Posted on 04/01/2023 10:10:46 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Below the surfaces of freshwater springs, lakes and rivers, sunken landscapes hold clues about the daily lives, beliefs and diets of the first humans to settle in what is now the United States. But submerged prehistory, as the study of these millennia-old sites is widely known, is often overlooked in favor of more traditional underwater archaeology centered on shipwrecks...
From Miami to Lake Huron to Warm Mineral Springs, these are three sites driving the conversation about the nascent discipline.
The hunt for sunken evidence of early humans in North America began some 60 years ago with a swirl of controversy in southwestern Florida. In 1959, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William R. Royal uncovered traces of prehistoric people while diving at Warm Mineral Springs, an hourglass-shaped sinkhole formed when an earthquake collapsed a subsurface cave around 20,000 years ago. Because Royal was "an untrained amateur," says Purdy, "scientists poured cold water over his bold claims."
The spring's main claim to fame is its association with Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who supposedly identified it as the Fountain of Youth in 1513. Though tales of the explorer's search have been greatly exaggerated, hordes of modern water worshippers have followed in his wake...
In the summer of 1959, Royal recovered an intact human skull at a depth of about 45 feet. Examining the bones, he noticed what felt like a |soft and slimy soap| at the base of the skull. Royal was convinced it was millennia-old brain tissue—an improbable theory given how quickly brains tend to decompose after death but one that would ultimately prove correct.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
My pleasure.
Naturally the studies are being done on inland bodies of water rather than the continental shelves where the prehistoric navigators first came and went.
LOL!
Don’t care about Juan Ponce much...but with age, that fountain he was chasing is intriguing...
They must have been a lot tougher then, to be able to live underwater like that.
Aquatic apes, indeed...
Am I the only one that read the last headline wor as “underwear”.
Mammoth bones and flint projectile points have been dredged up offshore on the continental shelf by fishing nets.
The first traffic circle?
Damned SUVs
Hi.
In the fwiw department Florida was about 250 miles wide between St. Pete and Melbourne. Twenty thousand years ago.
Damn global warming.
5.56mm
:^)
“Is that a snorkel in your pants, or...”
Ok. Two separate angles on this...
1. Wait! What? all those ancient people are hiding underwater, just waiting to jump out and get us?
2. No way! They didn’t have the tech to build underwater like that, way back when!!!
Sea levels rise... yeah, right buddy. What next? gonna tell us NYC was under a massive sheet of ice? Like Wall Street would ever let that happen.
To me, “prehistory” is everything BEFORE the Big Bang.................
p
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