Sea nomads of the Beagle Channel and surrounding areas.

PIANA, E.L.; ALVAREZ, M.R.; RÚA, N.S.

Antarctic Peninsula & Tierra delFuego: 100 years of Swedish-Argentine scientific cooperation at the end of the world

Taylor & Francis

Lugar: Leiden; Año: 2006; p. 195 - 214

The maguellan-fueguian channels and islands area was populated by natives adapted to this environment known as sea nomads or canoe people. Their descendents were first encountered by European at the beginning of the XVII Century. They called themselves Yamana and Halakwoolip , and were later known as Yahgan and Alakaluf. The Yamana country included the north coast of the Beagle Channel from Punta Divide to SloggetBay and the southern islands down to Cape Horn.  The Alacaluf’s one covered the western islands up to the Magellan Strait. These natives  soon called the European scholars attention for they lived naked in this extreme latitude, displayed an non complex social structure and their material equipment was simple. Most of the attention on them occurred after the Darwin’s visit to the region and the largest amount of written sources describing them are from the XIX Century. These natives were pin pointed as examples of the first stages of humankind and were described in many opportunities. Nevertheless, up recent years all the scholar’s understanding was restricted to the historical information and repeated but a few recurrent concepts. They were perceived as culturally primitive, as cornered in the southernmost tip by other some how stronger cultures and as recent inhabitants of the area. After systematic archeological research these assumptions probed to be wrong and it was understood that the Yamana were the point of a successful adaptative tradition that rooted for more than six millennia. This tradition has been followed through different archaeological records since some 6.4 uncal. 14C Ky. BP to the XIX Century. They had a hunting-fishing-gathering economy based on sea mammals fat consumption. Sea lions were most important and a year round staple and the diet was complemented with marine birds, fishes, guanaco and constant shellfish gathering. Cetaceous was a somehow hazardous resource. Though Tierra del Fuego is one of the most recently populated landmass in prehistory, human presence has at least ten millennia, that is previously to the Magellan Strait opening some 8 Ky. ago, but the archaeological remains of such antiquities show an inland hunters economy  with no adaptation to sea the littoral environment. For the presence of a sea nomads life style in the region an Hypothesis for it’s Maximum Possible Age was put forward. It remarks the need of  extended woods in the region as an unavoidable requirement for this sea littoral adaptation and focus the possible origin in the Southern Patagonian Pacific Archipelago. From this relationship sites older than roughly 6.5-6.7 uncl. 14C Ky. BP radiocarbon years are not expected to be found. Even though more than near a thousand sites were found since then in the Beagle Channel and surroundings there are not older dates than the expected. The oldest known sites and layers, all expressed in uncal. 14C Ky. BP are Túnel I Second component from 6.4 to 5.8 (on charcoal), Grandi 1 Inferior Layer 6, Aridos Guerrico, 6.5 (dated on shell), Imiwaia I 6.5 (on shell) and 5.8 AP (on charcoal)  and Lomada Alta Olivia (on charcoal) 5.600. Dates on shell should be reduced in near 600 years because after the known ratio of regional Reservoir. The archaeological record of all of those sites leads to consider them as already fully adapted, with a navigation device included,  and no clues of a transition from an inland life style to a sea littoral one was detected. Even though sites of  sea littoral adapted people north of Magellan Strait are roughly from the same antiquity, the most economic hypothesis is to  consider that the cultural adaptation to the Magellan-fueguian channels and islands started  some place within the Southern Patagonian Pacific Archipelago. From the mitocondrial DNA stand point, this natives are related with and only with the Amerindians. Once the adaptation to the sea littoral environment was reached it lasted for more than six millennia with no major changes, within an unstable stability. The general scheme maintained up to the Yamana.  This could happened because both biotic and abiotic sea environment  did not changed meanfully,  there was a constant food incoming from outside, the sea lion reproductive areas were away of the natives catchments areas,  and no other human groups competed for the environment until the European arrival. Even so, the total adaptation had a dangerous bottle neck: there was a high dependence on one resource, the sea lions. In the environment there was not scarcity of food, drinkable waters or woods, but due to clime conditions the metabolic requirements are high and the hidrocarbonates  availability in the woods is almost lacking. So the adaptation depended on fat’s consumption. Mollusks are almost all protein, fishes have little fat offer, guanacos are restricted to the north coast of the Beagle Channel and Navarino, from sea birds only penguins offer some fat,  cetaceans offer high amounts of fat but their availability was hazardous for they could be only be consumed when stranded and sea lions were the only trustable staple year round. Within such general stability scheme some changes were detected both by the refitting process and outside influences. From the latter the more meaningful are related with:  1) the disappearance of polished tools and some decorative patterns and the begging of use of large lanceolated  lithic spear point and near 4 uncal. 14C Ky BP, in agreement with the use of such sort of weapons in the islands from Chiloe down; 2) the use form at least 2.6 uncal. 14C Ky. BP of  triangle and stemmed points that are too large to be thrown with arrows  and are similar to the ones found within inland hunters from Tierra del Fuego and Eastern Patagonia and 3) the incoming of the bows and arrows complex up to now dated  at 1.4 uncal. 14C Ky BP. Of course not all of their life style was leaded by the adaptation process. For instance the encampment locations depended more on the previous social activities in the spot than from it’s geographical features. Once a settlement started for any reason, the activity carried on the spot and the high amount of debris produced by a constant consumption of mussels created particular microstructures that both call for the resettlement of the place and condition the further use of it.   The end of the sea nomads tradition reached with the Yamana extinction started before the constant contact  with the Europeans. The documented imported illnesses that  reduced the population form a figure of some 3.000 souls in middle XIX Century to less than a hundred at the beginning of the XX Century was just the final stage of a larger process that started with the North American and European  overhunting  of sea lions in their reproductive areas. This commercial activity unbalanced the environment- natives relationship  to a non return point. And there were not many alternatives to re balance it. It was a competition between industrial requirements vs survival needs.