Sunbelt Thaws Ice Age Mysteries in Study of 10,000-Year-Old Village

An ancient village scientists are calling a 10,000-year-old underwater time capsule is providing clues about how people survived the transition from the Ice Age to today’s modern climate.

The site on the Aucilla River in the Florida Panhandle was sealed and preserved in clay by a sudden flood, said Brinnen Carter, a University of Florida archeologist and member of the excavation team.

The site appears to have been a village by a pond in which people lived for a few generations about 10,000 years ago.

“These people who lived during this period had to adjust to drastic differences in climate, animals and plant life,” Carter said. “Populations had to move, find new sources of food and water, and make new living arrangements to adapt to the far-reaching environmental changes.”

Before temperatures warmed, causing the polar icecaps to melt, Florida’s landscape was much drier, resembling the savannas of modern-day Africa. Lower sea levels made the peninsula nearly twice its present size.

The excavation team found that people lived in concentrated numbers, providing more evidence that humans from this time--called the early Archaic Period--were less nomadic than their hunting predecessors.

“Not only were these the earliest people to see modern climates, but they were the first not to rely heavily on mammoths and mastodons,” Carter said. “Essentially, they were the first humans that weren’t big-game hunters.”

The site was nearly 100 miles from the coast 10,000 years ago, compared with five miles from the Gulf of Mexico today. Scientists believe the settlement was flooded because artifacts were found in clay.

Stone projectile points, fire-cracked rock, bone tools and wood fragments have been found, showing that the Paleo-Indians lived and worked in the area, probably in small groups.

“There has never been such a collection of worked wood dating so early,” said Mark Muniz, a University of Florida anthropology researcher. “Many pieces are pointed like tent stakes, and one very large piece of cypress was hollowed out like one end of a canoe.”

Also found were cutting stones, hammer stones and an intact hearth and flint modified into points.

“The worked flint artifacts are really important because they show industrial capability,” Carter said. “These people were not only manufacturing the tools they hunted with but also the tools they used to produce other tools.”