At the Bottom of Lake Huron, an Ancient Mystery Materializes

[Sometimes] Scientific American ^ | June 1, 2021 | Aaron Martin

[SunkenCiv]

The air was likely frigid as the hunter lit a small fire. The caribou would come in the morning—forced through the narrow strip of marshland where he camped. There was nowhere else to go. The land was flanked by water on both sides, and large stones had been laid out in slanting lines to funnel the animals into this bottleneck. The hunter struck his weapon to sharpen its edge in anticipation. In that moment, two glassy flakes splintered away from the point of impact and fell to his feet. They would be buried there for nearly 10,000 years.

In 2013 those two shards of obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, would be recovered from a sample of earth, roughly the volume of a quart of milk, that was pulled from the bottom of Lake Huron, under 100 feet of water. And the story the flakes would tell was one of an even longer journey...

Obsidian was highly prized by ancient stone toolmakers. The flakes identified by Brendan Nash, a member of O’Shea’s team at the University of Michigan, have strike marks and sharp, feathered edges—both telltale signs of human modification. This evidence, combined with the distance to the obsidian’s original source, paint a picture of an extensive trade or exchange network that spanned the continent nearly 3,000 years after the end of the last ice age.

Stone tools recovered from the Alpena-Amberley Ridge are much smaller than artifacts found nearby that date to the same time period. This suggests that a group of ancient people, with a different way of life and system of hunting, existed on the ridge around 9,000 years ago.

[SunkenCiv]

Two small artifacts recovered from the depths have a big story to tell. They are challenging what we think we know about how humans lived in North American nearly 10,000 years ago.

Archeologists [sic] have discovered a mystery at the bottom of Lake Huron | June 1, 2021 | Scientific American

[SunkenCiv]

Major update.

[martin_fierro]

Just for fun sometime, count the sheer number of booze ads in SA.

[SunkenCiv]

• Shipwreck Alley [Lake Huron, Thunder Bay] [12/30/2015]
• Ancient Caribou hunting site found underneath Lake Huron [04/29/2014]
• Archeological evidence of human activity found beneath Lake Huron [06/08/2009]
• Turning Back The Clock 10,000 Years (Great Lakes) [12/21/2006]
• Fireball ‘as bright as the moon’ lands in Lake Huron [01/25/2020]

[SunkenCiv]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZC3NUdjtug

[Tallguy]

I have a theory: The hunter had a “tragic boating accident” whereby he “lost” his regulated “assault spear” rather than having the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Spears remove it from him by force. Sound plausible?

[fidelis]

Only slightly less plausible than the story they made up to hook readers into this article. Just give me straight reporting, thank you.

[Monkey Face]

I don’t know about you, SC, but I think modern man is pretty arrogant to think that people didn’t exist or do certain things because modern man thought they were incapable of it.

More and more things are being discovered that prove civilizations existed in more advanced forms longer ago than anyone ever believed possible.

Thanks for posting this stuff!

‘Face

;o]

[corkoman]

Just for fun sometime, count the sheer number of booze ads in SA.

About half the number in any edition of Psychology Today. I flipped thru one in the 1990s and was floored by the number of booze ads.

I wonder why so many...?

[Rurudyne]

Actually, yes.

And you beat me to it.

[Rurudyne]

Because in chemistry alcohol is a solution.

[logi_cal869]

...dry land inhabited by Native Americans, who built hunting structures on it to trap and kill caribou.

An odd claim, since such humans at the time had migrated from Siberia across the 'land bridge', particularly absent any human remains whatsoever.

Will the discovery - and biased 'scientific' conclusions - lend provenance for NA claims to Lake Huron water rights? /s

[frank ballenger]

Just for fun sometime, count the sheer number of booze ads in SA.

Then challenge your buddies to take one beer and down it for each time you find an ad.

I'm a teetotaler myself but thought the gag sounded good.

[martin_fierro]

[blam]

"...underwater archaeologists have found something extraordinary about these two pieces of obsidian: they traveled nearly 2,500 miles from central Oregon before coming to rest at what is now the bottom of one of the Great Lakes."

Travelled by human feet. Must have been highly prized.

[frank ballenger]

Just give me straight reporting, thank you.

I agree.

The model for writers now seems to be those "click to next" ones on 25 shocking things or 20 remedies or something. With ads to delay the ending. Everything is now how long a period to tell advertisers they kept us online for the dreary preambles, backfill, introductions and stalling around.

It used to be writers wanted to hook the reader and get to the best part of the story in a reasonable amount of words and then close it out. No more.

[Bulwyf]

Stone age Europeans were in NA first as evidenced by many digs, so this guy might of been a remnant of that?

Don’t tell any Indians that though, we can’t have the money drying up.

[whitney69]

“...civilizations existed in more advanced forms longer ago...”

Aw gosh, go the whole route. It might have been aliens putting it there so we could find it 9000 years later just to mess with us. Look up Piltdown man.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/library-and-archives/collections/piltdown-man.html

He got rich.

wy69

[whitney69]

“I wonder why so many...?”

So much booze, so little time.

wy69

[Pete Dovgan]

Ok. That’s funny.