Touching deep Native American history | Tom Dillehay | TEDxNashville

With some good stories, Tom Dillehay recounts three ways his career as an anthropologist made an impact on him and on what we know about prehistory in the Americas.

Tom D. Dillehay is an internationally recognized anthropologist, known for groundbreaking and highly interdisciplinary scientific research. Many of his research projects are in South America where he focuses mainly on human migration and the resulting transformative processes that lead to political, economic, social and technological changes. His work has been featured in numerous publications and broadcast programs, including National Geographic, Scientific American, Nova, Discover, BBC, History Channel, Discovery Channel, NPR and others.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com.tedx.

Good morning, everybody.

It's my pleasure to be
in downtown Nashville

after seven years.

I had an abstract of about 800 words
in a foreign language

I was going to have you read,

but after seeing
Tom's abstract in physics,

I eliminated it.

What I want to do is talk to you today

about three impacts
in my life and my career,

and two of those -

with my research teams and students -

have impacted certain thoughts
about society and culture,

past and present.

And the last impact relates
to me being impacted by my own work.

So I want to get into that,

but before I do, I want
to define anthropology for you

because most people think of it
and they think of stones and bones,

or, number two, somebody in a pith helmet

hovering over some indigenous individual -

it's that too, but
it's much more than that.

A short definition -

the definition of anthropology
is the totality of the human experience.

And that means all the way through time,

all the way through circumstances,

all the way through space.

There's four subdisciplines
to anthropology.

One's what we call "ethnography."

That's the person who goes out,
the ethnographer,

and embeds him- or herself
in the society

and they study that particular society
for a very long period of time -

all aspects of it
or some very specific parts of it.

Second, archeology.

And archeology studies
not only all the way back into time

long before the written word -

which is 1492 here, so we go back
about 15,000 years in the Americas -

but also modern-day studies.

The real definition of archaeology

is human behavior observed
through the use of material goods,

mainly trash - we play
with people's trash -

past and present, again.

A third part of it is bio-anthropology,
the study of the human body -

anatomy, genetics, changes
taking place in human evolution -

through time as well,

all the way back to the hominids
and the work of the Leakeys,

up to your, my changing bodies today.

And fourth, linguistics,
social linguistics:

How does language change?

What has been the impact of the computer

as an instrumentation, information device,

on society and culture as well.

Well, I'm primarily involved
in two kinds of those anthropologies:

archeology and ethnography.

So when I say I'm going to go
into the deep history of Native Americans,

it's going to be in South America,
way back in time,

on one of these impacts,

and then I'm going to talk
about living people as well,

in two areas where I've done some work -

in the Amazon basin and also
down in Patagonia, southern Chile.

This is a shot of the Southern Andes,

a shot that I took
that I'm quite proud of;

if you take thousands and thousands
of shots with multiple cameras like I do,

eventually one of them satisfies
National Geographic Society,

as this one did.

But let me talk about the first impact,

and that has to do
with program development.

When I was in my 20s -
and this gets back to Meredith's talk -

I had some great discoveries then,

and I hope that I still have some

in mid-career and now
in the twilight years of my career -

which is still a ways to go.

And I went into -

I was doing my field work
and dissertation work In Peru

and was contacted
by the Inter-American Foundation

to go to Chile to open up
departments of anthropology, in the 70s,

after the Augusto Pinochet
regime and dictatorship

had exiled or killed off
most of the social scientists

at most of the universities.

So I went as an anthropologist and founded
two departments of anthropology,

that are still viable today, in Chile.

And since then, I have gone on
to develop other academic programs

in other Latin American countries,

with colleagues
and with ex-students of mine.

So, it has been one
of the delights of my entire career.

And I'm not ranking it over the others,

but I think it's extremely important
that when people are in need

and if you have the opportunity -

I certainly didn't have
the skills back then,

I learned those in place at the time -

to take that opportunity to help people,

it's a healing experience
for them and for you as well.

Let me tell you a little bit
about one of those experiences I had.

At the time in Chile,
at the Catholic University,

where the first program
I helped to develop [was],

the deans and the rectors
were military men,

within their military uniforms.

So I showed up from Lima, Peru,
coming into Santiago,

and went to the dean's office, general,

and he said, "Well, I'm glad you're here."

And I had long hair and a beard,

and that was a negative sign

because that meant
you probably leaned to the left

and you worked with
indigenous people as well,

and this was a right-wing,
hard-core military individual.

He says, "Your office is ready for you,"

because he was ready to receive me.

And he said, "Follow me,"

and he picked up a cushion,
and he took it with him.

He said, "This cushion
is really important."

So I followed him, and I was thinking,

"What? My dog carries
its teddy bear around ... "

and I'm thinking, "Why does
this guy need a cushion?

Does he got ... "
if you don't mind me saying,

I was really thinking, "a bad case
of hemorrhoids or something?"

You know, I didn't know.

He takes me to his personal bathroom,

unfolds a table, puts it in front
of the toilet, slams the lid down,

puts the cushion on it,
and says, "Here's your office."

And I spent one year in that office,

running and developing
the anthropology program.

So I learned perseverance.

I learned to hang on.

I learned not to ever
look behind me as well.

And when he came and knocked on the door
and wanted to use his "office,"

I would leave for
a considerable amount of time.

But that's an experience
that has stayed with me for years,

and in that same department
of anthropology today, 30 years later,

the lid to that toilet
hangs in the departmental office.

So, it's a moment I'm quite proud of.

But more than that
is still giving to programs,

and still working with
and developing students.

And I have a lot of ex-students
scattered throughout the continent,

South America, Latin America in general.

It has been a very, very
rewarding moment in my life,

and, perhaps, one of
the deepest meanings I've had.

Let me turn to a second impact,

and that is breaking a theory

that I was not only involved in
but sat at the center of,

that started back in the 70s
when I was in my 20s -

again, going back to Meredith's talk -

discovered a site down in Southern Chile,

which would be the very last arrow
on the right in South America,

right where that tip stops;

it's called Monte Verde.

I'll show you a few slides
of this in a moment.

The old theory of who
were the first Americans,

where did they come from,
and why is this question even important,

has its what's called Clovis Theory,
Clovis, New Mexico.

Big game hunters,

mainly following big game
across from Alaska -

see the orange and yellow lines -

all the way down through the Americas,

ending up in South America
around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago.

When in my 20s,
when I was living down in Chile,

I discovered this site,

and I mounted a research team
of more than 80 specialists -

geneticists, ecologists, entomologists,

sedimentologists, all these -ologists,

including a psychologist at one point -

studying the spatial makeup
of huts and things.

And I'll show that to you
in a few moments.

And we mounted this team
and studied this particular site

over a period of 30 years

and published the results
with Smithsonian Institution

in some large volumes.

But it took until about five years ago
for the theory to be accepted,

the Clovis theory,
which is the Clovis First theory,

having people coming over
around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago.

It was big game hunters quickly migrating
and moving their way through the Americas.

Where our work at Monte Verde -

This is the Clovis site in New Mexico,
discovered back in the 20s.

It's a mammoth kill site.

Just to show the scenario -
it's sort of an arid zone,

and this is the first great
"American invention," as experts had it,

which is called the "fluted point."

It has a channel, or flute,
down at the bottom,

which, once it penetrates
the animal, is for bloodletting.

That was the theory
that had been around for 70 years

and very difficult to break
and to buck up against the experts,

mainly experts from North America,
but a few in South America as well.

It took us multidisciplinary research

in excavating the Monte Verde site,

which is located here in southern Chile,

that dates back
to about 14,500 years ago,

putting it roughly 1,000
to 1,500 years earlier than Clovis.

So the question is how could it be

that if you had people
coming over from Asia -

Mongoloids, Asians -

going down through Alaska,

down through into the lower 48
and all the way down in South America,

why is the earliest site
down in South America?

People had to have been earlier
in North America.

Well, talking about theories
and paradigms and expertise,

the way the disciplines,
scientifically, are defined sometimes

is that when you obtain research funding,

you have to follow
a very strict paradigm at times.

And individuals who get outside
of that paradigm, that theoretical model,

often have extreme difficulties getting
funding and thinking about new things,

as Meredith was talking about as well.

This is a site that's located
in Central Valley,

incredibly beautiful.

I mean, there's volcanoes
everywhere, it's snow-capped,

it's an ecology and environment

very similar to
the Seattle-Vancouver area.

And this is Monte Verde site over here.

What makes this site so unusual
is that it was covered over by peat bog.

Some of you might have seen
in National Geographic magazine

some of these raisin-preserved
bodies, human bodies

that are under peat bogs or in ice sheets.

We found organic material at Monte Verde.

And what you see
on the two left-hand slides here

are the foundation remains
of long tent-like structures.

Found human hair,

found people who who were chewing
their fingernails off and throwing aside.

We did not find any of the humans -

nobody died when they were there,
so they didn't bury them in the site.

We found human footprints,
as you see off on the right:

toe impressions,
the arch impression, the heel.

Extremely good preservation
of animal hides, animal hair,

food remains, meat.

It's incredible - in fact, in two
of the huts that we found there,

there were two chunks of meat

that looked like
big, Wendy's hamburg patties,

which is interesting
and sends a signal to us

that these people must have had
some kind of a sharing unit -

you cut the meat in a certain way,
and you share it in a certain way.

And I don't have the time
to go into all the details on this,

but this site broke the Clovis theory

and changed the first chapter
of unwritten history

of humans in the New World -
Monte Verde did.

And since then a number
of other sites have come forward,

breaking the Clovis paradigm,
or the Clovis theory,

in North America as well.

We did this, again,
with a lot of perseverance,

a lot of interdisciplinary research,

and it was a personal struggle

where, at times in Chile
and outside of Chile,

I was often accused
of being a CIA agent:

"Nobody can find these sorts
of things," we were told.

Because usually what you find
in the archeological record

are stones and bones -
they preserve better.

But we found the organic remains,

and what you see here
are these foundations of wooden huts,

and this is a medicinal hut,
in the lower left-hand corner here,

where we found quids, or masticated cuds,

that people had been chewing on
and spit out and put on the floor.

Only of this wishbone,
or kind of a U-shaped hut.

They were combining a tea called "boldo,"

two kinds of seaweed
from the coast about 50 miles away -

has a high iodine content -

and also two other plants.

So it was sort of like
a pharmaceutical quid or package.

And it seems like
sick people went to this place.

We're still studying the sediment,
the floor inside the hut,

bringing in parasitologists
to do microscopic analyses.

So as I said, it's a highly
interdisciplinary project;

it still is going on

although most of the data
has been published.

Let me speak on a more personal note.

The impact here is obvious:

we, as I said, rewrote the first chapter
of human history in the New World.

These people, let me tell you
something about them.

You look at the skeletal remains -

not from Monte Verde,
but from other sites -

they were dying off at the age
of about 22 to 28, 30 years old.

You were old at the age of 25 or 30.

What you see are stress fractures
in the skeletal material,

stress fractures
from carrying heavy weight

at the age of, roughly,
9, 10, 11 years old.

I can't go into the data why we know
how old some of these early skeletons are.

Looking at the scar tissue

built up around the pubic zone
of the young females,

and once they reach puberty,

they were either aborting
or giving birth to children.

So, you were a full-blown,
mature working individual

on and through what we could call
teens and adolescent years.

And if you look at the skeleton material
from all over the late Ice Age period,

this pre-10,000, pre-11,000-year period

all the way down to about 8,000 years ago,

very few male or female skeletons
show individuals living beyond 25, 28 -

30 years old would be the equivalent
to about 80, 90 years for us.

These were the people
who laid the foundation,

culturally and socially,

for others to come,

not only in the Americas
but other parts of the world as well.

I have taken, over the past several years,

great pride in helping
to break this paradigm,

and I want to say, Meredith,
to you and to other people

experiencing similar kinds
of hindrances and obstacles

as you move forward
professionally or even personally -

if you're 22 years old,
you're going to outlive your critics.

Okay?

But I've had numerous opportunities
since this theory was proven

not only to lift
the middle finger on one hand

but two fingers,
simultaneously, on both hands.

(Laughter)

So, stick with it.

Somebody tells you "No,"
and you think and know you're right,

and you're working
with people - stick with it.

And on a personal side,
try to have options.

Because I had different research options
when the going got really tough here,

to the point that,

at the universities where I were,

there were colleagues signing letters
and sending them in, saying,

"You have to fire this guy.
He's off on the wrong track."

So we, me and my colleagues,
lived through all of that.

That's an impact that I think
that our research team had.

So, let me say something
about these early people as well.

99.99% of the existence of humanity

is associated with
these hunters and gatherers.

They're sophisticated;

they had options, they had choices;

they had technical sophistication,
and social organization and so forth.

They're not just individuals who
kind of mulled around in different places.

Briefly, as I conclude, I want to talk
about two living groups

because I work with living people:

Jivaro in the Amazon jungle

and the Mapuche
down in south-central Chile.

I work with shamans, religion,
with the Mapuche -

this a shaman in the Mapuche culture.

They have a completely different
mindset than we do.

We think in terms of profit,
goal-oriented practices and exercises;

we think in terms
of linear time - they don't.

This kind of leans back
into the talk on physics a bit.

They are nowhere,
but they're also everywhere,

because their thinking is flow-oriented.

They never talk about - and it's not
the only indigenous group that does this -

they never talk about the flow of events:

"When I was a child," or "When I get old."

They talk about events through all times,

and you never know if it was happening

during their childhood or adolescenthood
or present-day adulthood.

I've worked with some
of these groups, too, in the jungle.

And let me end on this note by saying
that they have a different idea of us too,

and what would we do
without Gary Larson in anthropology?

On occasion, in the Selva,
or the jungle in the Amazon,

I was out with a colleague of mine,

and I had not had my stomach
accustomed to the local food yet -

monkey meat, tapir, rodent meat as well -

and so I took cans of tuna fish
and a plastic knife.

These people lay a palm leaf out,

put worms on it, insects, meat,
vegetables - wild - and other things

and eat it.

But they have another leaf
where they would take a bite,

put their fingers in the water, clean
their fingers and then get another bite.

Well, one night they left us,
just simply left us.

We caught up with them a day later,

and they told us, "Look, we left
for the following reason:

when he opened his tuna fish can,
he put the plastic fork back in,

took a bite, put the fork
back in, took a bite -

without cleaning it each time.

We thought that he was
an uncivilized barbarian.

(Laughter)

Thank you very much.

They had an impact on me.

Thank you.

(Applause)