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

Sun Herald ^ | 8-15-2007

[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.