After 5000 B.C. the temperatures continued to rise producing a climatic
interval known as the Thermal Maximum when it was warmer and drier than
at the present time. After reaching its high point, the temperature
gradually declined and probably ended in southern Illinois about 2100
B.C. or later in a climate much like that of today.
By projecting the rate of deposit from the eight- to the eleven-foot
level of the Modoc Rock Shelter up to the five-foot level where the
Archaic remains appear to end, we secure a date for its upper limit of
about 2100 B.C. (Deuel 1957, p. 2). The remains between the five- and
eight-foot depths are scantier and less varied than in the earlier
(lower) layers and may indicate a cultural group in a losing struggle to
maintain itself under changing conditions.
[Illustration: Fig. 11. Potsherds from the Lake Baikal in southern
Siberia resemble those of Initial and Classic Woodland (Hopewellian)
in Illinois. The letters with subscripts refer to Siberian pottery.
A-E, reduced to ½ actual size; F-H, reduced to ¹/₁₆ actual size.
(Siberian pottery from Richthofen in ANTHROPOS, 1932: 128, 129, 130;
Illinois pottery from Illinois State Museum collections.)]
In northern Illinois, similar climatic conditions were developing.
There, possibly as early as 2500 B.C., a new culture, the Initial
(early) Woodland, was coming into existence. At any rate, groups living
there some time prior to 1000 B.C. made pottery, placed their dead in
cemeteries and in low burial mounds in a flexed or “doubled-up”
position, occasionally with food, personal ornaments and other funeral
offerings.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. A flint dagger or hunting knife from “Red
Ochre subculture” of Initial Woodland. (B.B.)]
The pottery of one Woodland group (Morton) in the Illinois valley
resembled, in shape, surface treatment, design and area decorated, pots
made in the Lake Baikal region in Asia some 7000 miles distant. The
appearance of such striking similarities has long been a puzzle to
anthropologists. In the first place the detailed likenesses suggest both
were made by one and the same people. It seems fairly obvious that the
several resemblances did not travel from tribe to tribe from Asia to
central North America. The preservation of a pottery tradition during a
migration of 7000 miles, probably lasting for several generations, seems
equally incredible. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that two
widely separated divisions of a people originating in central Asia with
the same cultural background and similar surroundings arrived
independently at a remarkably similar but very simple pottery type.
[Illustration: Fig. 13. A copper gorget, A, (possibly patterned
after the double-bitted ax-shaped bannerstone) and shell gorgets, B
and C, from “Red Ochre subculture” of Initial Woodland. All from
Mound 11, Fulton County, Illinois.]
These late migrants probably found groups like the Black Sand (and Red
Ochre) peoples in Illinois who were just emerging from the Archaic phase
into Initial Woodland. The settlements of all early Woodland peoples
were small in extent and poor in cultural remains. The population of
these hamlets probably seldom exceeded fifty. No traces of house
structures have yet been discerned. Temporary huts, probably built of
small poles and brush, may have been conical or hemispherical in shape.
The artifacts or cultural objects, except for a small amount of jewelry
(shell and copper beads and pendants) and the few offerings placed in
graves, show little evidence of any urge to fine workmanship or much
feeling for beauty of line or form. Life was probably too hard and the
effort in securing food and other requirements too exacting to leave
much leisure for artistic workmanship in durable materials.[10]