Life Existed 9,000 Years Ago (Florida, 12,000 YO Artifacts)

Sun Herald ^ | 8-15-2007

[blam]

Life existed more than 9,000 years ago

Discovery made at Little Salt Spring

Little Salt Spring ranks as one of the major archaeological sites in the western hemisphere. Even though only 5 percent of the spring has been explored, divers have found artifacts dating back 12,000 years ago.

NORTH PORT -- After thousands of years underwater, a handful of North Port's history resurfaced in a Ziploc bag.

"They don't call it hardwood for nothin'!" said Steve Koski to John Gifford after the two emerged from the Little Salt Spring with a radiocarbon sample last week.

Koski, an archaeologist at Little Salt Spring Research Facility, off Price Boulevard, mumbled this to his teammate while the two were 40 feet underwater. But Gifford, research director for Miami University, was unable to hear as his knife chiseled away at a piece of wood the team believes to be at least 9,000 years old.

Both men spent 30 minutes in the spring Thursday taking two samples from a log nearly 3 meters long. One will determine the age of the wood and the other the species.

"I don't want to get my hopes up, but I'd love for it to be something great, like a totem," Koski said.

Although a totem pole would be impressive in size, Koski has been thrilled to find artifacts that fit in the palm of his hand.

Pointing to a wooden stake a little more than a foot in length resting in a plastic container filled with spring water, Koski picks it up and examines the pointed tip.

"This small wooden stake took 48 minutes to excavate and bring to the surface. Its tip was the only thing sticking out of the sandy clay sediment. Can you believe it's estimated to be 10,500 years old?" he asked. "With this and other findings, we can look at the distribution of the stakes identified and perhaps see why they were carved and what their function might have been."

However, the most interesting fact is that it was found right in the backyard of "our homes," Koski said.

Little Salt Spring is not just another spring in North Port. Not a lot of people even know about it or the unique history it contains. Koski said this spring is one of the greatest archaeological finds in the country.

Located near Heron Creek Middle School, Little Salt Spring is a 250-foot-deep sinkhole on 112.5 acres of property owned by the University of Miami since 1982. The hourglass-shaped spring was first discovered as an archaeological site in 1959 by local divers.

"There is evidence of visitation and occupation from 12,500-6,000 years ago," Koski said.

Working on the slope of the 78-meter basin-like depression, Koski and other University of Miami divers are trying to uncover evidence of previous life.

"We have discovered a wide range of preserved organic materials including wooden stakes, textile fragments (delite), deer remains and bone tools. Because there is no dissolved oxygen in the water, bacteria cannot grow and decompose wood and the other organic materials, offering unique artifact preservation," Koski said.

In June 2005, Dr. John Gifford of the University of Miami/Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and a group of graduate students discovered two Archaic artifacts, estimated to be 7,000 years old. One was a greenstone pendant and the other was believed to be part of a spear-thrower.

Fourteen days out of the year, five to 12 advanced undergraduates and graduate students from the University of Miami come to Little Salt Spring. Students participate in daily underwater excavation at 20-40 feet, as well as surface support activities relating to diving.

Last year, Gifford and his colleagues and students also unearthed two stakes and brought one of the two to the surface, which they estimated was at least 10,000 years old.

"Since 2004, we have found eight wooden stakes and recovered four of the eight. We have removed two of them for radiocarbon dating and we're leaving the other ones," Koski said. "We take a conservation ethic in our work. We wouldn't have the site anymore if we took everything we found."

They are also planning an additional excavation on the 27-meter ledge to uncover extinct Pleistocene fossil remains and 12,000-year-old artifacts that lay there. However, because funding is so limited, researchers are able to perform excavations only once or twice a year, so only 5 percent of the spring has really been explored.

"This is the most important archaeological site in the United States and it's right here in North Port's backyard. This is also the only opportunity in the U.S. for college students to do fieldwork in prehistoric underwater excavation," Gifford said. "We have so much potential to make this site one of the best archaeological facilities, but the funding just isn't there. At this point, we don't even have the most basic necessities like running water."

For more information on group tours or volunteer opportunities, call Steven Koski at 941-423-0835.

You can e-mail Kharli Rose at krose@sun-herald.com.

[blam]

"This is the most important archaeological site in the United States and it's right here in North Port's backyard."

I don't believe this.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

The title makes no sense.

[Ed Condon]

Gee, a 9000 year old plastic container. I guess they don’t decompose.

[Jaysun]

I’m sorry to piss on the parade but zip-lock bags are less than 100 years old.

[xcamel]

Not the first spring in FL to contain artifacts > 10,000 y/o

[ThreePuttinDude]

blam, I live about 3 miles from this area. Its been known
by the locals for some time now. Some of the divers say
it’s like going down an elevator shaft through history.

[petertare]

Confusing at best. A campground, underwater? I did not realize scuba was that ancient.

[A_Tradition_Continues]

What? Did they find an old snowbird’s white Lebaron in a mall parking lot?

[wgflyer]

“The title makes no sense.”

Written for today’s politically correct public school graduates.

[Coyoteman]

"This is the most important archaeological site in the United States and it's right here in North Port's backyard."

I don't believe this.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

I didn't see the results of any radiocarbon dating in the article. There was no reference to a journal article or published report. In fact the article was short on a lot of the technical detail I would like to see.

I think I'll wait before agreeing that this site is the "most important archaeological site in the United States."

[Musketeer]

Has anyone carbon dated a fresh cadaver or fallen log lately? Just curious seeing the results.

[Defend the Second]

The article notes that the spring is actually a sinkhole, very common in Florida (I was born there). Therefore the campsite mentioned in the article used to be at ground level and was swallowed up when the sinkhole formed.

[blam]

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. "

I would choose Meadowcroft or Topper as the most important site...until I know more about this site.

[fight_truth_decay]

ROCK ON!

The oldest petroglyphs are dated to approx. the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary--- 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, other writing systems such as pictographs and ideograms began to be shown. Call it the ancient "gallery" opening where food and drink was enjoyed by all. Petroglyphs were still common though, and some less advanced societies (the beer drinkers) continued using them much longer usually on rock walls where one went to relieve oneself, until contact with Western culture (the more uppity lofty SoHo Capote crowd) was made in the 20th century.

Petroglyphs have been found in all parts of the globe except Antarctica (partly because of global warming, and partly because of no talent) with highest concentrations in parts of Africa, Scandinavia, Siberia, southwestern North America and Australia.

;)

[Coyoteman]

Has anyone carbon dated a fresh cadaver or fallen log lately? Just curious seeing the results.

I do a lot of radiocarbon dating so maybe I can take a whack at this.

A fresh cadaver would be heavily contaminated with post-atomic bomb carbon, and would not likely provide a reliable date. Further, extremely young dates are problematical because of the ± factor. Even if you have a very good range, say ±40 years, when you calibrate your date at two sigmas you have a range of about 80 years on either side of the intercept (center). So you could potentially get a calibrated date at two sigmas of AD 1860-2020. That's not of much use in determining if a cadaver was from WWI or WWII.

A fallen log could have quite an age range. Take either a redwood tree or a bristlecone pine from the White Mountains of southern California. Each could have wood going back from several to many thousand of years old. Archaeologists take these possibilities into account when dating charcoal.

Hope this helps.

[blam]

Bye, Bye Beringia (8,000 Year Old Site In Florida)

*Skeletal remains of 169 people, split almost evenly between males and females, ranging from 6 to 70 years old. About 75 of the skeletons were relatively intact.

*90 intact human brains that include the oldest DNA samples in the World.
*Artifacts of wood, bone, and seed that were made into jewelry and tools, providing insight into the ancient peoples' lives.
*Tests showed the oldest skeletons were buried 8,100 years ago. The youngest was placed in the ground 6,900 years ago.
"To put this into context," Doran said, "these people had already been dead for 3,000 or 4,000 years before the first stones were laid for the Egyptian pyramids!"

[Brad from Tennessee]

Anything dated to 12,000 ago puts it in the last ice age. Divers have found sites with human artifacts off the Florida coast which at one time were on dry land during the ice age.

[blam]

[xcamel]

You need to find someone who can overlay the sealevel map from the same period in time - pretty close to the -100m level from now, so most if not all of those sites would have been a mighty long way from the ocean...

[blam]

I have some 7,000 year old wood from Northern Florida. It was dredged up from Santa Rosa Sound, Florida...which was a cypress forest that went underwater during the last Ice Age melt.