What the locals ate 10,000 years ago (Utah)

Brigham Young University ^ | August 23, 2010 | Unknown

[decimon]

If you had a dinner invitation in Utah’s Escalante Valley almost 10,000 years ago, you would have come just in time to try a new menu item: mush cooked from the flour of milled sage brush seeds.

After five summers of meticulous excavation, Brigham Young University archaeologists are beginning to publish what they’ve learned from the “North Creek Shelter.” It’s the oldest known site occupied by humans in the southern half of Utah and one of only three such archaeological sites state-wide that date so far back in time.

BYU anthropologist Joel Janetski led a group of students that earned a National Science Foundation grant to “get to the bottom” of a site occupied on and off for the past 11,000 years, according to multiple radiocarbon estimates.

“The student excavators worked morning till night in their bare feet,” Janetski said. “They knew it was really important and took their shoes off to avoid contaminating the old dirt with the new.”

In the upcoming issue of the journal Kiva, Janetski and his former students describe the stone tools used to grind sage, salt bush and grass seeds into flour. Because those seeds are so tiny, a single serving would have required quite a bit of seed gathering. But that doesn’t mean whoever inhabited North Creek Shelter had no other choice.

Prior to the appearance of grinding stones, the menu contained duck, beaver and turkey. Sheep became more common later on. And deer was a staple at all levels of the dig.

[Monkey Face]

Great Salt Lake is what is left of Lake Bonneville, as are the salt flats. Lake Bonneville itself covered a good many thousands of square miles.

Which explains why we found so many fossil shells in the foothills when I was growing up.

:o]

[dfwgator]

What the locals ate 10,000 years ago (Utah)

Other locals?

[ApplegateRanch]

Yes, and Utah Lake at Provo is the other large remnant of Bonneville.

I never tire of looking at the highly visible shelving on the hillsides along I-84/I-15 from the various levels of Lake Bonneville.

Have to look at SOMETHING while driving in some of those areas...can’t always take scenic routes, such as Ogden Canyon/Logan Canyon/StarValley; or Idaho Falls/Swan Valley/Alpine/Jackson Hole to get back & forth between Oregon & SD.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) The ancestors ate whatever was around and didn’t kill them, the end result being, they have descendants. :’)

[Monkey Face]

Of all the places I’ve been in my life, the scenery in Utah is unparalleled. And Utah is the only place that makes me homesick.

[RadiationRomeo]

I bet the paticular site they found the safebrush seeds and flour was a medicine man’s place given the shortcomings and uses of sagebrush. Medicine man, shaman, whatever they had back then. It would be interesting to see what other ‘weird things’ they find there.