A new study based on the analysis of 370-year-old glass beads shows: indigenous communities were active in their “business operations” regardless of influences from Europe.
Adverts
Glass beads made in cities such as Venice, Paris, Amsterdam and Rouen played an important role in establishing links between early European settlers and the communities that inhabited North America during the colonisation period. Most interestingly, analyses of more than 1,000 European-made beads from the western Great Lakes region have revealed: many of them predate the arrival of the first missionaries in the area.
The chemical similarities between these beads and those found as far away as Ontario indicate that they were traded between the indigenous peoples of the two regions without European involvement.
