'Arlington Springs Woman', 13,000 Years Old Human Skeleton, California Island

Newsday.com ^ | 9-3-2002 | Bryn Nelson

[blam]

A Second Look

Armed with better technology, archaeologists return to the resting place of North America’s oldest known inhabitant

Revisiting the past is never easy, and revisiting an old excavation site on a canyon wall makes for a particularly dicey trip.

Especially when it no longer exists.

Yet a recent return by scientists to the final resting place of Arlington Springs Woman, the oldest known inhabitant of North America, has provided a striking demonstration of new technology's power to restore the past and preserve it well into the future.

SNIP ( click here for entire article)

So far, he's obtained 16 dates from bone fragments, sediment, and charcoal samples. With a little help then, Arlington Springs Woman has been firmly bracketed between 10,850 and 11,200 radiocarbon years, meaning her ripe old calibrated age of 13,000 calendar years is increasingly secure. (Is this a yes?)

[Gumlegs]

Apparently gender too. Don't expect to see a facial reconstruction of this one. lol

But she probably had a killer tan.

[Alas Babylon!]

I would sincerely be interested in what lies under the ocean all along the West and East coasts. During the last glaciation, sea levels were almost 300 feet lower than today. If people were moving down the coasts, it seems that most of their campsites were close to the beach, and now, therefore, underwater.

I heard about a dredging in British Columbia that picked up some stone axes, etc, from the bottom of a channel/sound. What more goodies lie beneath?

[blam]

"During the last glaciation, sea levels were almost 300 feet lower than today."

300-500Ft, most accept 400ft.

"I heard about a dredging in British Columbia that picked up some stone axes, etc, from the bottom of a channel/sound. "

Yup. That was something. They calculated where human settlement would most likely have been during the Ice Age and went dredging there. Amazingly, they found human artifacts.

I have some 7,000 year old wood dredged from Santa Rosa Sound in Florida that was once part of a coastal forest.

[liberalnot]

i think the los angeles times owns newsday.

[liberalnot]

i never did understand the clinton administration's bulldozing this site.

[Axenolith]

A good read on innumeracy...

200% of nothing

[blam]

"i never did understand the clinton administration's bulldozing this site."

It was the PC thing to do. Wouldn't want any more evidence supporting this Caucasian looking guy. Makes the natives mad.

[blam]

"I heard about a dredging in British Columbia that picked up some stone axes, etc, from the bottom of a channel/sound. What more goodies lie beneath?"

Yup. I read about that too. They picked what seemed would be a good human occupation site and then went dredging. Bingo!

[edwin hubble]

Spirit Cave man...
Looks very much like Jean-Luke Picard, (as does Kennewick
man).


What may be the oldest pre-Clovis site, Cactus Hill in Virginia, has many tools, few bones. ~15,000 yrs old.

[edwin hubble]

sea level 300-500 ft. lower.

The continential shelf off the mid-Atlantic states today runs 60 miles out to sea. Much of it is the submerged coastal plain, the '20 fathom flats' off Virginia. The 'edge' near Norfolk Canyon would have been ocean-front property 20,000 years ago.

The Chesapeake Bay was then a shallow valley of the Susquehanna river, running another 60 miles out to the ocean through the forests. Incidentally, some of these forests (stumps) are uncovered by storms along the shore.

[blam]

Check this out. Also, see the link here to the original 'Windover' article at the top of the post.

European DNA Found In 7-8,000 Year Old Skeleton In Florida (Windover)

[blam]

2004 GGG bump.

[Russian Sage]

The next oldest dated human skeleton...

I dated a skeleton once. She was kinda' quiet.

[SunkenCiv]

Here's one of those old topics (Sept 2002) which is in the GGG listing, but never got pinged.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[blam]

"Here's one of those old topics (Sept 2002) which is in the GGG listing, but never got pinged. "

Ahem, what took ya so long?

[SunkenCiv]

I just flew in from Arlington Springs and boy are my arms tired! [rimshot!]

[null and void]

At least she didn't try to yap your ear off.

(Is she available?)

[mwilli20]

A good read on innumeracy... 200% of nothing

Does this book mention the liberals' retarded obsession with Bush's tax cut which "went mostly to the rich"?

[crowbar]

RE: "Arlington Springs Woman"

Unless I've been duped, "Laguna Woman" represents the oldest human remains ever discovered in north america.

[blam]

I'll be darned, looks like you could be correct, see the last part of this article. I'll ping Coyoteman (our resident archaeologist who has published a book on the coastal Indians) and see what he says.

Laguna Woman

In 1933, 17-year-old amateur archeologist Howard Wilson, following up on stories that workers had found possible human bones at a Laguna Beach construction site (along St. Ann's Drive), uncovered a portion of a prehistoric human skull and a long bone fragment.

It wasn't until 1968 that, at the urging of the venerable Dr. Louis Leakey, these remains were submitted for radiocarbon dating, conducted by the UCLA Geophysics Lab. Establishing that the skull was that of a female, the Lab dated it at more than 17,000 years old which would make it the oldest human remains found in the North American.
The finding prompted a team of anthropologists that same year to excavate the same area where the remains were originally found. It was determined that the area had a great deal of sediment and rock that had, over the centuries, washed down from nearby coastal hills (suggesting that the woman had originally died in the hills).
The area also had been significantly developed since 1933, making it difficult to access the original site. No additional prehistoric remains were found. Unfortunately, time and new developments in anthropological dating has eroded support for Laguna Woman to the point where today she is not considered among contemporary anthropologists to be among the oldest human remains in North America.