Baja California

The many archeological sites and prehistoric being in the low-Californian peninsula located at the Mexico, are gathered under international name Baja California.

Terminology

The many archeological sites and prehistoric being in the Californian peninsula located at the Mexico, are gathered under international name Baja California.

General presentation

The peninsula of Low-California abounds in several hundreds of prehistoric sites, located in the Sierra of San Francisco, the sierra of San Juan, the sierra of San Borja and in the sierra of Guadalupe. Some consist of decorated caves or of rock shelters, others contain bones of various times. The area is very rich in rupestral works of art. Hundreds of representations were already indexed. Paintings represent the human ones but also a whole fauna such as common stags, sheep of the mountains, rabbits, birds and fish. Certain animals and even of human are represented crossed with arrows. The basic colors employed were the black (charcoal), the white (ashes volcanic), the red (crushed lava) and sometimes even of ocher (mixture of red-orange-yellow).

History of archaeological research

Rupestral art

Since the beginning of the years 1990, specialists, under the control of the Maria archeologist of Luz Gutiérrez, of the National institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH) and under the aegis of the INAH and the National council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) Mexican, study the cave paintings of Baja California. Because of its very good state of conservation, they estimated of it the age at less than 4.000 years. However in 2002, the Australian geologist Alan Watchman, universally recognized as regards dating of rupestral art, communicates to them, the results that it has just obtained on the samples taken in the solid mass of Guadalupe, in Mexico.
Les first datings astonish them, because several of them reach 7.000 years. Other later analyzes of dating, more than one about sixty in all, will reveal dates going up to 9.000 years. “This art, carried out by tribes of Hunters-gatherers stone and masons, is characterized first of all by an exceptional concentration of decorated sites, and a very great number of paintings”, explains Maria of Luz Gutiérrez. For the only solid mass of the sierra of Guadalupe, more than 700 sites of paintings were indexed and studied within the framework of the project of the INAH, carried out most of the time on large walls located at the foot of cliffs, or in shelters - under - rock. In 1992 Justin Hyland of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Berkeley in California and its colleague, María of Luz Gutiérrez of the INAH, undertake a field work in the Sierra of San Francisco. Their project, called: " Rupestral Proyecto Arte Baja California Sur" , is a research program and of conservation and constitutes one of the twelve special projects of archeology inaugurated by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. It is more the great project of archeology ever organized in Low-California and one of the more archaeological great project of all Mexico.

In December 1993, vis-a-vis the exceptional importance of the archaeological discoveries and with the excellent conservation of thousand-year-old parietal works, UNESCO decided to classify with the World heritage of Humanity, all the prehistoric cultural legacy of the Sierra of San Francisco. One evaluates with nearly 100.000 the number of pictorial representations as a whole of Low California. Majority of them, being in an excellent completely exceptional state of conservation in spite of their great age of almost 10.000 years for oldest.

The Spanish colonists were the first to be been interested in the pictorial richness of the area as of the XVIIIe siècle.
Les the first explorations scientific were undertaken since 1893 and in 1895 by the French explorer Leon Diguet. He studied eight sites of parietal arts located in Low California and published his research in several articles of anthropology in 1899. He in addition took many photographic stereotypes taken between 1893 and 1900, qu ' he gathered in a collection, republished in 1991. Jean Clottes, general Conservative of the Inheritance (honorary) and world specialist in Rupestral Art, author of works specialized in art at prehistoric time, testifies to the beauty of this thousand-year-old rupestral art: I wanted to share my experiments, my surprises, my emotions and my enthusiasms in fields as different as the excavations in the deep caves from Ariège, the last exceptional days with Lascaux, or the voyages in countries close (Spain) or distances (Niger, Australia, Baja California in Mexico) with difficult discovered often ignored rupestral arts and yet of a quality comparable with those to the French and Spanish caves. Jean Clottes.

Péricues and their ancestors

The Péricue S are a disappeared ethnicity which lived at the southern end of the peninsula of Mexican California. These people died out éthniquement and linguistically at the end of the XVIIIe century. According to the craniologic analysis, their craniums are of type Dolichocéphale, i.e. not Mongoloïde, but Australoïde or Europoïde. The analysis of the DNA reveals a marker haplotype " B" who would confirm the assumption of a migration by circumnavigation or terrestrial circambulation around the Pacific Ocean.

Territory

The ethnic territory of Péricues included/understood the southern point of the Californian peninsula, since the End of San Lucas until the End of Pulmo, as well as the large islands of the south of the gulf of California, like Cerralvo, Esiritu Santo or San Jose.

Language

The studies on the language péricue are very limited because there remains about it only some words recorded by the missionaries, more approximately a dozen Toponyme S of the South of Low California. The missionaries Jésuite S recognized that this idiom was a language different from the other Amerindian languages. It is supposed that the péricue and the Guaicura (close language) had to constitute a linguistic family with share.

History précolombienne

The territory of Péricues was occupied since the end of Pleistocene and during the Holocene one. The human presence in the peninsula of Baja California goes back to a few tens of thousands of years. The prehistoric sites of Baja California, rich in parietal paintings, delivered human bones Paléoaméricains whose craniums revealed an origin Mélanésien. The update, in 1996, of many tools (worked artefacts, wood burned, shells) on the site of the cave of Babisuri in Low-California made it possible to go back there to at least 40000 years the human presence.

Several tens of skeletons gone back to 13.000 years to 15.000 years were discovered thereafter by several teams of archeologists Mexican, American, British, Spanish and Japanese, in the same Mexican area of Baja California. Specialists international (R. Gonzalès-Jose and Mr. Hernandez of the university of Barcelona, A. Gonzales-Martin of the Academy of History and Anthropology of Pachuca, Mexico, H. Pucciarelli and Mr. Sardi of the scientific department of Anthropology of the museum of Plata, Argentina, A. Rosales of the National institute of Anthropology and History of center INAH Baja California, Mexico, and S. Van der Molen of the Autonomous University of Barcelona) lengthily studied craniums of several tens of skeletons. The craniometric analyzes made it possible to know the origin of these paléoaméricains. The Péricues skeletons, updated, present craniums hyper-dolichocephalic suggesting that the ancestors of Péricues were perhaps of type Australoïde or from type Aïnou and came by transpacific migrations as from the last period from the Pléistocène.

Posterior history with the Spanish Conquest

The first contacts between Europeans and Péricues go back to approximately 1530, when Fortún Ximénez and a forwarding sent by Hernán the Cortes reached Low California. Thereafter, of the sporadic meetings, some friendly times and other hostile times, occurred between explorers, missionaries or sailors and these people with the characteristics quite different from those of the Amerindian tribes usually met in all these new and vast territories, as well on the physical level (aspect) as cultural (ceramics). The conflicts and the epidemics will decimate these thousand-year-old people. The French explorer Leon Diguet took some photographic stereotypes of some rare survivors, descendants of Guaycuras, people close to Péricues, with the Amerindian métissées characteristics and péricues.

The Jesuits established their first permanent mission with Conchó during the year 1697, but reflect more than two decades to penetrate with the Southern extrème of the peninsula. Missions intended for Pericúes were finally established in Airapí (1720), Añiñí (1724), and Añuití (1730). A dramatic event for the Jesuits occurred in 1734, when a conflict with Pericúes started, which was transformed into one of the more big challenges for the missionaries in California. Two of them were assassinated -- Lorenzo Carranco in Santiago Añiñí, on October 1st, 1734, and two days later, Nicolás Tamaral in San Jose de Añuití. During two years, the area escaped control Jesuit. But they are Pericúes which suffered more, because of the deaths caused by the engagements against the Spaniards and the effects of the epidemics brought of Europe by the conquerors. At that time, the Crown of Spain came to assistance of the Jesuits and drove out what remained survivors péricues (1768). The latter were culturally comparable, but their genes survive in the mongrel population of the South of Low California.

Archaeological research: the cave of Babisuri

In 1991, the Japanese Harumi Fujita, enquiring archeologist with the INAH, worked on the sites of Baja California, in the southern district of Paz. She announced that she had given to analyze several samples of a prehistoric site located in a cave of the island of Espiritu Santo, in Low California. The laboratory of the INAH, by means of fourteen analyzes with radiocarbon 14, will go back these elements to 40.000 years. ( Cave of Babisuri ). From 1994 to 1996 the archeologists go to update nearly 150 prehistoric sites on the island of Espiritu Santo. (Dwellings in caves, sites in sport, caves funeral, pictographic sites, etc) In 2003, Stefan Lovgen of the “National geographic” puts forth the assumption that the populations paléoaméricaines of origin Australoïde or mélanésienne, arrived well before the migratory wave of the Amerindian people of origin mongoloïde. These people paléoaméricain of origne not-Amerindian, could have had like ancestor, the people having the same morphological characteristics like those of the Femme of Peñon discovered in the valley of Mexico City, close to an old lagoon and whose skeleton, gone back to 13.000 years points out those of Péricues.

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