Second, even well beyond historic time these environments were in continual change. Considering the last 12,000 years, during which there has surely been a human presence, there have been radical fluctuations in temperature and, consequently, in moisture. There have been violent seismic events that have re-positioned the land. And there have been volcanic events, some of great magnitude. We are dependent upon geologists to give us the main pictures, but even this is highly theoretical, an analysis that is only beginning. Beyond that, climatologists and archaeobotanists, among others, are adding their contributions to a very complicated picture.
The composite picture produced by all of these contributions suggests, first, that the pleistocene epoch came to an end somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 BP. The Clovis and Folsom people were already experiencing the stress of coming changes, which is why we see them creating the new fluted points (found only in the New World) that were adaptable to hunting smaller game. With the withdrawal of the glaciers, the big game retreated northward; and paleoindians may well have followed them northward all the way to Canada and eastern Alaska. As the glaciers melted, they left behind huge amounts of water that had to flow somewhere. In the Great Basin, these waters did not have access to the oceans.
At the end of the pleistocene, the Great Basin region was dominated by a number of large lakes that had been filled by runoff from the receding glaciers. Remnants of these lakes are seen today in the Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, Mono Lake, Pyramid Lake, and various dry lake beds. The precursor to the Great Salt Lake is called Lake Bonneville and it covered almost one quarter of the state of Utah. The precursor of Pyramid Lake is called Lake Lahontan and it covered almost one sixth of the state of Nevada. In archaic times, these lakes were far deeper than now. For instance, Owens Lake (now "dry" thanks to the City of Los Angeles) often ran out through its southern end, cutting a gorge through volcanic materials and filling China and Searles Lakes, far south. The Great Salt Lake was so high that it was united with Utah Lake (near Provo), now far separated by dry land, and it overflowed through Red Rock Pass northward into the Snake River. (Mehringer, HNAI, 11, pp. 33-37; maps by permission, Ray Sterner, Color Landform Atlas of the US)
While the general tendency, throughout the coming years, was toward warmer and drier climates, there were radical swings toward heavy precipitation (pluvials) countered by equally radical swings toward driness. Temperatures varied also. Indeed, in a simplistic model, the last 12,000 years has been rather like a pendulum, beginning with cold moist weather, moving to hot dry weather, and then "ending up" with a moderate climate, as known today. Obviously all of this had an enormous impact on vegetation; consequently, it would be naive in the extreme to assume that vegetation and wild life were static throughout this period. But as vegetation and wild life changed, humans must have come and gone and humans must have adapted their own lifeways to match the specific environments that they needed to appropriate for their own survival. An example of this can be found in the Coso Mountains, north of China Lake, in Eastern California, where an abundance of petroglyphs of fine quality demonstrates a high concentration of hunting over a long period of time in a location that, today, is arid and inhospitable to flora and fauna in any abundance.
Having said all of this, it is difficult to characterize the prehistoric environments of the Great Basin. We can imagine that extensive grasslands were always a part of this environment. These were undoubtedly always cut by rivers, moving water from one part of the Basin to another. The Humboldt River of Nevada, Sevier River of Utah, and the Truckee, Carson, and Walker Rivers of California are all examples of land-locked river systems that have survived into the present. These rivers continue to have enormous impact on wildlife habitats.
The Great Basin is really a high plateau with a minimum elevation around 5,000 feet. And this plateau is interrupted by numerous mountain ranges, mostly running southwest to northeast, which average heights of 10,000 feet. Thus, while rainfall is light, water runoff is concentrated in valley river systems and may result even in local marshes. (Map of Nevada adapted from Ray Sterner, Ibid) The whole is a complex and diverse system of flora and fauna, ranging from lowland marshs, river cut meadows, and shallow alkaline lakes to extensive semi-arid grass-and-brush lands and foothill chaparral to mountainous forests and even treeless mountain tundras. It is really this diversity of flora and (hence) fauna that explains the archaic lifeway. This is especially true because the Basin topography provided local (vertical) diversity throughout. People did not have to travel far to move into entirely different ecological systems. Thus, a seasonal round could be organized in which people would arrive, after a brief removal, at a new habitat where new and different plants, animals, or fish were ready to be harvested. At the same time, this environment clearly explains why archaic populations rarely grew large and people remained widely distributed throughout the Basin. While there was diversity, there was never plenty! These local habitats were small and fragile. (Mehringer, HNAI, 11, pp. 34-35; and Bettinger, 1985, pp. 43-44)
A paradigm of archaic Great Basin adaptation is the lifeway of the Washoe and their precursors. (Map of California and Nevada adapted from Ray Sterner, Ibid) As mentioned in the previous section, people began to inhabit Spooner Lake, Martis Meadow, Kings Beach, and other Tahoe Rim regions from early times onward. As time passed, a successful lifeway was constructed around a winter residence in Truckee Meadow (the valley floor from Carson City north to Reno) combined with spring-summer removal to Lake Tahoe and late-summer-to-fall visits into the higher Sierra lakes and meadows. These people literally beheld a vertically arranged food supply that came and went with the seasons. Lake Tahoe was so productive, indeed, that the Washoe flourished more than other Great Basin people and actually moved closer to social complexity than most.
Having said all of this, can we really imagine how people of the Basin actually survived? If most of us walked through the Basin today, we would have an extremely difficult time finding food. Let us begin, as archaic people did, in the lowlands. As we have already observed, the transition to the archaic culture is distinguished by utilization of plants and, especially, seeds. The beginning of plant utilization was in the proliferation of grasslands. There are probably one hundred different species of grass, in the Basin, that provide harvestable seeds. One could walk through the grass with a tray and a beating stick, emptying the tray into a burden basket, occasionally. Seeds could be stored without much treatment; eventually, they could be ground into flours. By far the most important seed to the Great Basin people was the pine nut, taken from the single-needle pinyon pine (pinus monophyllia) or the double-needle pinyon (pinus edulis); though this culture developed later in the archaic period. The pine nut is large and an excellent food source. It is, however, relatively difficult to harvest and requires a substantial group effort to do so. The pine nut harvest began in the late summer and lasted into the fall. It was essentially the last big food-gathering opportunity of the year before retirement into winter lowland quarters. It occured at intermediate elevations in arid upland hills where junipers and pinyons tend to grow. It was a significant social occasion, and most Great Basin people held these regions to be sacred ground. The pine nuts required substantial processing (which we will discuss under "material culture") and, then, they could be stored for later use.
Fresh green plants grew in the wetter parts of lowland areas and were also utilized. Roots, bulbs, and tubors were harvested. These were often dried, retained, and then ground into flours also. As Basin people ascended to new habitats, from spring through summer, they encountered new green plants coming into season as they moved. Thus, their supply of vegetables was excellent until late fall and winter. Bettinger estimates that 70% of the diet in the Great Basin was vegetarian. (Bettinger, 1985, p. 46)
I have not mentioned here the berries and fruits that Basin people regularly encountered as they moved. Nor have I mentioned certain rich resources that were available at extremes of the Basin boundaries --- acorns along the border with California and also southeastern Utah; and agave and mesquite bean in the southwestern hot deserts. All in all, Fowler lists about 52 different plant families that Basin people utilized; and many of these families provided anywhere from ten to forty different species that were spread throughout the Basin. (Fowler, HNAI, 11, pp. 69-79)
The remainder of the Great Basin diet was made up of mammals, birds, fish, and insects and depended strongly on the locale and season. Fowler mentions deer, pronghorn sheep, and big horn sheep as commonly hunted large mammals, though bear were hunted occasionally. Antelope and rabbits were universally abundant, however, enough to be hunted by group herding into traps. A variety of land birds were hunted successfully, including quail, pheasant, and grouse; however, the mainstay of birds were waterfowl, from geese to ducks to mud hens. Various traps and nets were used in appropriate habitat areas to catch both small mammals and birds.
Rivers and lakes, both, offered a variety of fish. The larger lakes not only offered round-the-year fishing but also provided spawning runs, in summer and fall, up the creeks flowing into them. Basin people created a wide variety of fishing devices, nets, traps, etc., to catch fish. Larger fish were split and dried on racks; smaller fish were often dried whole. Dried fish could be ground into powder along with grains or nuts and cooked into mush to provide extra protein.
A wide variety of insects were eaten but grasshoppers and larvae tend to stick in one's imagination. In some areas, a large pit was dug down wind of a field full of grasshoppers and, then, the field was lighted on fire. The hoppers would flee into the pit to avoid the flames but would wind up roasted anyway. The Basin people would scoop up baskets full of roasted grasshoppers and store them for later use. Certain grubs, or larvae, could be harvested also and were usually roasted before consumption.
While the environs of the Great Basin are intimidating at first and while it may well look as though anyone would starve in a week, if left alone there, it is, nevertheless, an abundant provider for those who are prepared to sample practically everything around them and who are willing to travel distances to find what they need. While the tastes and smells and textures may seem foreign to our tongues, they certainly offered incredible variety; and the indigenous diet was by no means lacking in nutrition, vitamins, etc. The single most important factor that clearly allowed for archaic life in the Basin was the tremendous variety available in almost any locality because of the varied topography. On the other hand, the factor that clearly allowed quick destruction of the Basin's resources was the central importance of the lowland waterways and grasslands. Anglo-American farmers diverted waters for irrigation and grazed cows and sheep on the grasses. Indigenous people were pushed into upland regions which had never supplied them year round.
See the Web site for Great Basin and Owyhee Uplands, Oregon to see a comprehensive overview of the Great Basin portion of southeastern Oregon.
