HEADLINE: HELEN TAKES VACATION IN CALIFORNIA
WON'T REVEAL AGE TO ENQUIRING PRESS
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Posted on 05/12/2007 10:13:51 AM PDT by blam
Human remains thought to be oldest ever found in Santa Cruz
By Todd Guild
Sentinel Correspondent
May 12, 2007
SANTA CRUZ — For the Santa Cruz Water Department, most construction projects are uneventful, encountering nothing more than dirt, rocks and an occasional root.
That was not the case when city workers installing a water pipe on the Westside unearthed the bodies of two Ohlone people — now believed to be the oldest human remains ever found in the city.
Studies over the past six months date the bones back 5,000 years, when construction on the Great Pyramids in Egypt had just begun and Europe was still in the Stone Age.
"In the city of Santa Cruz, it's the earliest evidence we have for habitation of the area," said Jennifer Farquhar, senior archaeologist with Albion Environmental Group, the Santa Cruz-based company that excavated the remains.
The Ohlone people, whose ancestors are thought to have crossed the Bering Strait 10,000 years ago, probably spent winters near the coast, migrating from the hills. Examinations of nearby middens — ancient garbage dumps — show an abundance of mussel, abalone and mollusk shell fragments as well as mammal and fish bones.
The two bodies found by city workers were discovered last fall about 22 yards apart in shallow graves, just under the base rock, according to Farquhar. Archaeologists are not providing the exact location for fear of looting.
Albion Environmental, which was monitoring the construction, sent the bodies to the UC Santa Cruz anthropology department lab, where it was recently determined the individuals are a male and a female, both about 45 years or older.
Testing on the remains is expected to conclude in June. Advertisement
The Ohlones numbered about 10,000 from San Francisco to Big Sur when the Spanish arrived in the early 1600s, according to rangers at Ano Nuevo State Park.
Their homes were simple dwellings made from willow branches tightly woven with tule rushes. They were excellent craftsmen, and wove watertight baskets from small willow branches and tule rushes, according to the rangers.
And, they regularly had to contend with the scores of prowling grizzly bears that inhabited the area at the time, the rangers said.
After the research is concluded, the bodies found in Santa Cruz will be buried at a "sacred spot" in accordance with Ohlone tradition, "so that the individual spirit travels back to the spirit world in a good way," said Anne-Marie Sayers, the Ohlone tribe member who monitored the excavation.
Albion Environmental will present its findings at a talk Tuesday, where speakers will discuss what they found, their monitoring process and their conclusions about the discoveries.
The $15 million water line project that led to the discovery runs from Ocean Street to the Bay Street Reservoir. Construction began in June 2006, and is expected to conclude late next month.
More haplogroup A ?
Those two can remember the last time Santa Cruz voted Republican.
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I doubt that mtDNA testing was done on these two individuals.
I would sure be interesting though!
Kind of a misleading headline.
If you read it as a complete sentence you might think Santa Cruz is the new Olduvai Gorge.
And of course it ain't.
I thought Robert Byrd was from West Virginia...
The decaying Grateful Dead t-shirts still wrapped around their ribcages gave it way. ;)
Then you must know that these are the bones of some 60's Hippie artificially aged by his copious consumption of controlled substances.
But for the grace of God they could have been mine from that period.
They were found with gold panning pans and a copy of the Declaration of Independence stapled to their dungarees.
“buried at a “sacred spot” in accordance with Ohlone tradition” How do they know? No written history, no nothing. Did they think anything was sacred? Maybe they worshiped ducks. Then they could bury them in the quack of a rock and send the city a bill?
Have they found their surf boards yet?
As to the ohlone, either they were primitive beyond belief, or they used those water proof baskets to trade with the Old World, because only the ultra-uncivilized would consider cooking & eating abalone without lemons.
Odd, I wonder why they were buried 22 yards apart? Normally people tend to cluster their dead together in cemeteries.
Within California, some of the larger groups, with more permanent villages, did have marked cemeteries.
The normal burial mode for many of the smaller groups was within the living sites. Among some groups the hut might be burned and the village abandoned after a burial, and by the time a year or two had passed the traces of the burial location would be largely lost. Multiply by 5,000 years.
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Ooops. Thought it said Santa Claus
That was not the case when city workers installing a water pipe on the Westside unearthed the bodies of two Ohlone people — now believed to be the oldest human remains ever found in the city.The chances of the same tribe holding the same ground for 5,000 years are extra-slim to none, yet the article states as a fact that these are Ohlone people.Studies over the past six months date the bones back 5,000 years, when construction on the Great Pyramids in Egypt had just begun and Europe was still in the Stone Age.
GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK!!!!
These skeletons are 5,000 years old!!!!
For a current tribe - one whose historical presence there is documented only afew hundred years, to claim these represent their ancestors is idiotic.
Even in the early historical period, Native American indian groups moved about quite a bit. The Shawnees for instance, moved from the deep south to Pennsylvania, the Tuscaroras moved from the mountains of the Carolinas to upstate New York.
This is equivalent to somebody in England claiming a 5,000 year old skeleton was his ancestor after waves of successive immigrants from all over western Europe.
ONCE AGAIN, political correctness trumps science and logic, the same way it does over the on-going garbage about human generated global warming.
Not far from Santa Cruz there is a documented mtDNA haplotype match of a skeleton dated to over 5,000 years old and living individuals.
This does not necessarily document direct ancestry, but it does track one specific lineage.
You could probably find such genetic compatibility among various different North American Amerindian groups.
We have no issue with exhuming and studying the remains of European and Asian and African forebearers.
The situation with regard to reisistance to exhumation of Native American remains and their study is based on repugnant practices in the 1800’s and 1900’s involving the exhumation, study, and/or display of the remains of recently deceased, massacred or killed Native Americans in a flagrantly inhuman manner, often in an effort to present blatant racist theories about ethnic groups.
Exhuming and studying the remains of individuals several thousand years old today can be justified by sound scientific grounds. Catering to the present “religious” beliefs of current Amerindians regarding alleged “proper burial rites” for their alleged “ancestors” is idiotic. Its another case of political correctness gone amok.
Nobody is advocating exhuming recent Amerindian remains.
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