Líĺwat climbers could see the ocean from the peak of Qẃelqẃelústen: Evaluating oral traditions with viewshed analyses from the Mount Meager Massif prior to its 2,360 BP Eruption
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| Authors: | Angelbeck, B; Springer, C; Jones/Yaqalatqa7, J; Willimas-Jones, G; Wilson, MC |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Journal: | American Antiquity |
| Title: | Líĺwat climbers could see the ocean from the peak of Qẃelqẃelústen: Evaluating oral traditions with viewshed analyses from the Mount Meager Massif prior to its 2,360 BP Eruption |
| Abstract: | Among Líĺwat people of the Interior Plateau of British Columbia, an oral tradition relays how early ancestors used to ascend Qẃelqẃelústen/Mount Meager. The account maintains that those climbers could see the ocean, which is not the case today, as the mountain is surrounded by many other high peaks, and the Strait of Georgia is several mountain ridges to the west. However, the mountain is an active and volatile volcano which last erupted ca. 2360 cal BP; it is also the site of the largest landslide in Canadian history in 2010. Since the mountain throughout the Holocene had been a high, glacier-capped mountain, much like other volcanoes along the coastal range, we surmise that a climber may have reasonably been afforded a view of the ocean from its prior heights. We conducted viewshed analyses of the potential mountain height prior its eruption and determined that one could indeed view the ocean if the mountain was at least 950 m higher than it is today. This aligns with the oral tradition, indicating that it may be over 2,400 years old, and plausibly in the range of 4000 to 9000 years old when the mountain may have been at such a height. |
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