New Clues Answer Questions to Early Civilization in the U.S.

Assistant Professor Jessi Halligan and a research team recovered several bones and stone tools from the Page-Ladson site on the Aucilla River. (Image: Florida State University )

The discovery of a site, which dates back 14,550 years, shows that humans settled the south-eastern United States much earlier than scientists previously believed by as much as 1,500 years.

The discovery of stone tools alongside mastodon bones in a Florida river now makes it the oldest known site of human life in the southeastern United States, according to a research team led by a Florida State University professor.

Jessi Halligan, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology from Florida State University, said in a statement:

“This is a big deal, there were people here. So how did they live? This has opened up a whole new line of inquiry for us as scientists as we try to understand the settlement of the Americas.”

There are sites all over North America that are around 13,200 years old. However, there are only around five in all of North and South America that are older. The archaeological site, called the Page-Ladson, was named after Buddy Page who was a former Navy Seal diver and was the first to bring the site to the attention of archaeologists in the 1980s and the Ladson family, who are the property owners.

The site is located 26 feet underwater in a sinkhole on the Aucilla River, near Tallahassee. Researchers James Dunbar and David Webb were first to investigate the site from 1987 to 1997. They had retrieved eight stone tools and a mastodon tusk, which had cut marks. However, their findings were dismissed as they were considered to be too old to be real, and were questionable as they were found underwater.

Close­up of an epoxy cast of transverse cut marks on the base of the Page-Ladson mastodon tusk. Diagonal feature is a fracture through the outer layer. (Image: Daniel C. Fisher, University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology)

However, Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan, re-examined the tusk. What he found was that the deep parallel grooves on the surface of the tusk, were, in fact, caused by humans using stone tools to remove the tusk from the skull. This now shows the original interpretation was correct.

Fisher, who is the director of the U-M Museum of Paleontology and a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said in a statement:

“These grooves are clearly the result of human activity and, together with new radiocarbon dates, they indicate that humans were processing a mastodon carcass in what is now the southeastern United States much earlier than was generally accepted.”

Fisher believes that the tusk could have been removed to gain access to the edible tissue at its base. It is also understood that the ancient humans who lived in this area were known to use ivory to make weapons, he added.

“It now appears that people were targeting disruption of this tissue when they cut into the side wall of the tusk socket, leaving the set of transverse grooves. Each tusk this size would have had more than 15 pounds of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity, and that would certainly have been of value.”

Michael Waters from Texas A&M University and Halligan had held an interest in the site, believing that it was worth taking another look. So, between 2012 and 2014, divers, which included Dunbar, excavated the site once again.

Working in near-zero-visibility waters, the researchers were able to retrieve stone tools and the bones of extinct animals. Among their finds from the murky river was a biface — a knife with sharp edges on both sides. This knife is thought to have been used for cutting and butchering animals.

A 12,600-year-old stone knife found at the Page-Ladson site in Florida. (Image Courtesy Of Michael Waters, Texas A&M University)

By using the latest in radiocarbon dating techniques, the researchers were able to date all artifacts to around 14,550 years ago. Scientists believed that a group called Clovis was among the first inhabitants of the Americas, who are understood to have settled in the area about 13,200 years ago.

However, this new find puts that into question, with Walters saying:

“The new discoveries at Page-Ladson show that people were living in the Gulf Coast area much earlier than believed. The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools.

“These people were well-adapted to this environment. The site is a slam-dunk pre-Clovis site with unequivocal artifacts, clear stratigraphy and thorough dating.

“It’s pretty exciting. We thought we knew the answers to how and when we got here, but now the story is changing.”

Waters said the Page-Ladson site has changed dramatically since it was first occupied 14,550 years ago. Millennia of deposition associated with rising water tables tied to sea level rise left the site buried under 15 feet of sediment and submerged, according to the University of Michigan.

“Page-Ladson significantly adds to our growing knowledge that people were exploring and settling the Americas between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago.

“Archaeological evidence from other sites dating to this time period shows us that people were also adapted to living in Texas, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and South America. Clearly, people were all over the Americas earlier than we thought.”

Evidence from the Page-Ladson site indicates that people had coexisted with, and also, hunted large mammals such as the mammoth and mastodon, before they became extinct, with Fisher saying:

“In addition, our work provides strong evidence that early human hunters did not hunt mastodons to extinction as quickly as supporters of the so-called ‘Blitzkrieg’ hypothesis have argued.

“Instead, the evidence from this site shows that humans and megafauna coexisted for at least 2,000 years.”

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