Distant Past’s Artifacts, Relics, & Start of Human Caused Extinctions
Stories and Histories of Our Place
What ruins might lie buried under the mud and ocean waters off the ocean’s coast or fresh waters of rivers and lakes deltas now buried by silt? One certainty, the Native Indigenous of the Far West cultures with 80 different languages respectively, lost their story tellers when they lost most of their populace. And in Cascadia they were soon to lose their Camas & Wapato fields, already without the benefit of the rest of the America’s use of the 3 Sisters & Potato. This was to be followed by loss of hunting and fishing grounds, buffalo and salmon specifically. Perhaps they had other resources before Rising Shorelines, but that is an Underwater History that may never be known. Artifacts are tough to come up because sea water destroys almost all materials. Close on the ocean’s shore we have a trace of ancient Tsunamis. For sure, there was global warming causing the oceans to rise from a far colder time 3,000 to 15,000 years ago when peoples immigrated across the Bering Sea’s land bridge. And there was another holocaust awaiting, humans deliberate or inadvertent elimination of species: animals, plants, and even peoples. Like annual and biannual plants and animal species, stories can become extinct without their being reborn/reseeded/retold. It takes but 1 year. Waves of water, disease, fires, human created holocausts; all bury history.
In an attempt to glimpse a bit of what this lost history might be, recommended references:
https://www.nps.gov/anch/learn/historyculture/alaska-s-history.htm
Explore the cultures, traditions, and history of Alaska Native groups such as the Inupiat, Tlingit, Haida, and Athabaskan
https://www.travelalaska.com/things-to-do/alaska-native-culture/cultures/inupiat
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/4/4/234
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/indigenous-languages-of-alaska-inupiaq.htm
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/northwest-coast/lingit-tlingit
https://www.ccthita.org/about/history/docs/T&HHallofFame_2023.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43700746