This assumption has long influenced interpretations of human evolution in the humid tropics 1 4. It presumed that the first Americans would not have been broad spectrum foragers but instead big game hunters following herds from the Siberian steppes into similar American habitats after those megafauna went extinct at the end of the Ice Age were people hypothesized to have developed agriculture in the dry, open vegetation valleys of the Central Andes and Mesoamerica, before finally migrating into the tropical forests and coastal lowlands. | Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology December 2017, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 1-17 ISSN 2334-2420 (Print) 2334-2439 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: URL: Paleoindian Solar and Stellar Pictographic Trail in the Monte Alegre Hills of Brazil: Implications for Pioneering New Landscapes Christopher S. Davis1, Anna C. Roosevelt, William Barnett & J. P. Brown Introduction In the last 50 years, archaeological finds from Amazonia have forced revision of some theories about human evolution. A common assumption had been that human evolution was restricted by environmental limitations which favored slow progression from simple, unspecialized, economically unproductive cultures to complex, specialized, and highly productive ones. This assumption has long influenced interpretations of human evolution in the humid tropics 1 4. It presumed that the first Americans would not have been broad spectrum foragers but instead big game hunters following herds from the Siberian steppes into similar American habitats after those megafauna went extinct at the end of the Ice Age were people hypothesized to have developed agriculture in the dry, open vegetation valleys of the Central Andes and Mesoamerica, before finally migrating into the tropical forests and coastal lowlands 9. According to the environmental limitation theory, only cooler agricultural zones fostered conditions that gave rise to civilized achievements like math, astronomy, and calendars exhibited by the Maya, Aztec, and Inca. Hunter gatherers were notpredicted to need, nor deemed capable of devising such cultural achievements. In contradiction to this theory, recent research on Paleoindians shows that the first colonists ventured onto the marine coasts and into the tropical lowlands as soon as they spread through the hemisphere, living by hunting and foraging economies based
