Location of the Quereo site
(71o 34' 43" W, 31o 55' 41" S)
54. Possible Relatives in the Americas
Quereo site (Conquimbo, Chile)
by George Weber
|
|
Location of the Quereo site |
|
|
Detail map of the Quereo site location. Red line: modern roads |
The Quereo site is located on a bluff overlooking the Pacific and was (much like Tagua Tagua further south) a butchering site. It has yielded a few simple unifacial flaked tools associated with mastodon, horse, extinct camelid, deer, and sea mammals.
|
|
Archaeoelogist Olaff Olmos Figueroa (1951-2005) at work at the Quereo site. |
The earliest traces of humans at Quereo date to around 12,000 years before the present and appear in two separate cultural layes, I and II. Much as the early hunters at Tagua Tagua, the Quereo people were hunters of large animals; indeed, perhaps the two populations were one and the same. Later populations at the site were agriculturists with pottery
Animal remains found at Quereo site (reproduced in simplified form from from Rafael O. Labarca and Patricio G. López. 2006. "Los mamíferos finipleistocénicos de la Formación Quebrada Quereo (IV Región-Chile): biogeografía, bioestratigrafía e inferencias paleoambientales." Mastozool. Neotrop. vol.13 no.1. Mendoza Jan./Jun.issue). Shown here are remains of (left) Equus amerhippus (the American horse) and of (right) of a member of the deer family, Antifer antifer .
The bones shown are not poroportional to each other in size or completely reproduced (for all details and for other animals butchered at the Quereo site see original article)
|
|
|
|
|
Only a few tools have been found and described from the oldest levels of the Quereo site. |
The area of Quereo is also famous for its rock paintings which, however, date to a much later time than the one we are looking at here
For rock paintings see http://www.rupestreweb.info/bustamante.html
|
[ Go to HOME ] [ Go to CONTENTS OF OUT-OF-AFRICA CHAPTERS ] [ Go to CONTENTS OF AMERICA CHAPTERS ] |
Last change 15 April 2007
