Archaic Science
ZOOLOGY (Animal Science)
Introduction: From deer to smaller animals like snails, the Archaic Indians needed many different kinds of creatures to meet their needs. Since it doesn't take any skill to hunt a snail--all you have to do is find it and pick it up--we will discuss what the Archaic Indians had to know to hunt larger game. This knowledge was used to hunt rabbits, snakes, lizards, rodents, and many other animals. Think about everything you would have to learn just to put a morsel of meat in your mouth or an animal hide on your back.
Animal Behavior: If someone has to hunt animals for food, he has to understand how each animal thinks. He has to know what it likes to eat, where it eats, and when it eats. Equally important, he has to know how to track an animal. The hunter also has to know if it migrates and where it goes. Even more important, he has to know which senses an animal uses to detect a threat. He then has to figure out how to avoid being seen, heard, or smelled so that he can get close enough for the kill.
Animal Anatomy: Anatomy is the study of the body and how it works. An archaic hunter had to know the location of an animal's vital organs. A shot in the wrong place would wound an animal but not bring it down.
Archaic men and women also knew how to use nearly every part of an animal's body. You have already learned how bones and ligaments were used. Hides were turned into articles of clothing, but they had to be tanned. A hide that wasn't tanned rotted. Special procedures were discovered to make the hides last a long time.
Yucky Stuff: Archaic hunters had skills that might surprise you. Examining an animal's dung, for example, told them a lot about that animal. By feeling the dung, they could tell how fresh it was. Soft, warm dung told the hunter that the creature was nearby. Hard, cool dung told the hunter that the creature might be far away.
Smelling dung could tell the hunter if the animal was a carnivore (meat eater), an herbivore (plant eater), or an omnivore (eats plants and animals). The dung of carnivores has a stronger smell than that of an herbivore.
Examining the dung for its contents revealed what the animal ate. If the dung contained fur, the animal was obviously a carnivore. If the dung contained plant fibers and seeds, the animal was obviously an herbivore. If the dung contained both animal and plant matter, it was an omnivore.
Studying the fresh blood of a wounded animal revealed information about its injury. The color of blood indicated if the animal was injured in its vital organs or in a less serious part of its anatomy. Hunters often tasted the fresh blood of an animal to determine how serious the injury was.
Once all of the information was gathered, the hunter used what he had learned to track the animal.
BOTANY (Plant Science)
Think about the plants where you live. Think back to the questions you answered on the home page. Compared to the Archaic Indians of the Lower Pecos, we know very little about the plants around us. Here is what they had to know:
Poisonous Plants: Some plants irritate the skin when you touch them. Others irritate the skin when they poke you. Others make you sick or kill you when you eat them.
Medicinal Plants: Plants were a primary source of medicine. Some helped wounds to heal. Others were used for upset stomachs.
Sap from the leatherwood plant is applied to wounds to assist healing.
Raw Materials from Plants: Just like today, plants during Archaic times were used to make clothing and other articles necessary to everyday life. Plants like the lechuguilla and sotol provided fibers that were used in weaving. Archaic women developed various weaving patterns that gave each article strength.
Plants for Shelter: Good ideas last for thousands of years. Just like the Archaic Indians of the Lower Pecos, some people live in huts today. Most of us have homes constructed from plant materials. Our homes, for example, are made out of wood. Archaic Indian homes did not last as long and were not as comfortable as your home, but their huts were made out of plant materials. Slender trunks were bent to form a frame. Grasses were attached to the frame to complete the shell.
Archaic Indian Hut
Inside an Archaic Indian Hut
Plants for Tools & Weapons: Have you ever tried to start a fire by rubbing two sticks of wood together? Be honest. It didn't work. Archaic Indians knew that only certain types of wood could be used in friction fire starting. Imagine how much experimenting it took to decide which ones worked.
Atlatls and rabbit sticks were carved from wood. Digging sticks required less preparation, but they were also made from wood.
A dart (spear) shaft was made from river cane. The dart point and feathers were attached with sinew. Cordage could also be used, but it was not as effective. Archaic Indians discovered that after sinew has been wet, it shrinks. After tightly mounting a dart point to a shaft with sinew, the sinew was moistened. As it dried, it shrank. Another way of doing this may have been to moisten the sinew before tightly wrapping it around the dart point. As the sinew dried, it drew even tighter. This really held the dart point securely on the shaft.
Flint knapped knives were attached to a wood handle to make a sotol knife. The blades could, once again, be attached to the handle with sinew.
PHYSICS
Atlatl: The atlatl appeared over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Therefore, it had been around for thousands of years when the Archaic Indians of the Lower Pecos used it. It was truly the invention of a genius. Here is how it works.
The atlatl extends the length of the arm when throwing a dart (spear). Scientific tests were recently conducted to determine how well it worked. Here is what the scientists discovered in this particular test:
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The dart launched with an atlatl traveled 15 times faster than a dart thrown by hand.
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The dart launched with an atlatl had 200 times the force as one thrown by hand.
A modern hunter who hunts deer with an atlatl told Scott Walters about the time one of his darts entered a buck's chest and passed completely through the animal, exiting its rear. A hand-thrown spear would never have done that.
An archeologist told about the time a group of students were "messing around" with an atlatl in the school parking lot. When a throw missed its target, the dart wound up piercing the metal door of a vehicle in the parking lot.
A scientific investigation and these stories tell just how powerful a dart launched by an atlatl could be!
Dart with Detachable Dart Shaft: This is another cool invention, and you can use it to impress your family with your knowledge and brilliance. When a dart hits its target, the dart shaft is driven deep into the animal. The shaft bounces back, leaving the dart in the animal. The hunter can then run up, grab the dart, reload another dart shaft, and launch a second time. Here's the part that will impress your friends and family. The dart shaft bouncing away from an animal after it has been hit can be explained by Newton's Second Law of Motion; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tell your parents about this while your eating your next meal, and you're likely to get an extra serving of desert.
Dart Feathers: These weren't for decoration. They stabilized the dart in flight. That means the dart flew straighter. Wow! These people were smart.
Rabbit Stick: This was another great invention that works much like a boomerang. Of course, the hunter did not want the rabbit stick to come back to him. That would make it a toy, not a weapon!
When thrown, the curved shape of the rabbit stick worked like a gyroscope. Spinning end-over-end around an invisible axis, it flew straighter and farther. Here comes Newton again. His First Law of Motion states that a body in motion continues in its state of motion until an outside force(s) change it.
Some rabbit sticks had grooves carved into them. It has been suggested that these grooves work much like the dimples on a golf ball. They were air foils that helped stabilize its flight. If that is true, it illustrates how much these ancient scientists must have experimented to improve their tools and weapons.
Friction Fire Starter (Fire Drill): Starting a fire with a friction fire starter is much more than spinning a stick in a hole in a split shaft. It has to be spun pretty fast while downward pressure is exerted on the stick. The goal is to create a glowing ember that is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot!
CHEMISTRY
Paint Making: Making paint Archaic Indian style is not as easy as mixing colored matter with water. The ancient artists had several ways of mixing paint that could use any of the following ingredients.
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Powered stone for pigment
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Water, blood, urine, or fat as a binder
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Sotol root juice as an emulsifier
When powered stone is mixed with animal fat, it does not apply smoothly. Adding the juice of a sotol root takes care of that problem. The sotol plant is known as the soap plant. It's juice can be used just like soap. If the Archaic Indians of the Lower Pecos had Dawn dishwashing detergent, it would have worked just as well as sotol juice in making the paint smooth and easy to apply. Yes, to answer a question you may be asking, the Archaic Indians may have used it when it was time to take a bath.
You have to be impressed with the fact that Archaic Indian paintings have lasted for thousands of years. Some house paint doesn't last a single year.