Modern Belize Owes a Debt of History to the Paleo-Indians

February 18, 2024
by denidimchev@webohub.com +

The Caribbean nation of Belize has gained attention throughout the world as a tropical destination that’s drawing the attention of both vacationers and westerners looking to move somewhere more peaceful — but it had a history long before it was a popular vacation spot. In fact, a mighty empire rose and fell before European colonizers ever set foot in the Americas — but even the Maya empire represents just a fraction of this land’s human history. The birth of human development in Belize extends all the way back to roughly 15,000 BC, and the impact of the people who called this land home for so long continues to reverberate into the present day. It all begins at a time that historians call the Paleo-Indian Period.

The Arrival of Paleo-Indians

Paleo-Indians refer to the first group of people who are believed to have crossed into the Americas. The world was very different during this period, both in terms of technological advancement and in terms of basic geography. Humanity’s earliest descendants came into being in Africa six million years ago, but it would take them a long time to spread throughout the surrounding continents. The first evidence of homo sapiens in Southeast Asia dates back to roughly 50,000 BC, and it would take another ten thousand years or so for these early human migrations to bring them to Europe. 40,000 years ago, these primitive humans had expanded all the way to the Arctic regions of what is now considered Russia.

It’s here that they’d find their opportunity to cross over into the Americas. These primitive people were primarily hunters, and their migrations are believed to be driven by the migration routes of large prey. As massive creatures like woolly mammoths crossed into new territory, their human hunters followed. The Bering Strait presently provides a barrier between Alaska and Russia — but there previously existed a land bridge known as Beringia. As early as 25,000 years ago, humans found their way into Alaska and expanded greatly. By roughly 16,000 years ago, these people had followed land bridges created by the current ice age into the Americas — a journey that would lead them finally to Central American and South American countries over 2,000 years later. Traces of these Paleo-Indians place them in Belize as far back as 15,000 years ago.

paleo indians belize — **Stone tips (points) of the North American paleo-Indians**

The Life of Paleo-Indians

It’s easy to think of these early humans as expansive nomads, but it’s important to contextualize the sheer scale of time it took them to travel so far. Large animals like mammoths and mastodons lured the people to Belize, but many would remain on these lands. That said, it can be hard to determine exactly what life was like for these people — in part because it happened so long ago and in part because they continued to live a nomadic life.

Permanent settlements in Belize from this era are unheard of, but the rare campsites that have been uncovered offered the best evidence of survival during this bleak and primitive era. Shell, stone, bone, and wood all served as materials for making tools and weapons, but they had yet to develop serious tools for metalworking. That’s not to say that there was no technological evolution during the Paleo-Indian period. The Yucatan Peninsula was fertile ground for hunting and sustenance, and it allowed for the development of a new type of arrowhead — the Clovis point. Their thin and fluted design allowed for them to be mounted effectively and fashioned into spears or arrows — and they can be found scattered liberally throughout the Americas. It’s even believed that this innovation helped hasten the extinction of megafauna and help expedite the development of early civilization throughout the continent.

An archaeological discovery in Belize’s Cayo District help put into context the cleverness of these early people. Giant sloth bones in the village of Santa Familia were cut open by sharp weapons — an indication that human hunters recognized the nutritional content in the bone marrow and actively created tools designed to access them. Ultimately, the Paleo-Indian population would disappear not because of natural disasters or competition from other humans but because they managed to develop more sophisticated tools of communication and survival that carried them to the next period of civilization.

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The End of the Paleo-Indians

More specifically, the era of the Paleo-Indians would end with the conclusion of the very ice age that bought them to the Americas. As the climate began to warm, glaciers began to melt and flood the land bridges that connected the continents of the east and the continents of the west. This rippling effect would have an impact on the food sources for Paleo-Indians as well. This new environment proved unable to sustain the megafauna that Paleo-Indians survived on, and it necessitated a new way of life that didn’t involve nomadic hunting migrations. They were effectively living in a new world where both their food sources and their mobility were decreased. But this also brought new opportunities for living.

The end of the Paleo-Indians is agreed to have taken place around 7000 BC, but it didn’t happen all at once. New methods for shaping spear points developed to help Paleo-Indians hunt for smaller prey like fish and rodents — and the withdrawal of ice allowed for plants to flourish like never before. Without the need to follow their prey any longer, Paleo-Indians began to develop permanent settlements — and with it brought the exchange of new technologies and survival techniques. Foraging would give way to agriculture, and hunting would give way to herding. The long migration of the Paleo-Indians would end, but civilization wouldn’t come right away. It was only thanks to the ingenuity of the people and the bounty of the land that they managed to carve out civilization for themselves. What we think of in the modern era as the age of the Mayas would begin in the period ranging from 3000 to 2000 BC, but they wouldn’t exist without the decisions made by the Paleo-Indian people that preceded them.

Photo credit: Wikipedia