Discoveries made during this past week in Florida has placed humankind in North America back at least a thousand years further than scientists had previously projected. Tools and the remains of a mastodon, among other findings, were pulled up from a 30 foot deep sinkhole in Florida’s Aucilla River. The exploration was part of a multi university project that continues to explore the fifty year old Page-Ladsen site that has been surprising archaeology for almost a half a century.
Previous digs there have found carbon dated items that went back as far as 11,000-13,000 years ago but these new findings place humankind in North America back as far as 14,500 years ago. The findings of the recent underwater dig has been published in the journal, Science Advances.
For scientists, it was the Clovis people who were here roaming North America over 10,000 years ago but the latest uncovered artifacts tells that a civilization older than the Clovis people were here a millennium before them. Archaeologists have always speculated that there were civilizations here longer than the Clovis but they never had any hard evidence in the form of carbon dated artifacts to support that speculation.
Speculation further has been that the rising of the world’s sea levels may be a factor in not being able to discover and remains more ancient than 13,000 or so years ago. One scientist, from Florida State University, Jessi Halligan, speculates that 14,000 years ago, sea level was around 100 meters lower than it is today. Because of this speculation regarding lower sea levels, it means, to them, that much of the potentially carbon dated history of North America remains deeply buried or entirely underwater.
Some stone tools and the remains of a mastodon were some of the items excavated in the last week or so. They speculate that the tools were used to butcher the killed mastodon. They compared the tools from this find to traditional tools used by the Clovis people and discovered that they were not similar in construction at all. In addition, they pulled up what appeared to be the remains of dogs that, apparently, lived and thrived even back then.
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