to be hafted in the spear and shot with a bow (Fundacion Polar 1988).
Other findings in Venezuela indicate distinctive early lithic traditions, showing early regional cultural diversity. The Manzanillo (Zulia State) fossil wood tools, possible choppers and scrapers (Cruxent 1982), the Tupuken and Cueva del Elefante (Bolivar State) jasper and basalt flat-convex scrapers (Fundacion Polar 1988), and the Bajo Caron! and upper Orinoco choppers and primary flakes (Barse 1990, Sanoja and Vargas 1995) are some examples.
Their economy could be defined as appropriating, obtaining resources directly from the environment without implementing controlled production techniques. This supposes that these bands also developed other productive strategies such as fruit gathering, seafood gathering, and fishing—but evidence is not conclusive about this. Since their way of life seemed to be defined by the movement of the great mammals, distributional evidence suggests they practiced restricted nomadism, with mobile settlements within restricted territories following natural niches and seasonal cycles. They had a low population density on the landscape, likely organized in family micro-bands of 12 to 35 people. Although they were intrinsically egalitarian, there was likely a sexual and social division of labor (Fundacion Polar 1988).
World History
