| How would you learn to survive if you moved
from a generations-long residence on the Pacific coast to the volcanic
interior highlands?
Our archaeological information from Central America suggests that
many of the earliest residents lived along the Pacific and Gulf
coastlines. These are areas where marine resources were plentiful
and easily harvested. But early in the Preclassic period some of
these coastal residents began to move along the river valleys into
the unexploited highlands. The highlands of Guatemala are volcanic
in origin. This means they have very rich soils excellent for agriculture,
but they are also subject to earthquakes and eruptions, and the
hillsides are easily eroded during slash-and-burn farming. Worst
of all, there are no marine resources to exploit. Dr. Eugenia Robinson's
excavations at the site of Urias close to Antigua have turned up
enormous quantities of well preserved animal bone that I am using
to search for information on how these coastal immigrants adapted
to their new environment. What animals did they hunt? If they couldn't
eat sea-creatures, did they replace them with riverine ones? And
were there some species that were familiar enough that they knew
how to find them regardless of whether they lived on the coast or
the hillside?
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