Field Museum digs deeper into oldest American dreams
Evidence suggests life was less stressful in the Stone Age than it is today.
Sure, there were the challenges of surviving climatic change, scrounging for shelter and putting food on -– er, over -– the fire.
However, the modern businessman could learn a lot from the life of an early hunter-gatherer, archeological anthropologist Jonathan Haas said.
“[Back then], once you gathered the food you needed for the day, you were done for the rest of the day,” Haas said. “There was not the sense of ‘Let’s put some money away in an IRA.’ You went and got the resources you needed for that day. If you didn’t get the resources, you went hungry.”
Haas, lead curator of the Field Museum’s new “Ancient Americas” exhibit, believes there is a lesson in that.
“That is what we have done as humans for 98 percent of our existence on the planet,” he said. “‘I have to hunt until I get enough food for the day. Then I’m done.’”...
Rather than tell the story chronologically, Ancient Americas’ galleries revolve around the innovations people used to meet day-to-day challenges. Learn how hunting and gathering evolved to meet a changing environment; how societies cultivated wild plants, like squash, for food and tamed wild animals; and how different forms of leadership led to the formation of hierarchical governments...
More than 20 distinct cultural groups are represented in the new exhibit, including the pueblo-building tribes of the American Southwest; the mound-building Hopewell and Mississippian cultures which flourished in the Midwest; the Taíno of the Caribbean; the South-American Incas and Mesoamerican civilizations like the Zapotec, Maya and Aztec. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec’s capital city in what is now Mexico City, once boasted more than 200,000 people.
Read entire article at Kane County Chronicle (Geneva, Ill.)
Sure, there were the challenges of surviving climatic change, scrounging for shelter and putting food on -– er, over -– the fire.
However, the modern businessman could learn a lot from the life of an early hunter-gatherer, archeological anthropologist Jonathan Haas said.
“[Back then], once you gathered the food you needed for the day, you were done for the rest of the day,” Haas said. “There was not the sense of ‘Let’s put some money away in an IRA.’ You went and got the resources you needed for that day. If you didn’t get the resources, you went hungry.”
Haas, lead curator of the Field Museum’s new “Ancient Americas” exhibit, believes there is a lesson in that.
“That is what we have done as humans for 98 percent of our existence on the planet,” he said. “‘I have to hunt until I get enough food for the day. Then I’m done.’”...
Rather than tell the story chronologically, Ancient Americas’ galleries revolve around the innovations people used to meet day-to-day challenges. Learn how hunting and gathering evolved to meet a changing environment; how societies cultivated wild plants, like squash, for food and tamed wild animals; and how different forms of leadership led to the formation of hierarchical governments...
More than 20 distinct cultural groups are represented in the new exhibit, including the pueblo-building tribes of the American Southwest; the mound-building Hopewell and Mississippian cultures which flourished in the Midwest; the Taíno of the Caribbean; the South-American Incas and Mesoamerican civilizations like the Zapotec, Maya and Aztec. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec’s capital city in what is now Mexico City, once boasted more than 200,000 people.