The statue below was found in Olmec ruins too.
Posted on 04/25/2004 12:30:28 PM PDT by blam
Archaeological evidence shows ancient coastal life
By Andrew Bridges, Associated Press
First Americans thought to have stayed mainly inland
SAN LUIS OBISPO - Rubbish dug a generation ago from an oceanside archaeological site first occupied around 8,000 B.C. is being re-examined for clues that could bolster the theory some of the first Americans to stream into the New World hugged the Pacific coast, reaping the bounty of the land and the sea.
This month, anthropologist Terry Jones and his colleagues began poring over the estimated 10,000 to 15,000 broken bones and shells, salvaged in excavations hastily carried out 36 years ago to make way for construction of a nuclear power plant on the Central California coast.
Now, more exhaustive analysis could support the controversial idea that some pioneering Paleo-Indians moved into North America along the West Coast, skipping inland routes that traditionally have been considered the most likely avenues into the continent from Asia.
"If you have, very early, people pursuing a life that's different from that of the big game hunters, that could suggest a different people and a different entry route," said Jones, 49, of California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.
At the time the site was originally excavated, archaeologists focused on the rich assortment of skeletons, stone tools, fish hooks, whistles and other artifacts pulled from the layers upon layers - stacked more than 12 feet deep - of detritus. They carried out only a basic analysis of the accompanying bits and pieces of long-dead otters, seals, deer, fish and other creatures and then placed them in storage.
"The bones have been lying in bags since 1968, waiting for someone to look at them," Jones said.
That garbage now may prove to be gold.
Scientists believe the collection of bone and shell is unparalleled in both its size and its sweep, since it traces - apparently without interruption - a staggering 10,000 years or more of persistent occupation of the site, which sits perched on a bluff 60 feet above a half-moon cove.
"It was certainly one of the major villages along the entire Central Coast," said Roberta Greenwood, the Los Angeles archaeologist who led the original dig.
Sorting, identifying and cataloging the remains should give scientists a fuller picture of how the village's inhabitants lived through the ages, including the range and number of species they hunted and fished, Jones said.
On a recent afternoon, Judith Porcasi, 64, and Angela Barrios, 25, sat side-by-side sifting through crinkled, brown bags of remains, separating the spoils into neat piles: bird, mammal, shellfish, fish and artifact.
"You've got a piece of bunny in with the fish. You can't do that," Porcasi gently scolded Barrios at one point.
Eventually, statistical analysis of the jumbled remains will allow "patterns to emerge," Porcasi said.
The dig site lies about 12 miles southwest of modern-day San Luis Obispo. It is partly occupied by Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s hulking Diablo Canyon Power Plant. Only a small percentage of the site was excavated; the bulk likely remains intact, Greenwood said.
Although little heralded, Diablo Canyon may be the oldest mainland coastal site anywhere in North America - something further carbon dating planned by Jones could confirm.
The dating work done at the time of the original excavations was met with skepticism, since it came up with ages far older than anything else from the region known at the time.
"It was a huge surprise. 'Bombshell' might be appropriate," Greenwood said.
If the ages hold up through testing planned for the summer, they could bolster claims made by some scientists that separate, coastal-dwelling populations of humans were among the early colonizers of the New World, moving in pulses independent of the big-game-hunters thought to have traveled by inland routes at the dwindling of the last Ice Age.
"That's what the smart money is on, on the coastal migration. It's just that it's a whole lot easier to compete on the coast than it is on the tundra. You get a good mammoth, yeah, it will last you a long time, if you have facilities to take care of it - but most didn't. But if you came down the coast, you've always got groceries," said Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.
The remains dug from six locations strung along a short stretch of coast represent the dozens and dozens of species that nourished the native Americans who occupied Diablo Canyon from as early as 8420 B.C. until the first European explorers reached the region in A.D. 1769.
The refuse heap, or midden, preserved evidence of more than 70 species of mollusk alone - a number likely unmatched by the offerings of any present-day seafood market. Mussels were an apparent favorite.
Jones is especially interested in sea otters, which were hunted for food and their pelts. Tracing the history of their exploitation as a species should dispel notions that Europeans stumbled on a pristine environment in the 18th century, Jones said.
"We should think of it as an environment harvested for 10,000 years. It's naive to think that harvesting didn't have some kind of effect," Jones said.
Preliminary analysis published by Greenwood in 1972 suggested no drastic shifts in the diet of the site's inhabitants over thousands of years, nor much change in the artifacts they produced.
That consistency suggests the people were established exploiters of the resources available to them on the coast and not necessarily Ice Age big-game-hunters who suddenly developed a taste for seafood, Jones said.
"They seem to have a coastal adaptation from Day One," he said.
Even older remains, dating as far back as perhaps 11,000 B.C., have been found on the Channel Islands off the Southern California coast.
That suggests the people who called the region home were navigating the open ocean nearly contemporaneously with the Clovis people, who hunted large mammals farther inland.
"Once you had that figured out, oceans, rivers and big lakes became highways rather than barriers. The water is actually going to facilitate the spread of cultures and ideas. That's what we're looking at. People dissed it for years. I am not at all surprised you have a huge 10,000-year-old midden there on the California coast," Stanford said.
Archaeologists have yet to find any coastal evidence that predates what's been discovered at Clovis sites farther inland - nor might they with any ease.
The rise in sea level that inundated the Bering land bridge that connected Asia with the Americas presumably flooded any coastal sites that might have been occupied before about 12,000 B.C.
"Finding the hard evidence, the field evidence, the concrete evidence - like finding a site that's older than anything inland - is eluding us," said Gary Haynes, a University of Nevada at Reno, anthropologist and coastal migration theory skeptic. "When that evidence comes in, I will be glad to say the coast was first."
The Bering land bridge wasn't worth poop, the Minoans were peaceful, and all people worshiped gaia, puke.
The statue below was found in Olmec ruins too.
PING!
This is a sign from Gaia. We are to tear down Diablo Canyon and build a sacrificial altar overlooking the ocean.
Burl Ives?
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.