Aboriginal Sophisticates

Ancient America was not as primitive as moderns may think. The discovery of a network of earthen ridges, engineered with geometric precision by pre-Columbian aborigines in South America, is persuading archaeologists to revise their theories.

Aerial photos taken over the sparse, seasonally flooded fields of northern Colombia--50 miles east of Monteria in the San Jorge River district--first revealed what even the earliest conquistadors overlooked or could not see: more than 1,400 sq. mi. of intricate clay corrugations, built generally at right angles to the several rivers in the area and standing in bold relief among the numerous waterways. The ridges are as much as five feet high, 20 feet wide, and a mile long. Other ridges run in checkerboard patterns, while a third type extends in long parallels without apparent orientation to the winding riverbanks.

Pandora's Box. An unknown aboriginal people built the washboard-like excavations possibly more than 1,000 years ago, using only the crudest implements, without benefit of metal tools or draft animals. Their motive remains a mystery, although some speculate that the shallow channels lying between the ridges may have carried water to or from grain or root crops grown on top of the long mounds.

Berkeley Geography Professor James Parsons and Graduate Student William Bowen report in the Geographical Review that the area once may have supported as many as 80,000 people, a vastly greater aboriginal population than has ever before been attributed to such an American tropical lowland. The discovery, they write, "opens a Pandora's box of questions relating to cultural origins." To which Parsons adds, "The discovery might even have implications of transpacific migration."

It seems surprising enough that archaeologists should have missed such a find for so long--the area lies beneath a well-traveled air route to Bogota. Even more humbling is the knowledge that these aboriginal people were sophisticated enough to turn their hostile environment to such advantage. According to carbon 14 dating of a shell mound near the area, the newly discovered culture goes back to 3090 B.C., making it the oldest pottery site recorded in the New World. Only within recent years has earth-moving equipment, mechanized farming and malaria control made a 20th century dent on the ridged plains of Colombia.

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