Читать книгу One Best Hike: Grand Canyon. Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Hike from the Rim to the River—and Back онлайн

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The Archaic culture began by definition 8,500 years ago, and by 8,000 years ago people of this culture inhabited the Grand Canyon area. They too were a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture and had no permanent habitations. Over the subsequent six millennia, the distribution of people and especially their population densities fluctuated greatly, dictated largely by natural climatic fluctuations. During dry periods there were fewer predictable water sources and probably fewer game animals to hunt.

The descendants of the Archaic culture are the people of the Basketmaker culture, distinguished by the beautiful baskets they made. The Basketmaker culture began around A.D. 1, and by A.D. 500, at the latest, the people of this culture were farming corn, squash, and beans. This change in food source meant that the people were no longer nomadic, instead building more permanent habitations: pithouses as living quarters and shelters for food storage. However, even after they began to farm, the Basketmaker people living in the Grand Canyon continued to depend partially on wild game and wild plants. This flexibility gave them an advantage over tribes to the south that relied more heavily on farming; because of their use of wild food sources they maintained a more balanced—and healthier—diet than the tribes relying mostly on corn did.