Dating artifacts and radiocarbon dating North American indigenous population shows changes in 2,000 years

A small team of all archaeologists and humanists of the University of Vyoming, Michigan State University, and Desert Research Institute, all in America, have used radiocarbon dating of bone and other artifacts found at various sites in North America, so that indigenous population Learn more about the ups and downs before the arrival of Europeans.

In their paper Published In Action of National Science AcademyThe group describes how they used dating thousands of items to achieve insight into population centers in North America over the last 2,000 years, and what they learned from doing so.

In the last several decades, studies have assessed a decline in the heavy population of indigenous people in North America after the arrival of European settlers. However, on this new attempt, the researchers noted that very little work has been done to assess the population number before their arrival. In this new attempt, the research team demanded to fill some intervals by conducting a long -term field study of materials left behind by indigenous people in the United States and Canada.

The work of the team involves obtaining food scraps, charcoal bits, textiles, bones and other artifacts, which were left behind by indigenous people over 2,000 years and then carbon is dating them. The work took 10 years – finally, the team collected more than 60,000 radioacarbon dates from the goods.

To estimate the population, researchers corrected the abundance of objects that they dated and their types. He estimated how many people lived in a given area over a period of 2,000 years. He then used such projections to develop population numbers for the entire continent in the same period.

Given their maps and data, researchers found that population growth and declining with time and sector vary – some fields increased in population while others shrunk. For example, the population of Kahokia, the largest known city in prehistoric North America, reached its peak around 1100 and then soon declined, due to hunting and climate change. By 1350, no one was left.

The research team also found that North America’s population reached its maximum by about 1150 – after that, there were eb and flow throughout the continent. When the Europeans started arriving, the population was reversing, but then soon started falling and crashed in the next centuries.

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