Understanding the roots of modern culture 



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environments and how he's adapted to both climate 

 and natural changes, we can learn some lessons about 

 our own future," says Phelps. 



Much of Phelps' work points to a startling 

 similarity in the ways that different coastal people 

 have adapted to the land. Take Collington Island, for 

 instance. Excavations on the site have turned up 

 evidence that 2,000 years ago Algonkian Indians es- 

 tablished fishing camps there during the season of 

 the year when food was scarce elsewhere. The early 

 colonists built temporary fishing villages there. And 

 today it is largely a resort area, catering to seasonal 

 tourists. There are a few fishing villages on the 

 island, located in the same protected spots where the 

 early colonists lived. But for the most part, few have 

 found the island suitable for permanent occupation. 



But there are major exceptions to the Collington 

 Island case. The arrival of modern technology meant 

 a radical break in man's relationship to the land and 

 its resources. The most noticeable changes have oc- 

 curred on the mainland since about 1850 and on the 

 Outer Banks since about 1930. 



The Outer Banks, Phelps points out, have existed in 

 their present state for only 3,000 years. Until the 

 1930s all the settlers there chose the same sites for 

 locating their homes and villages. They built in the 



Phelps: organizing the lessons of human history 



relative shelter of scrub oak forests on the sound side 

 of the islands — never on the ocean side. This settle- 

 ment pattern remained virtually unchanged until 

 paved highways came to the banks in the 1930s. With 

 roads running right up to the dunes, oceanfront con- 

 struction seemed less formidable. Since then, man 

 has consistently built on valuable oceanfront 

 property, often destroying the only natural protec- 

 tion from the storms and erosion— the dunes and 

 maritime forests. 



In addition to endangering his physical safety 

 modern man has begun to seriously pollute his envi- 

 ronment. Phelps calls this trend "technological over- 

 ride of the ecosystem" and he thinks it's extremely 

 dangerous. "The real emergency is that human 

 technological systems have become so efficient that 

 most people in a highly complex culture (such as the 

 United States today) have no contact with or know- 

 ledge of the natural environment. They can't see the 

 fact that the destruction of food producing environ- 

 ments, pollution of stream systems or surplus human 

 populations will ultimately affect the culture's sub- 

 sistence base," he says. 



In the final analysis any culture, no matter how ad- 

 vanced, is dependent upon its ability to produce food. 



During the centuries before modern technology, 

 Phelps points out, the bond between man and culture 

 was more obvious. The Algonkian Indians who set- 

 tled most of coastal North Carolina were especially 

 adapted to that area. They lived in villages located on 

 high areas or bottom lands beside streams and rivers. 

 Unlike many of the settlements in inland areas, these 

 were permanent. At that time inland Indians had to 

 move seasonally in order to stay close to game and 

 other food supplies. But the coastal people had ready 

 access to fish and shellfish all year. 



Tom Loftfield, an archaeologist teaching at the 

 University of North Carolina at Wilmington, notes 

 that the natural environment in turn affected the In- 

 dian's culture. With a stable food supply, the coastal 

 Indians had less incentive to change. Agriculture, for 

 instance, is thought to have come to the coastal area 

 several hundred years after it was established inland. 



And because of their relative isolation from other 

 Indian groups, the coastal Indians tended to retain 

 traditional culture longer. English records indicate 

 that Indians during John White's time (late 1500s) 

 retained the old shaman religion which was based on 

 the worship of gods of the hunt even though they 

 were a fully agricultural society. At that time the 

 culture had a formal priesthood and a group of 

 shamans, an unlikely combination. 



Even today on the Outer Banks tradition seems to 

 have a strong hold. Ocracoke residents still celebrate 

 Old Christmas in the tradition of the early English 

 colonists. More importantly, notes Phelps, they ob- 

 serve the Old Buck ceremony at Christmas, which 

 has its origins in the 30,000 year old European tradi- 

 tion of bull worship. 



