HEADLINE: HELEN TAKES VACATION IN CALIFORNIA
WON'T REVEAL AGE TO ENQUIRING PRESS
.
Posted on 05/12/2007 10:13:51 AM PDT by blam
Human remains thought to be oldest ever found in Santa Cruz
By Todd Guild
Sentinel Correspondent
May 12, 2007
SANTA CRUZ — For the Santa Cruz Water Department, most construction projects are uneventful, encountering nothing more than dirt, rocks and an occasional root.
That was not the case when city workers installing a water pipe on the Westside unearthed the bodies of two Ohlone people — now believed to be the oldest human remains ever found in the city.
Studies over the past six months date the bones back 5,000 years, when construction on the Great Pyramids in Egypt had just begun and Europe was still in the Stone Age.
"In the city of Santa Cruz, it's the earliest evidence we have for habitation of the area," said Jennifer Farquhar, senior archaeologist with Albion Environmental Group, the Santa Cruz-based company that excavated the remains.
The Ohlone people, whose ancestors are thought to have crossed the Bering Strait 10,000 years ago, probably spent winters near the coast, migrating from the hills. Examinations of nearby middens — ancient garbage dumps — show an abundance of mussel, abalone and mollusk shell fragments as well as mammal and fish bones.
The two bodies found by city workers were discovered last fall about 22 yards apart in shallow graves, just under the base rock, according to Farquhar. Archaeologists are not providing the exact location for fear of looting.
Albion Environmental, which was monitoring the construction, sent the bodies to the UC Santa Cruz anthropology department lab, where it was recently determined the individuals are a male and a female, both about 45 years or older.
Testing on the remains is expected to conclude in June. Advertisement
The Ohlones numbered about 10,000 from San Francisco to Big Sur when the Spanish arrived in the early 1600s, according to rangers at Ano Nuevo State Park.
Their homes were simple dwellings made from willow branches tightly woven with tule rushes. They were excellent craftsmen, and wove watertight baskets from small willow branches and tule rushes, according to the rangers.
And, they regularly had to contend with the scores of prowling grizzly bears that inhabited the area at the time, the rangers said.
After the research is concluded, the bodies found in Santa Cruz will be buried at a "sacred spot" in accordance with Ohlone tradition, "so that the individual spirit travels back to the spirit world in a good way," said Anne-Marie Sayers, the Ohlone tribe member who monitored the excavation.
Albion Environmental will present its findings at a talk Tuesday, where speakers will discuss what they found, their monitoring process and their conclusions about the discoveries.
The $15 million water line project that led to the discovery runs from Ocean Street to the Bay Street Reservoir. Construction began in June 2006, and is expected to conclude late next month.
More haplogroup A ?
Those two can remember the last time Santa Cruz voted Republican.
.
I doubt that mtDNA testing was done on these two individuals.
I would sure be interesting though!
Kind of a misleading headline.
If you read it as a complete sentence you might think Santa Cruz is the new Olduvai Gorge.
And of course it ain't.
I thought Robert Byrd was from West Virginia...
The decaying Grateful Dead t-shirts still wrapped around their ribcages gave it way. ;)
Then you must know that these are the bones of some 60's Hippie artificially aged by his copious consumption of controlled substances.
But for the grace of God they could have been mine from that period.
They were found with gold panning pans and a copy of the Declaration of Independence stapled to their dungarees.
“buried at a “sacred spot” in accordance with Ohlone tradition” How do they know? No written history, no nothing. Did they think anything was sacred? Maybe they worshiped ducks. Then they could bury them in the quack of a rock and send the city a bill?
Have they found their surf boards yet?
As to the ohlone, either they were primitive beyond belief, or they used those water proof baskets to trade with the Old World, because only the ultra-uncivilized would consider cooking & eating abalone without lemons.
Odd, I wonder why they were buried 22 yards apart? Normally people tend to cluster their dead together in cemeteries.
Within California, some of the larger groups, with more permanent villages, did have marked cemeteries.
The normal burial mode for many of the smaller groups was within the living sites. Among some groups the hut might be burned and the village abandoned after a burial, and by the time a year or two had passed the traces of the burial location would be largely lost. Multiply by 5,000 years.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Ooops. Thought it said Santa Claus
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.