54. Possible Relatives in the Americas
Las Vegas culture and the "Lovers of Sumpa"
(Guayas, Ecuador)
by George Weber
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The early prehistoric Ecuadorian Las Vegas culture flourished on the Santa Elena peninsula and in the larger area around it from 10,000 to 6,500 years ago. The western tip of the peninsula (Punta Santa Elena is 140 km west of the city of Guayaquil.
The Las Vegas culture is best known for the number of human remains found (including the famous "Lovers of Sumpa") |
The Las Vegas culture has been classified by archaeologists into three periods, based on C14 dating of human remains, of artefacts such as stone tools, of faunal remains and pollen.The classification is based on the more than 30 sites known in 1985.
- the pre-Las Vegas phase (11,000 to 10,000 years ago
- the early Las Vegas phase (10,000 to 8,000 years ago)
- the late Las Vegas phase (8,000 to 6,600 years ago)
The people of the earliest pre-Las Vegas stage were unspecialized hunter-gatherers and fishermen living along a coast with fish-rich waters. They probably represented a transitory stage between pure hunter-gatherers and the later fisher-famers. A little before 8,000 years ago the Las Vegas people were among the earliest Americans to develop the cultivation of edible plants (bottle gourd Lagenaria siceraria and an early type of corn/maize Zea mays L.).
The Las Vegas culture is seen by archaeologists as a local manifestation of an early tropical (pre-ceramic) forest and fishing culture out of which developed the later ceramic-stage cultures of the Ecuadorian coast. Although Las Vegas was a coastal culture, few if any sites are thought to have been lost to the rising sea since the beginning of the holocene since,as Stothert notes in 1985 "...it is unlikely that any sites have been submerged, since tectonic uplift has more than kept pace with marine emergence since the end of the pleistocene".
The type sitee for the Las Vegas cultural complex was discovered and first investigated by E.P. Lanning and published in 1967. The site OGSE-80 was excavated most thoroughly of all Las Vegas sites 1977-1980 by Karen Stothert and published (Stothert K.E. 1985. "The Preceramic Las Vegas Culture of Coastal Ecuador", American Antiquity, 50(3):613-637)
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The Las Vegas sites (adapted from Stothert 1985)
red dots: sites of the Las Vegas culture black: modern settlements light green: height of the land between 0-10 m medium gree: hight of the land between 10 and 50 m dark green: hight of the land more than 50 m The rivers carry water only intermittently
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Below:
The wall trench and fireplace is all that remains of a cicular hut (the stakes do not indicate post holes) built approximately 7,000 years ago. Other parts of the site in which this hut was found date back to more than 10,000 years ago. Site 80 also contained human burials with bones dated to between 6,600 and 9,800 years ago.
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Excavations at Site 80: 1. Wall trench 2. Burial place of 45-year-old woman beneath the hut 3. Centimeter scale and arrow pointing North 4. Flat-surfaced stone artefacts 5. Fireplace
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The bones of no less than 122 adult and 70 sub-adult individuals of the Las Vegas culture have been foundwith sexes seems fairly evenly represented. These burials all seem to date from the late period.
Burial pattern included:
- primary burials of one or two individuals (the "lovers of Sumpa"
belong to this category)
- secondary burials of one or two individuals (i.e. the burial of
bones from people who had already received a primary burial earlier)
of bones in regular or irregular bundles
- Secondary burials of large numbers of disarticulated skeletons in
ossuaries.
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Excavations at Site 80: The yellow semi-circle (a) represents the wall trench of the hut shown in the photogtraph above. b is the burial of woman and child shown below c the "Lovers of Sumpa" White: excavated areas Grey: unexcavated areas
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Burial of a woman and child at Site 80: The child's bones are disarticulated in a secondary burial and packed in a bundle. The adult (the child's mother?) is a primary burial with her bones remaining articulated. The location of this burial is marked b in the plan above. |
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A quartzite pebble used as grinder with edge-grinding along one side and at both ends comers from an early level of Site 80.
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The skeletons of a male and a female in loving embrace were unearthed on Site 80 in the late 1970s by Karen Stothert and named the "Lovers of Sumpa" ("Amentes de Sumpa", Sumpa being the name of the local area) and dated to around 7.000 years ago. Since the discovery and exhibition in the local museum, the two lovers have provided a welcome magnet for tourists to the area. The reason why the two skeletons' were buried in this unusual position remains unknown. The cause of death has not been established so that the rather strong possibility of a stoning (for adulterery? in what their contemporaries may have regarded as a shameful position?) remains. However, many early societies are known to have weighed down their dead with stones to prevent their return from the spirit world. For this reason, the stones on top of the skeletons need not necessarily be evidence for stoning. A detailed and thorough forensic investigation of the "Lovers of Sumpa" might be able to answer some of these open questions. Photograph by Eduardo Almeida Reyes |
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The tiny but well-kept little museum near Site 80 where the "Lovers of Sumpa" and many finds of that site as well as of other prehistoric cultures of the area are housed. The museum was opened to the public in 1997. |
Among web-sites with further information are:
- http://www.doaks.org/RAEC.html
- http://www.saa.org/publications/saabulletin/16-2/SAA15.html
- http://www.touriz.com/ecuador/Salinas_Ecuador.html
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Last change 1 July 2007
