Ancient Sea Peoples of the North Atlantic

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T.W. Timreck is a Peabody Award winning visual anthropologist and documentarian who has been working with several anthropological departments at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History since 1980. He has held a research position in the Arctic Studies Center and worked with teams of scientists from the ASC, the Paleo Program, Physical Anthropology and Repatriation. His work has been shown on PBS and television systems all over the world.

His earlier PBS programs about the life of Northwest Coast anthropologist Franz Boas, the surprising, first discovery of early, ocean adapted Northeastern Native Americans in the "Lost Red Paint People" and the history of Viking explorations in the North Atlantic marked the beginning of a nearly half century of archeological field research and moving image documentation.

Timreck's controversial series "Hidden Landscapes" assembled evidence from the Native perspective for ceremonial stone landscapes that existed among the early indigenous cultures of Northeastern North America. The program became prime evidence, with it's Native oral history contributions, for the National Register of Historic Places to change their Federal preservation guidelines in the Northeast. Although still controversial, the impact of that series demonstrated that the long accepted archeological history of Eastern Native America would have to be radically re-imagined. It's an interesting coincidence that the mythical stone ruins of the Northeast and the scientific acceptance of a new, ocean adapted Native culture that once lived along the North Atlantic Coasts of Ice Age America were both introduced to science and the public in the short decade of the 1970's. Now, a better understanding of climate change and a new comprehension of the "Algonquin Atlantic" as a cultural force is gradually supplanting the Antiquarian Myths and changing the deeply held scientific misconceptions about Eastern Native life. Timreck's most recent programs with Smithsonian scientists in collaboration with tribal representatives, show how inclusive science evolves slowly but convincingly.

Covering decades of research, Ancient Sea Peoples of the North Atlantic is a culminating story of the gradual discovery of this ocean adapted Native American civilization and the recognition that their cultural remains can extend out onto the now submerged continental shelf of the Atlantic Coast. The program places this indigenous culture in a Circumpolar context comparing their surprising sophistication with other ocean adapted peoples of the North Atlantic. The documented research with Native interpretation chronicles the slow but inexorable change in scientific thinking about culture, climate, and connection across the northern Circumpolar World that offers a new perspective on early Native American history.

"A beautifully produced film that presents evidence from archaeology, architecture, ancient documents, and Indigenous oral histories linking Medieval and Celtic views of maritime geographic knowledge with a much more distant past. Interviews with prominent archaeologists discuss decades of coastal and underwater research, providing tantalizing and provocative ideas regarding a now-inundated continental shelf along eastern North America that may have been densely settled as long as 20,000 or more years ago. Ideally suited for university courses in world prehistory and North American archaeology as well as for advanced high school social science or history courses, this film will promote critical discussions into the nature of solid evidence for our understanding of the debates surrounding the peopling of the New World." Peter E. Siegel, Professor of Anthropology, Montclair State University, Co-author, The Archaeology of Native North America

"Ancient Sea Peoples is a revelation. Taking a literal deep dive into its subject, drawing on long-submerged evidence and the latest scholarship in sensitive ways, the film reveals how seafaring peoples transformed both Atlantic and Pacific shores thousands of years before the present. This extraordinary documentary reconsiders everything we thought we knew about the ancient maritime world." Andrew Lipman, Associate Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University, Author, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast

"In over four decades, cinematographer Ted Timreck has adventurously explored the Maritime Revolution that transformed Indigenous peoples and cultures ranging the northern Atlantic seaboard in the millennia since the last Ice Age. Made in close collaboration with Arctic archaeologist William Fitzhugh and his colleagues at the Smithsonian, this well-crafted documentary raises compelling questions about prehistoric navigation technology and ancient mysteries in symbolic and submerged landscapes that invite speculation and drive research." Dr. Harald E.L. Prins, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Kansas State University

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Keywords

Clovis,Paleo Indian,Paleo-India,maritime,hidden landscapes,Circumpolar World,Newfoundland,martitime adaptation,Red Paint Peoples,Red Paint People,Red Paint Culture,Maritime Archaic,ted timreck,bullfrog films,documentary,anthropology,archaeology,ice age,coastal north america,atlantic coast,indigenous culture,indigenous history,North Atlantic; "Ancient Sea Peoples of the North Atlantic"; Bullfrog Films

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Around 10,000 years ago,

00:00:52.970 --> 00:00:56.380
what archaeologists call
the Agricultural Revolution

00:00:56.590 --> 00:01:00.500
gradually turned nomadic hunters
and gatherers into farmers.

00:01:09.150 --> 00:01:12.449
But thousands of years before
the Agricultural Revolution,

00:01:12.760 --> 00:01:17.489
there was an earlier technical advance
that also profoundly changed human life.

00:01:19.069 --> 00:01:22.849
The Maritime Revolution occurred
when people adapted to life

00:01:22.860 --> 00:01:24.889
on the ocean during the last ice age.

00:01:32.569 --> 00:01:36.190
No one knows when or where
the maritime revolutions began.

00:01:37.650 --> 00:01:40.190
But at least 60,000 years ago,

00:01:40.489 --> 00:01:45.069
humans used watercraft to reach
Australia from Southern Asia.

00:01:51.809 --> 00:01:54.999
Some of the best places on earth
to explore the remains

00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.330
of early maritime-adapted cultures

00:01:57.510 --> 00:01:59.720
are along the northern
shores of Scotland

00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:01.980
and especially in the
outer Scottish Isles,

00:02:01.989 --> 00:02:03.589
like the Orkneys and the Shetlands.

00:02:09.699 --> 00:02:13.399
Ocean environments have always
offered irresistible food resources.

00:02:14.199 --> 00:02:16.889
And when humans learned
to navigate the seas,

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there were profound and often
still-unrecognized developments

00:02:20.630 --> 00:02:22.860
that had a powerful effect
on their cultures.

00:02:23.729 --> 00:02:28.729
For example, the art of navigation
beyond the sight of land,

00:02:28.730 --> 00:02:32.110
with its deep reliance on the sun,
the moon and the stars,

00:02:32.470 --> 00:02:35.419
may have been an important factor
in developing the knowledge

00:02:35.429 --> 00:02:39.229
of astronomy that is found among
many ancient coastal peoples.

00:02:42.169 --> 00:02:44.979
The early navigators used alignments,

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imagining straight lines from
their boats to the sky,

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following the stars to maintain
their direction at night.

00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:54.830
And they calculated
visible alignments from

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their positions offshore
back to landmarks they built

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out of stone on hilltops
along their seascapes.

00:03:03.929 --> 00:03:07.880
Together, these visual alignment
techniques allowed them to navigate

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over long ocean distances
between the outer islands.

00:03:13.570 --> 00:03:16.350
This technology of
straight lines, angles,

00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:19.550
calculations and stone
markers used for navigation

00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:23.880
may have been the original source of
geometric knowledge that has been in

00:03:23.889 --> 00:03:28.429
evidence since very early times and still
remains a mystery for researchers today.

00:03:29.460 --> 00:03:33.750
In fact, the ceremonial landscapes
found in the outer Scottish isles

00:03:34.100 --> 00:03:36.101
are thought to be some
of the earliest ritual sites

00:03:36.102 --> 00:03:40.259
that include astronomically
aligned stone monuments.

00:03:48.190 --> 00:03:51.440
Scientists like Graham
Clark long ago suggested

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that permanent human settlements,

00:03:53.001 --> 00:03:55.759
and therefore the roots of civilization,

00:03:55.760 --> 00:03:58.999
may have begun along the
sea coasts or near the mouths of rivers.

00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:04.029
Unlike nomadic hunters who walked
over the rugged paleolithic terrain,

00:04:04.559 --> 00:04:09.679
people adapted to the sea could use
watercraft to easily travel long distances

00:04:09.880 --> 00:04:14.270
and then return to their sturdy permanent
settlements over many generations.

00:04:19.450 --> 00:04:23.589
The edges of the oceans are among the
most abrasive environments on Earth.

00:04:24.239 --> 00:04:27.320
Ancient settlements that were
oriented to the shoreline

00:04:27.329 --> 00:04:31.190
are often completely obliterated
by storms and rising sea levels.

00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:36.890
The accidental and spectacular
preservation of Skara Brae is rare.

00:04:37.309 --> 00:04:40.001
And so far, very few coastal settlements

00:04:40.002 --> 00:04:41.809
from the Stone Age have been located.

00:04:43.220 --> 00:04:45.920
So it's understandable that
very little evidence of this

00:04:45.929 --> 00:04:49.119
early maritime cultural revolution
has been recognized

00:04:49.125 --> 00:04:50.799
by archaeologists in the past.

00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:55.279
There may be many cultural
developments in other places around

00:04:55.290 --> 00:04:58.980
the globe that had their roots in
this earlier maritime revolution

00:04:59.339 --> 00:05:02.190
that had been attributed
to later cultural stages

00:05:02.200 --> 00:05:05.859
simply because we tend to
underestimate the abilities

00:05:05.879 --> 00:05:07.500
of our ancestors in the deeper past.

00:05:14.730 --> 00:05:17.679
The old colonial thinking
of western science always

00:05:17.690 --> 00:05:20.690
held the belief that
ancient old world cultures

00:05:20.700 --> 00:05:23.660
were more advanced than the
supposedly primitive peoples

00:05:23.670 --> 00:05:26.230
that the Europeans discovered
in the western hemisphere.

00:05:27.880 --> 00:05:32.179
But the slowly unfolding history
of ancient Native peoples

00:05:32.190 --> 00:05:35.899
who once lived along the eastern
coast of North America is indicating

00:05:35.910 --> 00:05:39.880
that the Atlantic may have had an
equally profound cultural effect

00:05:39.890 --> 00:05:42.440
on the peoples who lived on
both sides of the ocean.

00:05:43.750 --> 00:05:48.119
But like many scientific realizations,
this one began as a myth,

00:05:48.549 --> 00:05:51.529
the myth of the Lost Red
Paint People of Maine.

00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:56.820
In 1882, Augustus Hamlin,
the mayor of Bangor, Maine,

00:05:57.019 --> 00:06:00.250
was guided to a region near the
mouth of the Penobscot River

00:06:00.251 --> 00:06:02.269
by Foster Soper, a local farmer.

00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:05.540
Soper had told the mayor
about a place where

00:06:05.549 --> 00:06:08.529
blood-colored pools were
rising out of the earth.

00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:10.709
Hamlin, the antiquarian,

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was about to make a discovery which
would eventually change scientific beliefs.

00:06:16.130 --> 00:06:19.670
Though its real significance was
not understood for 100 years,

00:06:19.920 --> 00:06:24.019
what he found here was the first
evidence of a completely unknown

00:06:24.170 --> 00:06:29.690
ancient race of skilled seafaring people
who once lived along the Atlantic coast.

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As a geologist, Hamlin realized he was
looking at a high grade of red ochre,

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iron oxide.

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Buried in the ochre, Hamlin found
artifacts made of polished stone.

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He knew that Native American
peoples used red ochre

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for war paint and for their rituals.

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But what surprised
him was the quality

00:06:53.910 --> 00:06:56.279
and the perfection of
the polished artifacts.

00:06:57.109 --> 00:07:01.649
The stone woodworking tools were honed
to a sharpness rivaling a metal blade,

00:07:02.070 --> 00:07:05.970
and they were far superior to the
artifacts found at Indian sites in Maine.

00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:13.149
Over the next 100 years, the Red Paint
People became a fantastical myth.

00:07:13.640 --> 00:07:18.989
Popular imaginative theories of
lost races or early European diffusion

00:07:18.990 --> 00:07:22.209
tended to discourage the interests
of professional archaeologists

00:07:22.329 --> 00:07:25.999
who were afraid of having
their careers possibly tarnished

00:07:26.001 --> 00:07:27.100
by a brush with fantasy.

00:07:29.440 --> 00:07:31.700
Given the controversy,
and the fact that

00:07:31.709 --> 00:07:35.179
so little archaeological evidence
survives along the abrasive shore,

00:07:35.609 --> 00:07:38.679
there hasn't been very much
serious research focused on

00:07:38.690 --> 00:07:42.459
the early Native peoples who once
lived along the Atlantic coast.

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One archaeologist who has
explored this question

00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:51.190
is Bill Fitzhugh from the
Smithsonian Institution.

00:07:51.760 --> 00:07:55.999
He has devoted years to studying
what he believes are connected

00:07:56.001 --> 00:07:58.999
Red Paint ceremonial cultures
that once lived along

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the water systems of the Atlantic coast

00:08:00.799 --> 00:08:03.309
from southern New England
to northern Labrador.

00:08:04.429 --> 00:08:07.489
Fitzhugh and his Smithsonian
teams began exploring the

00:08:07.500 --> 00:08:10.010
coast of Labrador in the 1970s.

00:08:12.059 --> 00:08:16.239
They were the first archaeologists to
locate red paint burials along with the

00:08:16.250 --> 00:08:20.700
remains of house foundations built by
Native Americans at a place called

00:08:21.070 --> 00:08:23.359
Noliac Cove just below
the Arctic Circle.

00:08:25.140 --> 00:08:27.760
He proved that these Indian cultures

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that traveled thousands of miles
along this perilous coast

00:08:31.130 --> 00:08:33.750
must have had maritime technologies

00:08:33.760 --> 00:08:37.320
and navigational capabilities
that historians never imagined.

00:08:38.760 --> 00:08:43.340
Some years ago started doing
archaeology in Labrador,

00:08:43.450 --> 00:08:47.570
which was, back in the '60s and '70s,
really unknown territory.

00:08:47.789 --> 00:08:51.999
And very soon after we started
we ran across this culture.

00:08:52.001 --> 00:08:56.030
And it was a very old group of people,
4000, 5000 years old.

00:08:56.039 --> 00:08:59.880
And we were extremely
surprised to discover

00:09:01.280 --> 00:09:06.960
these early Indians were living in
the outer islands on beaches that had

00:09:06.969 --> 00:09:10.359
big surf crashing on them
and a lot of ice around

00:09:10.369 --> 00:09:11.679
in the winter and spring.

00:09:12.070 --> 00:09:14.679
So these were people that were
partly like Inuit or Eskimos

00:09:14.690 --> 00:09:18.030
and partly like a very
northern-style Indians,

00:09:18.039 --> 00:09:23.250
but they were so incredibly different
from the Indians that we knew

00:09:23.619 --> 00:09:26.289
from the ethnographic
record in Labrador.

00:09:26.380 --> 00:09:31.999
And yet the archaeology that
we were encountering in the ground

00:09:32.001 --> 00:09:35.969
was of an Indian group,
but 4000 years earlier

00:09:36.640 --> 00:09:39.960
and a very complicated,
sophisticated culture.

00:09:40.130 --> 00:09:42.109
They were living, we discovered,

00:09:42.280 --> 00:09:45.710
in long houses with
separate compartments

00:09:45.719 --> 00:09:48.020
in these long houses for
individual families,

00:09:48.030 --> 00:09:52.869
sometimes 20 or 30 families living
in a single long house settlement.

00:10:08.690 --> 00:10:12.510
At the front of the raised beach terrace,
which was once the edge of the ocean,

00:10:12.859 --> 00:10:16.599
the team found a 4000 year
old burial mound along with

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a rectangular enclosure that had
once been filled with red ochre.

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And built into the mount,

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there was a stone
chamber facing the ocean.

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And over here on the
east side of the mound,

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there is a crypt of some sort,
a chamber built out of stones

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in a rather unusual way.

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We've never seen
anything like this before.

00:10:42.719 --> 00:10:44.229
4000 years ago.

00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:48.179
long before the famous mound
builders of the midwest,

00:10:48.190 --> 00:10:51.090
Native Americans already had
a sophisticated tradition

00:10:51.092 --> 00:10:55.289
of ceremonial stone landscaping
along the North Atlantic coast.

00:10:55.760 --> 00:10:58.659
So we had this interesting
contrast between

00:10:58.669 --> 00:11:01.229
the modern Indian people
who are living

00:11:01.369 --> 00:11:03.590
a very nomadic life on the interior

00:11:03.599 --> 00:11:07.150
and an archaeological
culture on the coast that was

00:11:07.469 --> 00:11:11.190
incredibly different and
very maritime-oriented.

00:11:11.489 --> 00:11:12.869
We never expected that,

00:11:13.210 --> 00:11:17.169
because our view of the
Native people of this part

00:11:17.179 --> 00:11:19.739
of the world had come from
the south to the north.

00:11:20.270 --> 00:11:24.759
It developed as a result
of the colonial encounters

00:11:24.760 --> 00:11:27.700
in Massachusetts
Bay colony in Nova Scotia.

00:11:27.770 --> 00:11:32.219
But the first wave of
European settlement

00:11:32.229 --> 00:11:35.729
in those areas had so
fundamentally changed

00:11:35.969 --> 00:11:40.059
the coastal Indian cultures
that they basically evaporated,

00:11:40.429 --> 00:11:42.510
and we see a little bit,
only a little bit

00:11:42.520 --> 00:11:47.719
of that life in those peoples
after the whalers began,

00:11:47.729 --> 00:11:50.760
the European whalers began
and hired some of these

00:11:50.770 --> 00:11:53.979
Indian people who turned
out to be great harpooners.

00:11:54.859 --> 00:11:57.999
But mid-19th century
Americans weren't inclined

00:11:58.001 --> 00:12:01.001
to see Native maritime abilities
as part of a deeper

00:12:01.003 --> 00:12:04.280
cultural tradition that may have
extended back in time.

00:12:06.840 --> 00:12:09.140
The historian John De Forest wrote

00:12:09.150 --> 00:12:11.940
an important and comprehensive
history saying that

00:12:11.950 --> 00:12:15.580
the Connecticut Indians could
build canoes holding up to 20 men.

00:12:16.289 --> 00:12:20.210
But he added a footnote saying
that in the early 1600s,

00:12:20.212 --> 00:12:22.390
John Winthrop, the first governor,

00:12:22.520 --> 00:12:26.429
described Indian canoes that
could hold 60 or 80 men.

00:12:27.419 --> 00:12:31.719
De Forest couldn't believe that Indians
could accomplish the engineering

00:12:31.729 --> 00:12:35.479
or had the social organization
needed to build such large boats.

00:12:35.969 --> 00:12:38.450
And his type of colonial thinking

00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:42.200
has shaped scientific and
historical opinion ever since.

00:12:45.599 --> 00:12:48.000
But why would Governor
Winthrop lie about the

00:12:48.010 --> 00:12:51.059
size and capability of
the Indian canoes he saw?

00:12:53.270 --> 00:12:56.760
Well, you know, if people are going
to be living on those coastal edges

00:12:56.770 --> 00:12:58.349
at the end of the Ice Age

00:12:58.619 --> 00:13:02.609
they've got to be using boats,
and we have been, you know,

00:13:02.940 --> 00:13:06.999
unable to understand this
in most places in the world

00:13:07.001 --> 00:13:09.200
because boats don't
generally get preserved.

00:13:10.869 --> 00:13:14.650
By the 1850s, when De Forest
wrote his history of the Indians,

00:13:14.960 --> 00:13:19.450
the widely accepted image of early
eastern Natives as primitive savages

00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:22.169
who would never have been able
to navigate the Atlantic Ocean

00:13:22.450 --> 00:13:26.049
was a political and apparently
a scientific necessity.

00:13:26.309 --> 00:13:28.130
Bottom line is that
there are gonna be boats

00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:30.149
and that they're going to--

00:13:30.171 --> 00:13:32.859
They may be in the northern areas,
they may be skin boats.

00:13:33.539 --> 00:13:38.799
By the time people
start using larger boats,

00:13:39.299 --> 00:13:42.760
which is during the Maritime
Archaic or Moorhead time period,

00:13:42.770 --> 00:13:45.450
this is the time that we
get these big stone axes.

00:13:45.809 --> 00:13:48.000
And they're really amazing tools.

00:13:48.450 --> 00:13:53.159
They're very hard rock that have been
carefully carved and chipped and ground.

00:13:53.320 --> 00:13:56.200
Some of them are
just like axes or adzes,

00:13:56.210 --> 00:13:58.679
and others are cut in a
certain way like a gouge.

00:13:59.090 --> 00:14:02.460
There's only one thing that you're
gonna do with a big stone gouge.

00:14:02.469 --> 00:14:03.580
You're gonna make a boat.

00:14:04.030 --> 00:14:06.349
That's the only
purpose of such a tool.

00:14:06.500 --> 00:14:10.130
And we've seen this in
Scandinavia and in Finland.

00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:14.549
When the first big log boats
begin to be used, big dugouts,

00:14:14.719 --> 00:14:16.929
there they are with
these big stone tools.

00:14:17.380 --> 00:14:20.999
Like the conceptions
of the Indian cultures

00:14:21.001 --> 00:14:23.130
that began from colonists
who came, you know,

00:14:23.260 --> 00:14:25.929
in New England and began
looking at the local Indians,

00:14:26.280 --> 00:14:28.630
the archaeologists also
had the same pattern

00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:31.390
of starting from the
south and moving north,

00:14:31.669 --> 00:14:34.750
discovering, you know, surprising things

00:14:35.169 --> 00:14:36.869
the further north that you went.

00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:40.989
And this was not logical according
to sort of European mentality.

00:14:41.270 --> 00:14:45.109
European mentality was that people
went, you know, they were farmers.

00:14:45.119 --> 00:14:48.999
The highest cultures were the
cultures that lived, you know,

00:14:49.001 --> 00:14:52.289
with agriculture and lived
in villages and so forth.

00:14:52.419 --> 00:14:55.549
People who were having to be
fishermen and living on the coast,

00:14:55.559 --> 00:14:59.219
this seemed kind of marginal
to the way of life.

00:14:59.229 --> 00:15:01.349
and it was often thought
these sort of barbaric

00:15:01.669 --> 00:15:03.849
kind of ways of living.

00:15:04.390 --> 00:15:08.210
But what we were beginning to discover
is that in the early time period

00:15:08.270 --> 00:15:13.869
the Indian cultures gradually
developed this maritime capability

00:15:14.179 --> 00:15:20.289
and it developed to a very high standard
that you might even compare very,

00:15:20.299 --> 00:15:24.770
you know, successfully with the Indians
of the northwest coast of America.

00:15:25.080 --> 00:15:28.999
Living with big dugout canoes,
paddling hundreds of miles,

00:15:29.001 --> 00:15:34.999
trading copper and hunting
whales and, you know,

00:15:35.001 --> 00:15:37.419
having a huge salmon-based
economy and so forth,

00:15:37.419 --> 00:15:40.609
that way of life continued
on the northwest coast.

00:15:40.619 --> 00:15:42.429
But for some reason,
in the northeast coast

00:15:42.690 --> 00:15:46.289
it was truncated
around 3500 years ago.

00:15:46.690 --> 00:15:50.340
And the reasons for that are--
we're still trying to find out.

00:15:53.809 --> 00:15:58.299
Scientists believe that globally,
technological development and

00:15:58.309 --> 00:16:01.109
cultural evolution follow a
similar path through time.

00:16:02.059 --> 00:16:05.929
Theoretically, people in the Paleolithic
started as nomadic hunters.

00:16:06.299 --> 00:16:08.750
Migrating all over the world on foot,

00:16:08.900 --> 00:16:11.690
they learned to hunt the big
game animals of the Ice Age.

00:16:13.619 --> 00:16:18.080
Then, slowly, over thousands of
years they became agriculturalists,

00:16:18.330 --> 00:16:20.919
learning how to cultivate
plants and therefore had

00:16:20.929 --> 00:16:24.080
the ability to live in permanent
or semi-permanent villages.

00:16:26.090 --> 00:16:29.309
Archaeologists believe
these gradual technological

00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:31.640
and social advances
tied to agriculture

00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:34.929
are what led to the earliest
stages of civilization.

00:16:36.010 --> 00:16:38.999
For example, it is thought
that the Indians needed

00:16:39.001 --> 00:16:41.380
a calendar to know when
to plant their crops.

00:16:43.289 --> 00:16:45.710
This practical need led to astronomy,

00:16:45.719 --> 00:16:47.770
which evolved into spiritual traditions

00:16:47.780 --> 00:16:51.030
including ceremonial sites
with astronomical and

00:16:51.039 --> 00:16:54.859
geographical alignments that can
be found all over the Americas.

00:16:55.950 --> 00:16:58.700
The odd thing is that farming came to

00:16:58.710 --> 00:17:01.929
northeastern North America
rather late in Native history,

00:17:02.659 --> 00:17:04.989
perhaps less than 2000 years ago.

00:17:07.819 --> 00:17:11.239
But ceremonial stone
landscapes and alignments

00:17:11.250 --> 00:17:14.000
that are over 7000
or 8000 years old

00:17:14.010 --> 00:17:16.999
can be found at coastal
archaeological sites

00:17:17.001 --> 00:17:20.359
along the edge of the North Atlantic.

00:17:21.719 --> 00:17:25.848
In fact, this complex ritual burial
mound at the entrance to the

00:17:25.858 --> 00:17:28.760
Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the
coast of southern Labrador

00:17:29.109 --> 00:17:32.920
is actually one of the oldest
ceremonial stone landscapes

00:17:32.930 --> 00:17:35.880
that have been found so far in
the western hemisphere.

00:17:36.849 --> 00:17:43.000
Dr. James Tuck excavated this mound
with Professor Robert McGee in 1976.

00:17:43.010 --> 00:17:45.290
When we first came we saw only
a corner of it that had

00:17:45.300 --> 00:17:48.680
been exposed by this road
construction and subsequent erosion.

00:17:50.219 --> 00:17:52.569
We excavated the
mound in quadrants,

00:17:53.750 --> 00:17:58.640
and near the center there was a rectangular
stone cist made of upright stones.

00:17:59.040 --> 00:18:01.899
We were a little disappointed
because there was no skeleton

00:18:01.901 --> 00:18:04.150
nor any artifacts in there.

00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:05.979
A little bit of red ochre.

00:18:05.989 --> 00:18:08.899
But when we dug below the cist,

00:18:08.901 --> 00:18:10.160
just to make sure there
was nothing there,

00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:13.270
we were really surprised to
find the skeleton of a child

00:18:13.272 --> 00:18:17.800
about 12 or 13 years old buried
face down, head to the west.

00:18:18.109 --> 00:18:19.799
We don't know if it was
a male or female

00:18:19.801 --> 00:18:21.335
because it was too young
to be able to tell.

00:18:22.670 --> 00:18:24.699
The artifacts themselves included

00:18:25.719 --> 00:18:29.999
a toggling harpoon of a design
we've never seen before or since,

00:18:30.001 --> 00:18:32.140
and since it's 7500 years old it's

00:18:32.569 --> 00:18:37.380
if not the oldest, one of the oldest
toggling harpoons that's ever been found.

00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.060
So these guys were pretty
sophisticated sea mammal hunters.

00:18:43.079 --> 00:18:47.219
It was Dr. Tuck who gave the Red
Paint People a new scientific name,

00:18:47.550 --> 00:18:49.300
the Maritime Archaic,

00:18:49.770 --> 00:18:54.420
and the slow process of redefining
Algonquin Atlantic history began.

00:19:03.540 --> 00:19:08.119
Doug Harris is a Narragansett Indian
tribal historic preservation officer

00:19:08.130 --> 00:19:11.949
who has been working for years with
scientists and government agencies

00:19:11.951 --> 00:19:15.839
to preserve Native cultural
resources both in the landscape

00:19:15.849 --> 00:19:18.400
and out on the floor
of the Atlantic Ocean.

00:19:18.800 --> 00:19:21.999
His underwater work began
with tribal oral history

00:19:22.001 --> 00:19:25.899
recounted by the Narragansett
medicine woman Dr. Ella Sekatau.

00:19:26.819 --> 00:19:30.790
Oral history that Dr. Ella Sekatau
shared with us about--

00:19:31.239 --> 00:19:36.239
More than 15,000 years ago, the
ancient villages of the Narragansett

00:19:36.459 --> 00:19:38.630
were out where the ocean is now.

00:19:39.459 --> 00:19:41.490
The waters began to rise overnight

00:19:41.491 --> 00:19:43.999
and the people had to
abandon their homes.

00:19:44.229 --> 00:19:49.689
That piece of oral history raises
a number of imporant questions

00:19:49.930 --> 00:19:51.699
about the ancient peoples,

00:19:52.050 --> 00:19:53.930
where we were and
what we were doing.

00:19:54.609 --> 00:20:00.189
And hopefully much of that
will be understood as we

00:20:00.290 --> 00:20:04.899
do examinations of the outer continental
shelf and develop those protocols

00:20:04.901 --> 00:20:10.709
for the projects that will be
federal undertakings in the future.

00:20:10.959 --> 00:20:12.400
Wind turbines,

00:20:13.459 --> 00:20:15.170
gas and oil projects,

00:20:15.369 --> 00:20:19.150
anything that will be disturbing
the outer continental shelf.

00:20:20.369 --> 00:20:23.020
But the questions that it raises,

00:20:23.280 --> 00:20:25.630
that gets to be very exciting.

00:20:26.959 --> 00:20:31.030
If we were out there on the
continental shelf, what was life like?

00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:35.080
The continental shelf is the edge
of the North American land mass

00:20:35.082 --> 00:20:37.670
that now lies submerged
along the Atlantic coast.

00:20:39.050 --> 00:20:42.099
The underwater shelf can
extend out for 200 miles

00:20:42.109 --> 00:20:45.189
or more before it drops off
steeply into the Atlantic.

00:20:46.380 --> 00:20:49.999
Around 24,000 to 26,000 years ago,

00:20:50.001 --> 00:20:52.428
at the maximum extent
of the last ice age,

00:20:52.430 --> 00:20:56.079
all of this submerged shelf
was exposed dry land.

00:20:57.520 --> 00:20:59.999
The land was exposed and
the ocean was lower

00:21:00.001 --> 00:21:03.890
because so much of the Earth's water
was tied up in the glacial ice

00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:07.170
that accumulated all around the
northern circumpolar globe.

00:21:12.229 --> 00:21:13.290
In the North Atlantic,

00:21:13.420 --> 00:21:17.410
the glacial pack ice once formed
a solid bridge across the ocean.

00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:22.680
This has been determined by studying
core samples extracted from the sea floor.

00:21:24.810 --> 00:21:28.770
This animation shows how the pack ice
expanded and contracted

00:21:29.099 --> 00:21:32.899
the ice rim moving north or
south as global temperatures

00:21:32.901 --> 00:21:37.589
alternately warmed and cooled beteen
22,000 and 18,000 years ago.

00:21:38.859 --> 00:21:41.709
As the temperatures gradually
warmed over time,

00:21:41.810 --> 00:21:45.101
more ice melted and eventually
sea levels rose

00:21:45.102 --> 00:21:48.400
to form the coastlines
we recognize today.

00:21:55.290 --> 00:21:58.260
The old textbook model for
the earliest migration of

00:21:58.270 --> 00:22:02.510
the ancestral American Indian from
Siberia to eastern North America

00:22:02.689 --> 00:22:06.489
explains that humans crossed
the Beringian land mass on foot.

00:22:07.500 --> 00:22:10.050
Once imagined as the first Americans,

00:22:10.099 --> 00:22:13.670
they became known as the Clovis people
because of their distinctive

00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:18.410
fluted stone points first discovered
in the west near Clovis, New Mexico

00:22:20.650 --> 00:22:23.489
These Paleo-Americans are
thought to have reached the

00:22:23.500 --> 00:22:26.989
northeastern Atlantic coast
at the very end of their trek,

00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:30.469
sometime around 12,000
or 13,000 years ago.

00:22:33.729 --> 00:22:35.459
But the old models are changing,

00:22:35.619 --> 00:22:40.001
and now the idea of people also
traveling by watercraft

00:22:40.003 --> 00:22:42.789
along the edges of the
Pacific glacial pack ice

00:22:42.781 --> 00:22:43.999
is becoming more accepted.

00:22:44.810 --> 00:22:47.550
The coastal ice shelf that
formed this North Pacific Rim

00:22:47.560 --> 00:22:50.810
extended for hundreds of
miles out into the ocean

00:22:51.099 --> 00:22:55.390
and required sophisticated sea hunting
and navigation technologies.

00:22:57.380 --> 00:23:01.050
The acceptance of this new concept
is opening up new ways

00:23:01.060 --> 00:23:04.609
of looking at other aspects of
early Native culture and history

00:23:04.890 --> 00:23:07.660
that in the past haven't fit easily

00:23:07.662 --> 00:23:09.770
into the Beringian
land migration theory.

00:23:14.530 --> 00:23:18.339
For example, in 1996
a discovery was made

00:23:18.349 --> 00:23:20.880
along the banks of the Columbia
River in Washington State

00:23:21.099 --> 00:23:24.439
that proved to be one of the
most controversial discoveries

00:23:24.449 --> 00:23:27.680
of Native human remains
ever found in North America.

00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:32.050
A full skeleton was found eroding
out of the bank along the

00:23:32.060 --> 00:23:36.430
Columbia River and it turned out
to be almost 9,000 years old.

00:23:38.109 --> 00:23:42.160
It was first worked on by forensic
anthropologist James Chatters.

00:23:43.640 --> 00:23:46.939
The discovery became sensationalized
and controversial

00:23:46.949 --> 00:23:49.550
when it became clear that the
well-preserved bones

00:23:49.552 --> 00:23:53.430
indicated that the man was,
in the old racial terminology,

00:23:53.439 --> 00:23:54.780
a caucasoid individual.

00:23:57.660 --> 00:24:02.400
People had come to assume that any early
humans arriving in North America from Asia

00:24:02.530 --> 00:24:05.999
would look like the pictures of
Asiatic Mongoloid peoples

00:24:06.001 --> 00:24:08.999
that artists had been putting in
textbooks since the beginning

00:24:09.001 --> 00:24:10.839
of anthropological science in America.

00:24:12.430 --> 00:24:16.479
This is a record of the first attempt
to reconstruct the facial image

00:24:16.489 --> 00:24:20.900
of Kennewick Man based on the underlying
anatomical structure of his skull.

00:24:25.369 --> 00:24:29.579
The controversy and lawsuits arguing
about the ownership of this ancestor

00:24:29.589 --> 00:24:33.229
were international in scale
and went on for 20 years,

00:24:33.239 --> 00:24:36.140
eventually ending with a
Native American reburial.

00:24:36.750 --> 00:24:41.130
But is there a logical possible explanation
for where this man came from?

00:24:42.589 --> 00:24:45.609
These are Ainu tribesmen
from northern Japan.

00:24:46.310 --> 00:24:49.469
The Ainu people are considered to be
the descendants and physical

00:24:49.479 --> 00:24:52.999
examples of the early
paleolithic populations

00:24:53.001 --> 00:24:54.384
who once inhabited northern Asia.

00:24:57.569 --> 00:25:01.005
The ancestral home of the Ainu people
were the islands of Japan,

00:25:01.006 --> 00:25:03.589
and they were a highly
sea-adapted culture.

00:25:04.839 --> 00:25:08.280
When the Japanese Islands were invaded
by peoples from the mainland

00:25:08.290 --> 00:25:09.420
during the 9th century,

00:25:09.770 --> 00:25:13.020
the Ainu tribes were driven away
from their good harbors

00:25:13.030 --> 00:25:15.780
and forced onto Hokkaido
and the northern islands,

00:25:16.650 --> 00:25:19.010
much like the American Indians
were pushed out of

00:25:19.020 --> 00:25:21.640
their valuable tribal lands
in the western hemisphere.

00:25:24.030 --> 00:25:26.251
Eventually, the Ainu were
again forced out

00:25:26.253 --> 00:25:28.849
of their last coastal
settlements on the island,

00:25:29.859 --> 00:25:32.670
and their villages were relocated
up in the mountains

00:25:32.910 --> 00:25:36.160
where their ancient seafaring
traditions began to disappear.

00:25:38.170 --> 00:25:41.189
Scientists call the ancestors of
the Ainu the Jōmon culture,

00:25:41.500 --> 00:25:46.000
which in Japan extended back
more than 15,000 years.

00:25:46.719 --> 00:25:50.109
The Jōmon were also a
sea-adapted people

00:25:50.111 --> 00:25:52.999
whose sophisticated navigational
and sea-hunting abilities

00:25:53.001 --> 00:25:55.300
took them long distances
over the ocean,

00:25:55.719 --> 00:25:58.180
perhaps especially in
the north where the

00:25:58.189 --> 00:26:01.859
strong Pacific currents pushed
east away from Asia,

00:26:02.109 --> 00:26:05.780
all the way across the rim
to the coasts of North America.

00:26:08.469 --> 00:26:10.189
People would have been interested in the

00:26:10.199 --> 00:26:12.969
northern glacial pack ice
across both oceans.

00:26:15.380 --> 00:26:20.219
The edges along both the Pacific and the
Atlantic ice rims were teeming with life.

00:26:20.229 --> 00:26:22.920
They were among the most productive
hunting environments that

00:26:22.930 --> 00:26:25.400
were available to humans
during the last ice age.

00:26:27.589 --> 00:26:32.329
And scientists now recognize that cultures
all around the ancient northern globe

00:26:32.339 --> 00:26:35.810
were well-adapted to the cold
and to living on the ocean,

00:26:36.140 --> 00:26:39.530
much like the Siberian Eskimo
and Inuit peoples of today.

00:26:42.410 --> 00:26:46.290
The Ainu may or may not be
ancestral to Native Americans.

00:26:46.599 --> 00:26:49.989
Advances in genetic research will
eventually answer the question.

00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:53.599
But the Ainu story
represents a significant part

00:26:53.601 --> 00:26:56.869
of the ancient worldwide
maritime revolution,

00:26:57.339 --> 00:27:00.002
and scientists are now
looking for the remains

00:27:00.003 --> 00:27:03.999
of even earlier North Asian
seafaring cultures

00:27:04.001 --> 00:27:07.380
who once may have navigated the
strong currents of the North Pacific.

00:27:18.630 --> 00:27:22.209
The idea remains controversial,
but scientists are beginning

00:27:22.219 --> 00:27:24.839
to recognize the northern rims
of shifting pack ice

00:27:24.849 --> 00:27:28.009
that once spanned both
the Atlantic and the Pacific

00:27:28.011 --> 00:27:30.689
as possible human migration routes,

00:27:31.069 --> 00:27:35.810
environmentally rich ocean bridges
connecting the northern hemispheres.

00:27:38.760 --> 00:27:43.050
In the past, few scientists ever
considered ocean migration

00:27:43.051 --> 00:27:45.999
or even seafaring contact among
the ancient peoples

00:27:46.001 --> 00:27:47.959
who once lived along
the Atlantic coast

00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:51.160
as a significant part of
eastern Native history.

00:27:51.660 --> 00:27:55.589
But there are oral history traditions
suggesting that Native peoples were

00:27:55.599 --> 00:28:00.040
motivated to explore the ocean and
water systems of eastern North America

00:28:00.219 --> 00:28:02.189
for very complex reasons.

00:28:03.880 --> 00:28:07.430
Dr. Ella Sekatau, who gave us
the 15,000 year story,

00:28:07.969 --> 00:28:13.100
also spoke of Enishkeetompauwog,
"the people".

00:28:14.399 --> 00:28:17.999
And Enishkeetompauwog can be
the people around you,

00:28:18.001 --> 00:28:20.500
your immediate neighbors,

00:28:21.001 --> 00:28:24.939
or it can be all of your people:

00:28:25.239 --> 00:28:30.680
all of the people who speak your
language or dialect of it,

00:28:30.859 --> 00:28:37.439
all of the people who utilize the same
cultural belief system that you utilize.

00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:40.489
And if we examine that,

00:28:40.630 --> 00:28:42.660
we're talking about people

00:28:43.390 --> 00:28:44.900
from Labrador

00:28:45.400 --> 00:28:47.869
down the Atlantic Coast

00:28:48.380 --> 00:28:50.349
all the way to the Carolinas.

00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:56.376
The stories of Enishkeetompauwog,

00:28:56.380 --> 00:28:57.890
of the people,

00:28:58.869 --> 00:28:59.930
all of the people,

00:29:00.949 --> 00:29:04.569
it's what we are attempting
to bring forth.

00:29:05.999 --> 00:29:09.449
Those stories, many of them
are still embedded in us.

00:29:09.459 --> 00:29:13.130
We know bits and pieces of it,
but don't have a reason to call on it.

00:29:16.069 --> 00:29:18.250
So I'm here to share a story

00:29:19.739 --> 00:29:22.209
of a travel of a people.

00:29:22.839 --> 00:29:24.569
They would come to

00:29:26.199 --> 00:29:28.459
celebrate, I guess,

00:29:29.390 --> 00:29:32.520
a sacred spot in the east.

00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:36.729
And how the story came about was
when I was in a sweat lodge,

00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:40.959
during a sweat lodge ceremony
with my Saulteaux Cree uncle.

00:29:41.459 --> 00:29:46.209
And we talked about the relationship
between the Mi'kmaq and the Crees

00:29:46.869 --> 00:29:48.930
pre-European contact.

00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:55.150
And he talked about how this story
was told to him by his grandfather,

00:29:55.260 --> 00:29:58.199
which probably was beyond his
grandfather and his grandfather,

00:29:58.209 --> 00:29:59.420
which was passed down.

00:30:00.010 --> 00:30:04.949
Now, this one particular spot that I'm
talking about is called Kellys Mountain.

00:30:04.959 --> 00:30:07.670
Now, Kellys Mountain is in
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia,

00:30:08.329 --> 00:30:12.069
and to the Mi'kmaq it's
a very sacred site,

00:30:12.449 --> 00:30:16.920
reason being is that we believe that this
was the place of where Gluskap lived.

00:30:17.270 --> 00:30:19.229
Gluskap's Cave is there.

00:30:22.430 --> 00:30:25.839
In the tradition of the Wabanaki
peoples of the far northeast,

00:30:26.079 --> 00:30:29.750
Gluskap was the spirit of
environmental transformation.

00:30:32.959 --> 00:30:36.109
He was a giant who could change
the physical relationships

00:30:36.110 --> 00:30:38.001
of both humans and animals

00:30:38.003 --> 00:30:40.339
and alter the forces
of the natural world.

00:30:42.250 --> 00:30:46.520
His mythical home was situated exactly
at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence,

00:30:46.890 --> 00:30:49.670
a position of power
overlooking and protecting

00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:52.079
the entrance to the key
northern water system

00:30:52.739 --> 00:30:56.050
that links the Atlantic Ocean
to the Great Lakes,

00:30:56.060 --> 00:30:59.380
into the Ohio and Mississippi rivers,
down to the Gulf of Mexico.

00:31:00.579 --> 00:31:02.189
So what they talked about was

00:31:02.479 --> 00:31:04.380
that they would make this journey

00:31:04.609 --> 00:31:07.369
from the plains of
northern Saskatchewan

00:31:07.709 --> 00:31:09.079
and come down through,

00:31:09.250 --> 00:31:13.520
and they would make it as far as down
to around the Lake of the Woods area

00:31:13.689 --> 00:31:17.999
and around Thunder Bay area
where the Ojibwe were.

00:31:18.001 --> 00:31:19.065
What he said was,

00:31:19.069 --> 00:31:21.819
they would trade the canoes and they
would go through and they would

00:31:21.829 --> 00:31:24.609
go all along the Great Lakes,
and as they were going through

00:31:24.810 --> 00:31:27.060
they would pick up people

00:31:27.449 --> 00:31:31.239
as interpreters for when they're
going through the next territories.

00:31:31.530 --> 00:31:35.869
And it was, they were going
to the east to do ceremonies,

00:31:36.069 --> 00:31:39.119
so there was that understanding,
"I'm going through your territory,

00:31:39.359 --> 00:31:40.670
"I'm asking permission,

00:31:40.819 --> 00:31:43.150
"and we're going for a ceremony,"
and it was granted.

00:31:43.609 --> 00:31:46.101
So they would make their way
all through the Great Lakes

00:31:46.103 --> 00:31:48.999
and come up around through
the Saint Lawrence

00:31:49.001 --> 00:31:51.760
and come around the Gaspé
and all the way around the coast,

00:31:52.010 --> 00:31:54.699
and you go all the way down through
where Prince Edward Island

00:31:54.700 --> 00:31:57.850
in Nova Scotia is now, all the
way up to where Cape Britain is.

00:31:57.851 --> 00:32:02.999
And that brings you up to that
point where Kellys Mountain is

00:32:03.001 --> 00:32:05.030
and where the Gluskap's Cave would be.

00:32:06.089 --> 00:32:09.739
After doing ceremony there,
he said, for one moon,

00:32:10.050 --> 00:32:12.130
that they would would continue on

00:32:12.239 --> 00:32:13.999
and as they would come
down and they would

00:32:14.001 --> 00:32:17.299
come around the outskirts of
Nova Scotia, Bay of Fundy area

00:32:17.301 --> 00:32:18.810
and come down the coast.

00:32:19.260 --> 00:32:21.510
And he says that they would
trade along the way,

00:32:21.819 --> 00:32:25.510
all the way as far as down around,
down to the coast of Florida,

00:32:25.520 --> 00:32:28.051
around and come up through, he said,

00:32:28.052 --> 00:32:31.109
and come up and trade right up
through the Mississippi River.

00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:37.001
And the Mississippi River would
then go back into the Great Lakes,

00:32:37.800 --> 00:32:42.999
and then they would go back
to Lake of the Woods area

00:32:43.001 --> 00:32:48.001
and they would re-trade their
canoes back to the Ojibwes

00:32:48.003 --> 00:32:50.199
so that they could make
the journey back home.

00:32:50.299 --> 00:32:53.001
Our sea canoes were big,

00:32:53.459 --> 00:32:58.880
and the way they were
designed with the upper front

00:32:58.882 --> 00:33:02.001
so they could hit the waves,
and when they would hit the waves

00:33:03.100 --> 00:33:06.420
they were raised up in the middle,
so that when they hit the wave

00:33:06.520 --> 00:33:09.859
they cut through the wave and the
wave would not go into the canoe.

00:33:09.869 --> 00:33:12.979
So they were, like,
you know, out in the ocean.

00:33:13.170 --> 00:33:17.899
So that's a story that's embedded
in you and embedded in your people,

00:33:17.901 --> 00:33:19.579
embedded in your sweat lodge.

00:33:19.849 --> 00:33:21.339
Each of us has those.

00:33:22.489 --> 00:33:26.550
We just haven't had the right call yet
to bring those stories back.

00:33:32.890 --> 00:33:36.899
Unfortunately, it's long been
a scientific dogma

00:33:36.901 --> 00:33:39.999
that northeastern Native peoples
were among the least civilized

00:33:40.001 --> 00:33:41.970
of all the American Indian groups.

00:33:43.010 --> 00:33:47.001
This goes back to the first Puritan
settlers and their certainty

00:33:47.002 --> 00:33:49.589
that Indian culture was
not advanced enough

00:33:49.590 --> 00:33:53.409
to deserve the rights to their own land.

00:33:53.479 --> 00:33:58.999
American scientific anthropology began
in New England at Harvard and Yale,

00:33:59.001 --> 00:34:03.160
where the original Puritan attitudes
about Native culture were maintained,

00:34:03.510 --> 00:34:07.180
and those attitudes shaped
the evolution of academic science.

00:34:11.228 --> 00:34:14.810
Perhaps it was because the northeast
was supposed to be the last region

00:34:14.820 --> 00:34:18.250
on Earth that was settled by modern
humans who trekked out of Africa.

00:34:18.978 --> 00:34:21.749
So it seemed that those first arrivals
couldn't have been living

00:34:21.750 --> 00:34:23.999
in their new home new home long
enough to have developed

00:34:24.001 --> 00:34:26.199
much depth to their culture.

00:34:26.239 --> 00:34:31.179
After all, the northeast had no Native
empires like the Aztec or Inca,

00:34:31.530 --> 00:34:34.080
no cities with ancient stone pyramids,

00:34:34.228 --> 00:34:36.719
no huge burial mound complexes.

00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:39.600
So the northeastern region
looked like a backwater

00:34:39.610 --> 00:34:41.458
compared to the rest of Native America.

00:34:43.728 --> 00:34:48.938
Nowhere is the scientific neglect of ancient
sea-adapted culture more apparent

00:34:49.060 --> 00:34:53.270
than in the primitive picture that most
academic anthropologists have created

00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:56.870
of the earliest Indians who lived
along the northeast coast of America.

00:34:57.959 --> 00:34:59.840
This is a very important story.

00:34:59.949 --> 00:35:02.999
Our people, our ancient people,

00:35:03.001 --> 00:35:06.139
were using seacraft, were using boats.

00:35:07.050 --> 00:35:11.600
And it's our belief that as long
as a tree was floating,

00:35:11.610 --> 00:35:13.620
they were navigating the waters,

00:35:13.649 --> 00:35:17.979
whether they were the fresh waters
or whether they were the salt waters.

00:35:24.250 --> 00:35:25.699
During the Paleolithic,

00:35:25.949 --> 00:35:30.189
traditional societies based their
spiritual lives on communication with

00:35:30.199 --> 00:35:33.199
with the animals and the natural
environments that surrounded them.

00:35:34.129 --> 00:35:35.999
During the maritime revolution,

00:35:36.001 --> 00:35:39.399
as people gradually adapted
to life on the ocean,

00:35:39.399 --> 00:35:43.550
they would have begun to communicate with
a new set of species they met in the water.

00:35:44.709 --> 00:35:47.919
Shamans, consulting with
sea creatures for navigation

00:35:48.100 --> 00:35:50.300
and adopting them as clan totems,

00:35:50.610 --> 00:35:54.799
suggest that maritime societies
evolved with different influences

00:35:54.801 --> 00:35:56.209
than land-based cultures.

00:35:57.000 --> 00:35:58.999
They communicated with sea mammals

00:35:59.001 --> 00:36:02.729
that scientists now recognize have
higher forms of intelligence.

00:36:04.729 --> 00:36:07.939
The tradition of communicating
with creatures from the sea

00:36:07.949 --> 00:36:11.770
still exists among the maritime cultures
of the Pacific Northwest coast.

00:36:12.860 --> 00:36:17.429
Our old histories speak of
conversing with the animals.

00:36:17.810 --> 00:36:20.969
Here's a perect example of it.

00:36:21.860 --> 00:36:24.129
There's a family up around
the Juneau area,

00:36:24.830 --> 00:36:27.001
and they were living in their house.

00:36:27.002 --> 00:36:29.360
It's a clan house, a hunting area

00:36:30.500 --> 00:36:33.199
And the snow had gotten pretty deep,

00:36:38.540 --> 00:36:39.709
and they were getting hungry,

00:36:40.040 --> 00:36:43.560
and the killer whales were
coming up the channel.

00:36:44.850 --> 00:36:48.501
So the old woman had
all her grandkids with her.

00:36:48.502 --> 00:36:51.600
She started speaking in Tlingit to them,

00:36:52.760 --> 00:36:56.300
asking their brother to bring them
some food because they were hungry.

00:36:58.459 --> 00:36:59.719
Killer whale understood them,

00:37:00.639 --> 00:37:03.330
killed a seal and brought it,
nose it up to the beach.

00:37:04.939 --> 00:37:08.800
All the older people that
I talk to always, you know,

00:37:09.060 --> 00:37:10.560
say we had an understanding

00:37:12.999 --> 00:37:14.439
with killer whales especially.

00:37:15.169 --> 00:37:19.779
But I think it a lot of it
has to do with the way

00:37:20.090 --> 00:37:23.320
that those old people were able to speak

00:37:23.321 --> 00:37:25.260
in such a respectful manner to them,

00:37:26.969 --> 00:37:28.469
that the understanding was there.

00:37:29.879 --> 00:37:32.999
This is an effigy of a killer whale
found in what is believed to be

00:37:33.001 --> 00:37:36.760
a shaman's burial in a Red Paint
cemetery used by the early

00:37:36.770 --> 00:37:40.379
sea-adapted Indians of Newfoundland
around 4000 years ago.

00:37:42.949 --> 00:37:46.629
The cemetery where the killer whale
was found offers a deeper insight

00:37:46.639 --> 00:37:49.001
into the knowledge these early
Atlantic Sea peoples

00:37:49.002 --> 00:37:51.001
had about their environment.

00:37:55.220 --> 00:37:56.999
Port au Choix Aoi is a small peninsula

00:37:57.001 --> 00:37:59.999
that sits along the scenic
west coast of Newfoundland.

00:38:00.959 --> 00:38:06.100
In 1968, a bulldozer digging a
foundation for a new movie theater

00:38:06.280 --> 00:38:08.139
cut through a patch of red ochre.

00:38:09.260 --> 00:38:12.590
During the more than half century
that has elapsed from the discovery

00:38:12.600 --> 00:38:16.050
of the Red Paint cemetery to the
scientific thinking of today,

00:38:16.560 --> 00:38:19.989
there have been two major trends
that are radically changing

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:21.570
North American archaeology.

00:38:23.005 --> 00:38:26.260
Port au Choix is a good example of how
both of these trends have evolved.

00:38:27.239 --> 00:38:30.999
First, there is a new attitude
of appreciation and respect

00:38:31.001 --> 00:38:33.629
in the public's understanding
of Native tradition.

00:38:35.059 --> 00:38:37.610
When the Port au Choix Museum
was opened in the 1970s,

00:38:37.620 --> 00:38:40.580
it displayed the full
recreations of the burials.

00:38:41.030 --> 00:38:45.799
But in the 21st century
the displays of bones were removed,

00:38:45.801 --> 00:38:48.649
and the focus of the museum
turned to the second trend,

00:38:48.659 --> 00:38:52.800
understanding that environmental
conditions can shape culture.

00:38:54.590 --> 00:38:57.999
The cemetery was in continuous use
as a Red Paint burial ground

00:38:58.001 --> 00:38:59.989
for almost 2000 years.

00:39:00.999 --> 00:39:03.999
After the Red Paint
Maritime Archaic vanished,

00:39:04.001 --> 00:39:06.569
the Dorset Eskimo moved
into the same region,

00:39:06.570 --> 00:39:08.889
which they occupied
for hundreds of years.

00:39:09.989 --> 00:39:13.290
When the Indian and Inuit
occupations were first discovered,

00:39:13.760 --> 00:39:18.889
scientists wondered why this small windswept
peninsula could be so important

00:39:18.899 --> 00:39:22.959
to the burial practices of two
very different Native cultures.

00:39:25.199 --> 00:39:27.909
People may have first settled here
because of its proximity

00:39:27.919 --> 00:39:30.739
to the annual seal migrations,
which offered good hunting.

00:39:31.120 --> 00:39:33.979
But it also turns out that the
peninsula is formed by

00:39:33.989 --> 00:39:37.520
an outcrop of limestone that sticks out
into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:41.999
There is no forest cover, and groundwater
that seeps up to the surface

00:39:42.001 --> 00:39:45.300
is rich in calcium which it picks up
from the limestone below.

00:39:46.120 --> 00:39:48.360
The calcium in the water
enables a number

00:39:48.370 --> 00:39:51.050
of rare medicinal plants
to grow on the surface,

00:39:51.379 --> 00:39:55.300
and creates one of the richest areas
of biodiversity in the entire region.

00:39:58.850 --> 00:40:00.999
So the location, recognized
by ancient peoples

00:40:01.001 --> 00:40:02.800
as a source of rare medicine,

00:40:03.169 --> 00:40:07.629
can be understood as a desirable
burial site for tribal people

00:40:07.639 --> 00:40:11.960
who thought they would be connected
to this powerful sense of place forever.

00:40:13.699 --> 00:40:16.000
Red Paint environmental
knowledge was deep,

00:40:16.050 --> 00:40:18.080
which implies that they
had been familiar with the

00:40:18.090 --> 00:40:20.800
land and seascapes for a
significant amount of time.

00:40:21.350 --> 00:40:24.880
But what evidence do we have
to help us understand how long

00:40:24.881 --> 00:40:27.719
Native people have been adapted
to life on the Atlantic Ocean

00:40:27.919 --> 00:40:30.360
with any proof of
long-distance navigation.

00:40:39.229 --> 00:40:43.370
On a high beach terrace overlooking
Lake Champlain in northern Vermont,

00:40:43.739 --> 00:40:45.959
an extraordinary discovery was made,

00:40:46.060 --> 00:40:49.889
indicating that the origins of this
sophisticated maritime culture

00:40:50.020 --> 00:40:52.330
extend back into the Ice Age.

00:40:54.419 --> 00:40:57.899
It took Steven Loring,
another Artic anthropologist

00:40:57.901 --> 00:41:01.299
from the Smithsonian Institution,
more than 25 years

00:41:01.300 --> 00:41:04.439
to put the pieces of the
Ramah chert puzzle together.

00:41:04.810 --> 00:41:07.901
But he has broken through another
level in the glass basement

00:41:07.902 --> 00:41:12.799
of Native history with his evidence
for a new Eastern time period

00:41:12.801 --> 00:41:14.679
called the Paleo-Maritime.

00:41:17.270 --> 00:41:20.239
This sand pit may not
look like much now,

00:41:20.240 --> 00:41:25.999
but 12,000 years ago the cold
arctic waters of the Champlain Sea

00:41:26.001 --> 00:41:30.899
were lapping just a dozen meters,

00:41:30.900 --> 00:41:32.270
50 feet from where we are now.

00:41:32.639 --> 00:41:38.999
And that was a ocean environment
that was full of amazing animals.

00:41:39.001 --> 00:41:42.620
All the marine fauna
that we associate with

00:41:43.629 --> 00:41:47.660
northern coast of Labrador and
the Arctic regions today

00:41:47.661 --> 00:41:49.040
was a real cold-water environment.

00:41:50.770 --> 00:41:54.669
During the last ice age about
10,000 to 12,000 years ago,

00:41:55.129 --> 00:41:57.999
the weight of the glacial ice that
covered the northeast from

00:41:58.001 --> 00:42:01.310
the Arctic to New England
had depressed the land

00:42:01.320 --> 00:42:04.500
so there was an invasion of seawater
into the Champlain Valley,

00:42:04.919 --> 00:42:08.229
and the whole St. Lawrence Basin
into the Great Lakes region

00:42:08.370 --> 00:42:12.100
became an arm of the ocean
known as the Champlain Sea.

00:42:17.219 --> 00:42:19.458
For a couple of years in the mid '70s,

00:42:19.459 --> 00:42:24.479
I had a job working with the state of
Vermont documenting the collections

00:42:24.729 --> 00:42:28.600
that local farm owners and people had of

00:42:28.610 --> 00:42:32.229
Indian artifacts that they had
recovered from their farms.

00:42:32.649 --> 00:42:34.989
And in the course of this survey,

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:37.600
in the course of meeting
with many of these people,

00:42:37.939 --> 00:42:43.280
I was able to document a
small number, around thirtyish,

00:42:43.530 --> 00:42:46.949
of classic Paleo-Indian fluted points.

00:42:47.479 --> 00:42:52.860
When I came to plot on the map
where these points had been found,

00:42:53.120 --> 00:42:57.219
it turned out that a large
number of them were found in

00:42:57.229 --> 00:43:02.750
sandy blowouts in these beach-like
expanses high up on the hillsides.

00:43:02.760 --> 00:43:07.800
What these were were the shoreline,
the former shoreline,

00:43:08.350 --> 00:43:09.820
of the Champlain Sea.

00:43:12.530 --> 00:43:15.999
This is one of the fluted Paleo points
that Doctor Loring first saw

00:43:16.001 --> 00:43:19.139
when he did the Vermont
survey over 45 years ago.

00:43:19.909 --> 00:43:24.830
It has a very distinct channel flute
on this side where it spalled off.

00:43:24.840 --> 00:43:25.989
Another one here.

00:43:26.199 --> 00:43:28.230
And another one here.

00:43:28.330 --> 00:43:31.280
When I saw this specimen
for the first time,

00:43:31.429 --> 00:43:34.719
I hadn't done much
field work in Labrador.

00:43:35.260 --> 00:43:39.540
When I was reintroduced to this
specimen a year or so ago,

00:43:40.840 --> 00:43:45.109
I was struck by its resemblance
to Ramah chert.

00:43:46.070 --> 00:43:55.179
And indeed, I have some large pieces
of Ramah chert quarry material here.

00:43:55.300 --> 00:43:59.280
And indeed, it's strikingly
similar to Ramah chert.

00:44:00.590 --> 00:44:07.030
But recently, we've had a series
of chemical analyses done

00:44:07.439 --> 00:44:11.379
to get elemental signature of
this raw material, this specimen,

00:44:11.540 --> 00:44:14.929
and compared it with
samples derived from

00:44:14.939 --> 00:44:19.379
quarries in Vermont and
Labrador in Quebec.

00:44:19.429 --> 00:44:24.620
And we're now of the opinion that
there's very good evidence

00:44:24.780 --> 00:44:28.600
to indicate that this specimen is
actually derived from raw material

00:44:28.709 --> 00:44:30.540
that was acquired in northern Labrador.

00:44:31.750 --> 00:44:34.860
This is the center of the
Torngat Mountain coast.

00:44:35.199 --> 00:44:37.899
The mountains are extremely old.

00:44:37.900 --> 00:44:41.000
They're some of the oldest
rocks on Earth in this area,

00:44:41.520 --> 00:44:45.290
and they're all heavily
eroded and glaciated.

00:44:45.820 --> 00:44:48.999
It's an area where there's
a lot of sea mammals.

00:44:49.001 --> 00:44:52.050
A lot of caribou gather in
the Torngat Mountains.

00:44:53.009 --> 00:44:57.001
It's a pretty good area
for aboriginal life.

00:44:58.001 --> 00:45:01.730
Further north on the Torngat coast
we found the Ramah chert quarries,

00:45:01.731 --> 00:45:05.439
and discovered that this in fact
was the reason that the

00:45:05.739 --> 00:45:08.679
early Indian people
spread this far north.

00:45:10.600 --> 00:45:12.159
In the late 1970s,

00:45:12.169 --> 00:45:15.999
Fitzhugh, Loring and their Smithsonian
crew discovered the source of

00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.939
all the Rama chert artifacts
that had ever been found.

00:45:20.290 --> 00:45:23.999
The chert was mined out of a circular
bowl-shaped depression

00:45:24.001 --> 00:45:27.070
in a high mountain they found near
the mouth of Ramah Bay.

00:45:31.379 --> 00:45:35.689
Scattered throughout the outcrop are
areas where obviously people have sat

00:45:36.010 --> 00:45:38.470
and broken apart stones, workshop areas.

00:45:38.471 --> 00:45:42.399
You can see here the piles
of Ramah and its debitage.

00:45:44.629 --> 00:45:47.889
The chemical composition of
Ramah chert is so unique

00:45:48.189 --> 00:45:52.709
that scientists agree the outcrop
around Ramah Bay is the only

00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:55.270
place on Earth where this
distinctive mineral can be found.

00:45:58.879 --> 00:46:01.919
Because the source of the
raw material is so unique,

00:46:02.080 --> 00:46:06.040
whenever Ramah chert tools are
located in archaeological sites

00:46:06.080 --> 00:46:10.120
scientists know that the artifacts
or the raw material had to be

00:46:10.129 --> 00:46:13.340
transported from this
location in the far north.

00:46:17.379 --> 00:46:21.110
Ramah chert has been found along
the coast of Carolina to the south.

00:46:21.429 --> 00:46:24.101
It was carried west up
the St. Lawrence River

00:46:24.102 --> 00:46:25.280
into the Great Lakes region,

00:46:25.689 --> 00:46:28.139
and it's been found at
many archaeological sites

00:46:28.149 --> 00:46:30.479
throughout the Canadian Maritimes
and New England.

00:46:31.169 --> 00:46:35.979
The stone is proof of indigenous trading
links across thousands of miles of water.

00:46:39.110 --> 00:46:41.729
The only way that people could
have gotten Ramah chert

00:46:41.739 --> 00:46:45.350
would have been to go to
Ramah Bay, to Saglek Fiord,

00:46:45.540 --> 00:46:48.530
and bring this material back.

00:46:48.860 --> 00:46:54.969
When this tool was manufactured
10,500 years ago, approximately,

00:46:55.899 --> 00:47:01.069
vast sections of the southern
and central coast of Labrador

00:47:01.070 --> 00:47:06.520
still had tons of glacial ice
extending out into the sea.

00:47:07.149 --> 00:47:10.599
There were portions of
the north coast of Labrador

00:47:10.601 --> 00:47:12.570
that were bare of glacial ice.

00:47:12.570 --> 00:47:19.899
In fact, the very locations where
the Ramah chert quarries outcrop

00:47:19.901 --> 00:47:23.001
would have been free of glacial ice
probably as early as

00:47:23.002 --> 00:47:25.090
12,000, 14,000 years ago.

00:47:25.389 --> 00:47:28.729
But there were still great
tongues of ice coming out

00:47:28.889 --> 00:47:31.330
from the interior of Labrador,

00:47:31.590 --> 00:47:37.810
and this ice would have posed a
significant barrier to coastal travel

00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:41.929
and it certainly precluded
overland travel.

00:47:44.179 --> 00:47:50.999
Somehow, intrepid Paleo-Indian
seafaring navigators

00:47:51.001 --> 00:47:57.100
had to have been able to reach the
Ramah quarries in northern Labrador.

00:47:57.600 --> 00:47:59.499
Now does this mean harpoons,

00:47:59.501 --> 00:48:02.999
does this mean sea-ice
hunting with floats?

00:48:03.119 --> 00:48:09.279
Does this mean kayaks and umiaks,
skin boats traversing ice-choked waters?

00:48:10.659 --> 00:48:12.969
All of that is a possibility.

00:48:13.330 --> 00:48:16.999
I doubt we'll ever find
a Paleo-Indian skin boat,

00:48:17.001 --> 00:48:18.419
which is the preservation record.

00:48:18.429 --> 00:48:20.870
It's just not gonna give us that luxury.

00:48:21.510 --> 00:48:25.889
But the recovery of the
fluted point from Vermont

00:48:26.030 --> 00:48:32.799
figures significantly then in the story,
because it is the lithic testimony.

00:48:32.800 --> 00:48:34.489
It is the smoking gun.

00:48:34.489 --> 00:48:38.999
The fact that one of these
fluted points that we found

00:48:39.001 --> 00:48:45.001
being made out of Ramah chert
raises a rather fascinating question

00:48:45.002 --> 00:48:53.999
about the possibility of very evolved
maritime navigational skills.

00:48:54.112 --> 00:48:59.999
This is a very important
aspect of who we are

00:49:00.001 --> 00:49:01.129
and who we have been.

00:49:01.979 --> 00:49:05.810
And that then creates
another perspective

00:49:05.949 --> 00:49:11.629
on who science must begin to
examine us as having been.

00:49:12.610 --> 00:49:14.429
And where were we on the ocean?

00:49:15.979 --> 00:49:23.999
And what part of our ancestral
story is yet to be told

00:49:24.001 --> 00:49:27.149
by an examination of who
we were as an ocean people.

00:49:37.800 --> 00:49:40.659
Along the northern shore of
the Gulf of St. Lawrence,

00:49:40.879 --> 00:49:44.459
there are more traces of these
very early ocean-adapted Indians.

00:49:46.120 --> 00:49:50.770
This is another ceremonial burial mound
that was excavated in the 1970s

00:49:51.010 --> 00:49:52.999
where the same kinds
of artifacts were found

00:49:53.001 --> 00:49:56.219
that were recovered from the
nearby L'Anse Amour burial.

00:49:57.189 --> 00:50:01.419
This is the earliest burial anywhere in
far northeastern North America.

00:50:01.739 --> 00:50:05.270
At that time, this would have been
a very Arctic kind of environment.

00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:08.370
There probably were no trees at all
at the time they were living here.

00:50:08.750 --> 00:50:10.999
But, you know, it's clear that
they were taking care

00:50:11.001 --> 00:50:15.999
to bury special people in very,
you know, a complex way.

00:50:16.139 --> 00:50:20.530
This would have taken a lot of people
quite a bit of time to prepare this burial.

00:50:22.659 --> 00:50:27.679
How could it be that these two stone burial
mounds that are over 7000 years old

00:50:27.949 --> 00:50:30.419
seem to be the
archaeological beginning of a

00:50:30.429 --> 00:50:33.800
Native ceremonial landscape
tradition in North America,

00:50:34.360 --> 00:50:38.001
but the stone work and the rituals
in both examples appear

00:50:38.002 --> 00:50:41.399
already highly developed,
as if they had been practiced

00:50:41.400 --> 00:50:43.799
for thousands of years previously?

00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:51.379
It's possible that the Red Paint Maritime
Archaic cultures of 7000 years ago

00:50:51.669 --> 00:50:55.001
may have been the descendants
of the people who lived along

00:50:55.002 --> 00:50:57.999
the edges of the outer continental
shelf for thousands of years

00:50:58.001 --> 00:51:00.459
before this particular mound was built.

00:51:02.429 --> 00:51:04.350
But this ritual site is a clue,

00:51:04.459 --> 00:51:08.000
pointing toward the type of
ceremonial remains that may be found

00:51:08.001 --> 00:51:10.169
out on the ocean floor further south.

00:51:12.040 --> 00:51:13.669
When they were first built,

00:51:13.679 --> 00:51:17.379
these mounds were probably situated
very near the ocean's edge.

00:51:18.600 --> 00:51:22.139
Today, these mounds are found on
the raised ancient beach terraces

00:51:22.189 --> 00:51:25.379
lifted from the water's edge
by natural tectonic forces.

00:51:29.370 --> 00:51:32.760
When the weight of the glaciers
melted off the northern landscape,

00:51:32.770 --> 00:51:35.600
the depressed land
underneath began to rise.

00:51:36.110 --> 00:51:40.510
At the same time, the surface of the
land further south began to sink,

00:51:40.520 --> 00:51:42.870
inundating more of
the continental shelf.

00:51:44.330 --> 00:51:47.189
You can picture an
imaginary east-west line

00:51:47.199 --> 00:51:49.110
that runs through the middle
of the state of Maine.

00:51:49.770 --> 00:51:51.070
To the north of this line,

00:51:51.219 --> 00:51:54.901
the landscape is slowly rising
since the end of the Ice Age.

00:51:54.902 --> 00:51:55.879
And to the south of the line,

00:51:56.080 --> 00:51:59.340
the Atlantic beaches are slowly
sinking below the tides.

00:52:02.600 --> 00:52:04.999
Fitzhugh and his crew also discovered a

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:08.080
circular ring of stones
surrounding the burial mount.

00:52:08.330 --> 00:52:12.999
Together, the outer stone ring and
the mound form an identifiable

00:52:13.001 --> 00:52:15.899
ceremonial structure large
enough to be recognized

00:52:15.900 --> 00:52:18.360
by remote underwater sensing devices.

00:52:20.360 --> 00:52:25.139
So if we have this evidence further north
that's 7,000 to 8,000 years old,

00:52:25.750 --> 00:52:31.020
why would we not find it in
the offshore environment,

00:52:31.239 --> 00:52:34.699
the outer continental shelf,
in the same time frame?

00:52:35.669 --> 00:52:37.360
Why would we not find it?

00:52:38.379 --> 00:52:41.840
Now the scientists would tell us
we would not find it

00:52:41.850 --> 00:52:45.000
because the ocean action
would have obliterated it.

00:52:45.820 --> 00:52:48.989
Well, you only know that
if you go and look.

00:52:49.669 --> 00:52:54.169
We cannot assume that
and then not look.

00:52:54.909 --> 00:52:58.001
One of the questions we're
gonna have to ask is,

00:52:58.008 --> 00:53:02.610
who are the ancient people
that we descend from?

00:53:03.270 --> 00:53:07.739
What kind of ceremonialism
were they engaged in?

00:53:07.899 --> 00:53:12.799
Was it the same
ceremonialism that we see

00:53:12.800 --> 00:53:17.510
in the pre-European contact environment,

00:53:17.510 --> 00:53:22.189
where our ancient people are
are speaking prayers into stones

00:53:22.190 --> 00:53:27.249
and placing them on the Earth
Mother's body in order to call for

00:53:27.250 --> 00:53:30.840
balance and harmony in many
different circumstances?

00:53:32.169 --> 00:53:38.925
This tradition does not
come from nowhere.

00:53:38.927 --> 00:53:41.340
It evolves with the people.

00:53:41.340 --> 00:53:44.189
So we have to look at that,
and we have to look

00:53:44.190 --> 00:53:48.189
for that tradition in
the ocean environment.

00:53:48.370 --> 00:53:50.300
The environment of paum paugussett.

00:53:51.189 --> 00:53:54.030
Paum paugussett is the
spirit energy of the ocean.

00:53:55.159 --> 00:54:00.149
We built up this idea of the early
Indians as big game hunters.

00:54:00.159 --> 00:54:04.510
But the part of that whole picture
that is missing is what was happening

00:54:04.649 --> 00:54:08.989
to those Indians who were living
on the exposed continental shelf.

00:54:09.300 --> 00:54:12.005
There would have been a
civilization in those territories

00:54:12.006 --> 00:54:15.419
and they would have been a
maritime-oriented civilization

00:54:15.421 --> 00:54:20.389
because people could not have
avoided using those resources.

00:54:20.520 --> 00:54:25.489
So we expect that the exposed
part of the continental shelf

00:54:25.500 --> 00:54:28.060
would have had a quite
a large population,

00:54:28.340 --> 00:54:33.599
many sites and undoubtedly
ceremonial features of the sort that

00:54:33.600 --> 00:54:37.810
we see in someof the interior locations
that have been preserved today.

00:54:38.419 --> 00:54:41.479
We know nothing about this culture,
these people, I mean,

00:54:41.489 --> 00:54:46.999
we still are under the thrall
of the big game caribou,

00:54:47.002 --> 00:54:50.679
mastodon, mammoth-hunting
Paleo-Indian culture.

00:54:51.010 --> 00:54:57.999
And we need to be thinking a lot more
about what kinds of cultures

00:54:58.001 --> 00:55:00.919
and what kind of settlement
patterns and economies

00:55:01.050 --> 00:55:04.350
were operating just below
the water level of today.

00:55:04.379 --> 00:55:07.370
If our people were out
on the continental shelf,

00:55:07.989 --> 00:55:11.969
then there would be a presence
of our ceremonial tradition.

00:55:13.709 --> 00:55:17.110
We have to at least
raise those questions.

00:55:17.409 --> 00:55:22.780
When in fact there are impacts to
those ancient environments

00:55:22.899 --> 00:55:24.370
where we would have been,

00:55:25.479 --> 00:55:28.879
the National Historic
Preservation Act tells us

00:55:29.139 --> 00:55:35.101
that there has to be consultation
by contemporary tribal peoples

00:55:35.102 --> 00:55:42.389
to make sure that those places of
religious and cultural significance

00:55:42.390 --> 00:55:46.969
are not impacted
without our consultation,

00:55:47.100 --> 00:55:49.500
and preferably not impacted at all.

00:55:50.459 --> 00:55:52.999
So, we have to address those issues.

00:55:53.001 --> 00:55:59.399
We have to use contemporary law
to facilitate our examination

00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:02.401
of all the places on the outer
continental shelf that are

00:56:02.402 --> 00:56:06.620
currently being disturbed
for good reasons.

00:56:08.179 --> 00:56:11.999
But there's law that says
before they are disturbed,

00:56:12.001 --> 00:56:16.520
they have to be identified
and if possible protected.

00:56:32.030 --> 00:56:37.999
In the mid 1970s, Antiquarian
America went through another of its

00:56:38.001 --> 00:56:42.790
many historical phases of
pseudo-archaeological hyper diffusion,

00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:48.570
the idea that ancient old-world
visitors from across the Atlantic

00:56:48.580 --> 00:56:53.830
came to America and somehow built the
mysterious stone ruins of the Northeast.

00:56:56.719 --> 00:57:00.570
The anthropological profession
reacted furiously

00:57:00.739 --> 00:57:03.439
to what they believed were racist claims

00:57:03.449 --> 00:57:06.689
with no evidence or
archaeological context.

00:57:08.120 --> 00:57:09.949
The arguments were brutal,

00:57:10.189 --> 00:57:13.229
but they boiled down
to only two options.

00:57:14.260 --> 00:57:18.770
All the sites were built either
before or after Columbus,

00:57:18.870 --> 00:57:21.729
but the stonework could only
have been accomplished

00:57:21.739 --> 00:57:25.050
by the more advanced
cultures of the Old World.

00:57:25.969 --> 00:57:29.730
The idea that northeastern
Native Americans may have

00:57:29.731 --> 00:57:34.999
ritualized their environments and
built ceremonial stone landscapes

00:57:35.001 --> 00:57:39.949
seemed like an impossibility to both
the antiquarians and the professionals.

00:57:41.719 --> 00:57:44.999
It also seemed like a
pure coincidence that

00:57:45.001 --> 00:57:48.500
during the very same
decade of the 1970s,

00:57:48.510 --> 00:57:53.699
scientists were discovering that the myth
of the lost Red Paint People of Maine

00:57:53.989 --> 00:57:58.429
actually represented an unknown
ocean-adapted chapter

00:57:58.600 --> 00:58:02.699
in eastern Native American history
going back to the Ice Age.

00:58:04.479 --> 00:58:07.219
If this is the truth of
American history,

00:58:07.229 --> 00:58:11.998
then it emphasizes the power
of the global maritime revolution

00:58:11.999 --> 00:58:14.399
in shaping the development
of human culture,

00:58:14.830 --> 00:58:19.901
and it also points to a gaping
black hole in our understanding

00:58:19.902 --> 00:58:22.419
of early Native life in the
western hemisphere.

00:58:24.060 --> 00:58:29.001
None of our currently accepted theories
explained how there could have been an

00:58:29.002 --> 00:58:34.250
ancient ocean-adapted Native
civilization in eastern North America

00:58:34.510 --> 00:58:40.169
that was as sophisticated as the early
sea-adapted peoples of Atlantic Europe.

00:58:59.889 --> 00:59:03.219
In far northern Europe,
as the Ice Age melted away,

00:59:03.469 --> 00:59:07.419
the coastlines emerged and shifted
just as they did in North America.

00:59:08.629 --> 00:59:11.810
Humans first arrived in these
northern regions by boat.

00:59:14.419 --> 00:59:17.659
Noel Broadbent is another
Smithsonian archaeologist

00:59:17.660 --> 00:59:21.899
who has spent years studying the
earliest maritime-adapted settlements

00:59:21.900 --> 00:59:24.001
found along the shores of Scandinavia.

00:59:24.540 --> 00:59:28.199
Like Fitzhugh, working with the indigenous
cultures in the western Atlantic,

00:59:28.459 --> 00:59:31.439
Broadbent believes that the narrative
that has been created about

00:59:31.440 --> 00:59:36.439
early ocean-adapted peoples in the eastern
Atlantic has not been balanced accurately.

00:59:37.280 --> 00:59:39.820
I think there's a tendency
to put a lot of emphasis

00:59:39.821 --> 00:59:43.780
on the hunting of big game
during the Paleolithic period,

00:59:45.429 --> 00:59:48.699
and that's due in part to
an awful lot of the

00:59:48.870 --> 00:59:51.659
changes that you see in
the European landscape

00:59:51.870 --> 00:59:54.669
because of the melting of the glaciers.

00:59:54.810 --> 00:59:59.389
With the melting of the glaciers
around 10,000, 12,000 years ago,

00:59:59.399 --> 01:00:03.419
an awful lot of the European including the
North European coast was inundated,

01:00:03.669 --> 01:00:08.869
so much of the coastal history,
fishing sites and sailing sites,

01:00:08.879 --> 01:00:10.570
have been lost to archaeology.

01:00:10.909 --> 01:00:14.429
And I think that's created a very biased
picture of what people were doing.

01:00:14.439 --> 01:00:18.820
So, I imagine maritime adaptation
is not something new.

01:00:18.919 --> 01:00:22.199
It's something which has
always taken place

01:00:22.209 --> 01:00:25.580
but is poorly preserved in
the record and very

01:00:25.830 --> 01:00:29.810
unequally preserved depending
on the coastline of a region.

01:00:29.820 --> 01:00:35.169
Very flat coastlines in
western Europe, in Britain,

01:00:35.659 --> 01:00:40.760
they lose of course a great deal
of their earliest coastal history,

01:00:40.889 --> 01:00:43.479
Scandinavia, which is
much more mountainous,

01:00:43.489 --> 01:00:44.999
has more of it preserved.

01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:49.999
In the earliest sites in Scandinavia
you find on the Norwegian coast,

01:00:50.002 --> 01:00:53.560
and they are very definitely
coastal in origin.

01:00:54.639 --> 01:00:56.459
So, I think that to talk
about maritime adaptation

01:00:56.460 --> 01:01:00.879
you have to have a long, long historical
perspective to understand it.

01:01:08.959 --> 01:01:12.699
The earliest historical records of
ocean travel in the North Atlantic

01:01:12.709 --> 01:01:15.770
can be found in the written
sagas of the Middle Ages.

01:01:17.100 --> 01:01:19.889
They were originally much
older oral histories,

01:01:19.899 --> 01:01:23.399
adventure stories and legends that were
written down and sometimes

01:01:23.409 --> 01:01:26.800
illustrated in manuscript form by
the Celtic monks of Ireland.

01:01:30.310 --> 01:01:35.080
The best known hero of these early sea
tales was Saint Brendan the Navigator,

01:01:35.479 --> 01:01:39.770
who seems to have been canonized as much
for his courage exploring the ocean

01:01:39.780 --> 01:01:41.246
as for his piety.

01:01:43.560 --> 01:01:48.340
Brendan is said to have sailed west to
find strange lands across the Atlantic,

01:01:48.629 --> 01:01:52.379
and early maps show mythical islands
that he was said to have discovered.

01:01:53.570 --> 01:01:58.379
But it is possible that the stories of Saint
Brendan and his adventures may reflect

01:01:58.389 --> 01:02:03.001
the continuation into medieval times
of maritime geographical knowledge

01:02:03.002 --> 01:02:04.829
from a more distant past.

01:02:07.229 --> 01:02:11.280
As we've seen, the land and seascapes
of the Northern Atlantic have

01:02:11.290 --> 01:02:14.719
changed radically over thousands
of years of sea level fluctuation,

01:02:15.189 --> 01:02:18.800
and different cultures have seen different
ocean environments over time.

01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:27.100
The spiritual beliefs of the early Celtic
church in Ireland and Scotland

01:02:27.310 --> 01:02:31.999
were a gradually evolving combination
of old traditions from the pagan past

01:02:32.001 --> 01:02:35.459
that were mixed with the
new religion of Christianity.

01:02:36.620 --> 01:02:39.360
Brendan probably was a heroic navigator

01:02:39.659 --> 01:02:44.159
but he and his legends were also meant
to be politically and culturally symbolic.

01:02:46.330 --> 01:02:50.429
Brendan's saga was written down hundreds
of years after the events occurred.

01:02:51.639 --> 01:02:54.100
The numerous sea adventures
attributed to him

01:02:54.110 --> 01:02:56.840
may actually include
bits of oral history.

01:02:56.850 --> 01:02:59.169
going back to the Ice Age navigators,

01:03:00.399 --> 01:03:05.120
legends that were still remembered by the
native Irish and Scottish coastal tribes

01:03:05.300 --> 01:03:07.590
that he was trying to
convert to Christianity.

01:03:10.179 --> 01:03:13.649
These stories may have been
written down for the first time

01:03:13.659 --> 01:03:18.060
by the Irish monks in order to give the
history of their medieval maritime world

01:03:18.070 --> 01:03:19.949
a literate Christian context.

01:03:24.479 --> 01:03:27.979
But it is well known that the early
Christian monks were hermits

01:03:28.139 --> 01:03:30.649
who built their settlements
on the rugged coasts

01:03:30.659 --> 01:03:33.419
and solitary distant islands
out in the Atlantic.

01:03:34.060 --> 01:03:36.639
The Orkneys and the
Shetlands still have the

01:03:36.649 --> 01:03:39.520
remains of these early monasteries
along their coasts.

01:03:45.219 --> 01:03:48.030
This is St. Ninian Island,
off the Shetland coast.

01:03:48.820 --> 01:03:51.389
Like other early Celtic
Christian settlements,

01:03:51.530 --> 01:03:54.520
this one was built on top
of a previous occupation.

01:03:54.830 --> 01:03:57.679
Since what lies underneath
hasn't been excavated yet,

01:03:57.850 --> 01:04:00.159
it's not known what type of
site it may have been.

01:04:00.939 --> 01:04:03.499
But at this location,
there might be evidence

01:04:03.501 --> 01:04:07.070
of a link to a ceremonial
landscape from the deeper past.

01:04:10.070 --> 01:04:13.330
The site may have already
had an older sense of place,

01:04:13.570 --> 01:04:18.001
a history of spirit that was still
remembered by the early seagoing monks

01:04:18.002 --> 01:04:21.889
who were transitioning from a
pagan past to a Christian future.

01:04:24.230 --> 01:04:28.050
In many places, the first Christian
missionaries built their churches

01:04:28.060 --> 01:04:30.719
at sites that were already
sacred to the pagans

01:04:30.729 --> 01:04:32.959
in order to facilitate
the natives' conversion.

01:04:35.370 --> 01:04:38.799
Saint Brendan the Navigator
eventually became an icon

01:04:38.801 --> 01:04:41.999
in the romantic dream of
early transatlantic diffusion

01:04:42.001 --> 01:04:44.635
from Europe to the New World.

01:04:45.719 --> 01:04:48.979
Because of the geographical
evidence found in Brendan's saga,

01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:52.620
antiquarians suggested that the
Irish monk might actually

01:04:52.629 --> 01:04:55.860
have discovered America
1000 years before Columbus.

01:04:57.290 --> 01:04:59.820
But Brendan is only a
part of a long-standing

01:04:59.830 --> 01:05:03.530
controversy about who really discovered
America from across the Atlantic.

01:05:05.219 --> 01:05:07.999
The various theories about
diffusion from the Old World

01:05:08.001 --> 01:05:13.879
also included visits by the Phoenicians,
Druid priests and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

01:05:14.540 --> 01:05:17.479
But they all suffered from a lack
of archaeological evidence,

01:05:17.739 --> 01:05:22.280
and perhaps even more, they suffered
from colonial racist agendas.

01:05:23.570 --> 01:05:28.080
Throughout American history.
the idea of early European diffusion

01:05:28.199 --> 01:05:31.070
has complicated the
question of Native identity.

01:05:34.510 --> 01:05:40.001
It wasn't until 1960 that science proved
the Vikings landed in North America

01:05:40.002 --> 01:05:42.570
around 500 years before Columbus.

01:05:43.379 --> 01:05:46.999
It was the geographical evidence
found in the Icelandic sagas

01:05:47.000 --> 01:05:51.169
that kept the myth of Vinland alive
until the actual discovery of a

01:05:51.179 --> 01:05:53.949
Viking settlement at Lanza
Meadows in Newfoundland.

01:05:55.590 --> 01:05:59.290
The site was located at the northern
entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

01:06:02.510 --> 01:06:05.999
We've seen the possibility that
Brendan's Saga may have held

01:06:05.601 --> 01:06:09.110
bits of earlier maritime legends
about Atlantic geography.

01:06:09.439 --> 01:06:11.659
And strangely, in the Norse sagas,

01:06:11.909 --> 01:06:16.580
there is no sense of surprise at the Viking
discovery of lands across the Atlantic.

01:06:19.050 --> 01:06:21.760
Gwyn Jones was the pre-eminent expert

01:06:21.770 --> 01:06:24.719
on the translation and
interpretation of the Viking sagas.

01:06:26.989 --> 01:06:33.169
What kind of world did they think they
were living in and travelling around?

01:06:33.840 --> 01:06:35.500
So far as we can tell,

01:06:35.729 --> 01:06:38.280
the Viking world picture

01:06:38.639 --> 01:06:42.939
was one of a round Earth,

01:06:43.270 --> 01:06:45.459
a round world, let us say,

01:06:46.290 --> 01:06:50.350
which was either flat
or slightly saucer-shaped.

01:06:52.100 --> 01:06:55.810
Central to it was the inner sea.

01:06:56.870 --> 01:07:01.149
That would be the Atlantic,
the North Atlantic,

01:07:01.679 --> 01:07:03.780
and its contiguous waters.

01:07:04.989 --> 01:07:09.360
Surrounding the sea
would be a land ring.

01:07:10.580 --> 01:07:12.360
They were quite convinced about this,

01:07:12.570 --> 01:07:15.120
that the whole thing
was enclosed by land.

01:07:15.530 --> 01:07:18.999
And they knew from their own
experience that this started

01:07:19.001 --> 01:07:25.099
somewhere east of the north
of Norway, at Bjarmaland,

01:07:25.100 --> 01:07:27.590
and went over the White Sea

01:07:28.120 --> 01:07:30.439
right around the top
of the frozen world,

01:07:31.120 --> 01:07:34.600
missed Iceland, came to Greenland,

01:07:35.090 --> 01:07:38.540
and then proceeded to
come down the other side.

01:07:38.689 --> 01:07:43.610
So they would expect land to be out
that other side in a theoretic way.

01:07:44.520 --> 01:07:46.149
In the Northern Viking world,

01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:49.179
there may never have been
a cultural or geographical

01:07:49.189 --> 01:07:51.790
separation between the
Old World and the New.

01:07:52.629 --> 01:07:55.719
One of the biggest problems
in the history of the New World

01:07:55.729 --> 01:07:59.520
has been the relationship of its Native
peoples with those of Europe and Asia.

01:08:00.290 --> 01:08:04.020
And for years we've wondered,
really, what are the connections?

01:08:04.310 --> 01:08:06.520
Are they transatlantic,
transpacific connections?

01:08:06.859 --> 01:08:10.102
In fact, it seems to be in the north
that the major interaction

01:08:10.103 --> 01:08:13.340
of peoples across the
hemispheres has been occurring

01:08:13.459 --> 01:08:15.001
on a fairly regular basis.

01:08:15.104 --> 01:08:18.950
When you move into the
northern part of the hemisphere,

01:08:18.950 --> 01:08:22.798
the land masses come close together
and it's only a few hundred miles,

01:08:22.799 --> 01:08:26.859
in some cases only a few tens of miles,
across these major divides.

01:08:27.149 --> 01:08:31.370
So the study of contacts,
the study of diffusion of ideas

01:08:31.370 --> 01:08:34.009
and the movement of peoples through
the northern part of the hemisphere

01:08:34.010 --> 01:08:38.129
is something that really has never been
looked at by archaeologists in detail.

01:08:51.129 --> 01:08:54.470
The Vikings believed that
the Sámi, or Laplanders,

01:08:54.479 --> 01:08:58.509
the near-mythical people who lived in
the farthest northern reaches of Europe,

01:08:58.689 --> 01:09:03.169
were capable of crossing over the
frozen North Atlantic to the New World.

01:09:03.750 --> 01:09:06.910
They believe the Sámi were
related to the Skrælings,

01:09:07.040 --> 01:09:09.870
which is the name that the Vikings
used for Native Americans.

01:09:11.930 --> 01:09:15.509
Again, like the pre-Christian
Irish and Scottish tribes,

01:09:15.680 --> 01:09:18.709
this is evidence that the Viking
world view may have been based

01:09:18.720 --> 01:09:23.850
on geographical information inherited
from their Ice Age and later ancestors,

01:09:23.959 --> 01:09:27.859
who had been adapted to life on the
northern Atlantic for thousands of years.

01:09:30.220 --> 01:09:33.450
In terms of ancient rituals,
like this reindeer ceremony,

01:09:33.459 --> 01:09:36.899
that can persist among traditional
cultures into very modern times,

01:09:37.279 --> 01:09:40.930
the labyrinth or maze is an
example of how an older

01:09:40.939 --> 01:09:45.850
pagan maritime tradition survived among
coastal peoples into the 19th century.

01:09:47.709 --> 01:09:50.589
Noel Broadbent has investigated labyrinths

01:09:50.600 --> 01:09:53.999
found at ancient seal hunting and
fishing sites that are often found near

01:09:54.001 --> 01:09:57.299
early Christian chapels along
the Scandinavian coast.

01:09:57.810 --> 01:10:01.599
And the mazes are an ancient symbol,

01:10:01.601 --> 01:10:04.770
and there are over
300 of them along the coast.

01:10:05.240 --> 01:10:08.998
But why would fishermen,
Christian fishermen,

01:10:08.999 --> 01:10:13.998
use a symbol which goes
back in antiquity

01:10:13.999 --> 01:10:15.699
and is associated with death?

01:10:16.359 --> 01:10:20.330
We find that the fishermen
had a great many superstitions.

01:10:20.830 --> 01:10:25.310
They lived very hazardous lives,
and even today in the modern world,

01:10:25.740 --> 01:10:30.089
commercial fishing is one of the
most dangerous of occupations.

01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:34.899
When you left terra firma and
went out in your small boats,

01:10:34.900 --> 01:10:36.069
and these were very small boats,

01:10:36.209 --> 01:10:38.830
there was little guarantee that you
were going to make it back.

01:10:39.129 --> 01:10:43.790
And there were a lot of superstitions
that you used to protect yourself.

01:10:45.069 --> 01:10:52.102
And the labyrinth seems to
symbolize the passage,

01:10:52.103 --> 01:10:55.999
the journey that you take every day
as a fisherman leaving land,

01:10:56.001 --> 01:11:00.001
going to the uncertainty
of the sea, and returning.

01:11:00.002 --> 01:11:06.419
And these labyrinths or mazes
are not full of dead ends.

01:11:07.600 --> 01:11:11.069
They consist of a single
path which takes you,

01:11:11.200 --> 01:11:17.189
although in a very circuitous way,
in a long way,

01:11:17.439 --> 01:11:19.270
but always into the center.

01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:22.299
And always, when you reverse it,

01:11:22.509 --> 01:11:24.419
back to the origin,

01:11:25.629 --> 01:11:30.899
They are always initiated with a
cross-like figure in the center.

01:11:31.359 --> 01:11:34.899
But there was also magic,
and we don't have much oral history

01:11:34.900 --> 01:11:38.001
about labyrinths even though some of
them were made in the 19th century.

01:11:38.101 --> 01:11:39.259
Almost nothing.

01:11:39.259 --> 01:11:43.600
In fact, when you ask fishermen,
old fishermen, who made these things,

01:11:43.799 --> 01:11:50.129
They will say, "Oh, shipwrecked
sailers or Russians

01:11:50.130 --> 01:11:53.569
"or somebody else, but not us."

01:11:54.609 --> 01:11:56.520
And what was the function?

01:11:56.930 --> 01:11:58.879
"Oh, don't know about that."

01:11:59.410 --> 01:12:01.200
You know, it was very evasive.

01:12:01.560 --> 01:12:05.599
In any kind of magic,
you do not use the name

01:12:05.605 --> 01:12:07.701
or speak of the things you were doing

01:12:07.702 --> 01:12:10.919
because it takes the power away
from what you're doing.

01:12:11.649 --> 01:12:16.389
So this was part of the magical
context of fishing.

01:12:16.390 --> 01:12:20.101
And they today are found
usually between 5,

01:12:20.102 --> 01:12:23.100
but sometimes up to
80 meters above sea level,

01:12:23.100 --> 01:12:27.669
in some cases right along the shore
or the contemporary shore at that time,

01:12:27.680 --> 01:12:32.439
or in very high places where you
had views over the sea where

01:12:32.440 --> 01:12:37.859
this maze presumably could be walked
by a fisherman before he goes out,

01:12:37.870 --> 01:12:39.180
perhaps chanting.

01:12:39.379 --> 01:12:41.660
There is some record of this being done.

01:12:42.080 --> 01:12:44.999
But this was a physical
manifestation in the landscape,

01:12:45.001 --> 01:12:46.689
and from an archaeological
point of view

01:12:46.700 --> 01:12:47.979
of course very intriguing.

01:12:53.529 --> 01:12:57.150
Ceremonial landscapes and
early written histories may offer

01:12:57.151 --> 01:13:00.930
mysterious hints about the traditions
of early sea-adapted cultures.

01:13:01.350 --> 01:13:04.008
But let's take a deeper look
at what modern archaeology

01:13:04.009 --> 01:13:06.998
can show us about the complexity
and the cultural effects

01:13:06.999 --> 01:13:08.999
of the maritime revolution.

01:13:10.339 --> 01:13:12.799
These are the earliest
stone houses that have been

01:13:12.810 --> 01:13:15.129
found so far in the Scottish Isles.

01:13:15.490 --> 01:13:18.160
They are about 5,600 years old.

01:13:18.850 --> 01:13:21.999
They were found where the Atlantic
Ocean and the North Sea meet,

01:13:22.001 --> 01:13:24.339
on the northernmost
islands of the Orkneys.

01:13:25.399 --> 01:13:27.250
Accessible only by sea,

01:13:27.290 --> 01:13:30.202
archaeologists have suggested
that these early houses

01:13:30.203 --> 01:13:32.180
were actually shaped like boats.

01:13:40.600 --> 01:13:43.209
In the center of the house
is the rectangular hearth.

01:13:43.729 --> 01:13:46.550
The faint reddish tint
inside the hearthstones

01:13:46.551 --> 01:13:48.349
is the residue from red ochre.

01:13:49.549 --> 01:13:53.209
The red paint was made from
iron oxide, or hematite,

01:13:53.470 --> 01:13:57.359
that was processed in the fire to
intensify the red color of the powder.

01:14:00.009 --> 01:14:03.310
These rectangular hearths are found
in other settlements as well,

01:14:04.000 --> 01:14:07.870
and the use of red paint for
decoration and burial ritual

01:14:07.879 --> 01:14:10.259
appears to have been continuous
in these coastal communities

01:14:10.260 --> 01:14:12.229
for thousands of years.

01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:21.540
Skara Brae was an accidental find.

01:14:21.979 --> 01:14:24.939
A storm blew away the
sand of a beach terrace

01:14:24.950 --> 01:14:28.660
and revealed an intact village
over 5,000 years old.

01:14:30.569 --> 01:14:33.729
The structures, even the furnishings,
were found intact.

01:14:35.850 --> 01:14:39.390
Sophisticated artifacts like
whalebone and pottery point to

01:14:39.399 --> 01:14:43.869
a maritime adaptation and settled
living conditions at a very early time.

01:14:46.879 --> 01:14:50.740
There were amazing symbolic items
found throughout the village

01:14:50.750 --> 01:14:52.979
that archaeologists have
no interpretation for.

01:14:54.390 --> 01:14:56.169
Further north in the Shetlands,

01:14:56.180 --> 01:14:59.609
which is a fairly long and rugged
sea journey above the Orkneys,

01:14:59.779 --> 01:15:03.680
another settlement called Jarlshof
was built during the Neolithic.

01:15:08.080 --> 01:15:10.770
The history of this site is
different from Skara Brae.

01:15:11.649 --> 01:15:14.901
It appears to have been in
almost continuous use

01:15:14.902 --> 01:15:17.799
from the Neolithic period
through the Bronze Age,

01:15:17.801 --> 01:15:21.240
through the Iron Age,
and into the Viking era.

01:15:21.240 --> 01:15:25.939
Finally, a late medieval Laird house was
also built over the same location.

01:15:27.479 --> 01:15:29.500
Up until the arrival of the Vikings,

01:15:29.509 --> 01:15:32.001
there seems to have been an
architectural consistency

01:15:32.002 --> 01:15:36.810
running through all the different Native
groups occupying the same point of land

01:15:37.080 --> 01:15:40.899
that protected the community's
ideal beach for landing boats.

01:15:41.930 --> 01:15:45.930
This has allowed archaeologists
to understand how similar

01:15:45.939 --> 01:15:49.109
each cultural adaptation was in
relation to the ocean environment.

01:15:50.319 --> 01:15:54.998
It also suggests their cultural history,
their stories and legends,

01:15:54.999 --> 01:15:57.140
may have endured
over long spans of time.

01:16:03.680 --> 01:16:07.319
The most recent major
archaeological discovery in the Orkneys

01:16:07.330 --> 01:16:11.299
is a settlement from around 5,000
years ago called the Ness of Brodgar.

01:16:13.069 --> 01:16:17.240
The village sits on a narrow strip of land
between two protected bodies of water,

01:16:17.370 --> 01:16:20.490
one connected to the ocean
and the other an inland lake.

01:16:21.700 --> 01:16:23.430
The settlement exists in the center of a

01:16:23.439 --> 01:16:26.350
concentration of known
ceremonial sites that have been

01:16:26.359 --> 01:16:31.479
recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage
list as the heart of Neolithic Orkney.

01:16:40.729 --> 01:16:43.990
This illustration published by
National Geographic magazine

01:16:44.160 --> 01:16:48.430
shows how European archaeologists are
currently interpreting the civilization.

01:16:49.819 --> 01:16:53.008
The tendency today,
in terms of educating the public,

01:16:53.009 --> 01:16:56.729
is for scientists to celebrate the
sophistication of these cultures,

01:16:56.950 --> 01:17:00.040
but to emphasize that their
advancement came from farming.

01:17:00.910 --> 01:17:04.998
We tend to think that there was
some transition to a farming economy,

01:17:04.999 --> 01:17:07.500
to the raising of
ivestock and agriculture,

01:17:07.740 --> 01:17:13.999
and this replaced the importance of
gathering and fishing and seal hunting.

01:17:14.100 --> 01:17:17.999
But in fact, I think
in most of Scandinavia

01:17:18.001 --> 01:17:21.849
that transition never did take place,
even to this day.

01:17:21.860 --> 01:17:24.560
Economies were always very flexible

01:17:24.561 --> 01:17:28.569
and based on a mixed
bag of resources.

01:17:28.569 --> 01:17:31.540
If one failed you had
something else to fall back on.

01:17:32.000 --> 01:17:37.629
The stability in settlement that's necessary
if you're going to establish a farm

01:17:37.770 --> 01:17:42.930
was only possible if you had
some sort of reliable resource,

01:17:42.939 --> 01:17:47.509
and that tended almost always
to be coastal in origin.

01:17:47.520 --> 01:17:50.910
So, your earliest farming
sites in Scandinavia

01:17:51.214 --> 01:17:53.415
also are coastal sites.

01:17:53.604 --> 01:17:56.998
And it's interesting,
in the pollen analysis records,

01:17:56.999 --> 01:18:00.099
evidence of early farming and
domestication of animals

01:18:00.100 --> 01:18:03.984
which have influenced the vegetation,
you can see in the stratigraphy

01:18:04.095 --> 01:18:08.044
how the farming and the livestock
raising will come and go

01:18:08.950 --> 01:18:13.080
but the coastal resources
remain fairly constant.

01:18:13.319 --> 01:18:17.169
So in other words, it's the coastal
resources which enabled the farming,

01:18:17.339 --> 01:18:18.660
not the other way around.

01:18:21.609 --> 01:18:24.509
This is the way National Geographic
depicted its vision

01:18:24.510 --> 01:18:26.660
of the Orkney settlements'
access to the sea.

01:18:29.569 --> 01:18:31.430
But perhaps it looked more like this.

01:18:32.919 --> 01:18:37.700
To visualize this civilization as part of
the early Atlantic maritime revolution

01:18:38.040 --> 01:18:42.301
offers us a better understanding of the
technological and cultural advances

01:18:42.302 --> 01:18:45.140
that occurred with the
development of ocean navigation.

01:18:49.790 --> 01:18:53.001
For example, the megalith builders
were once thought

01:18:53.002 --> 01:18:55.101
to have been farmers
from the Middle East

01:18:55.102 --> 01:18:58.689
who migrated across
Europe to the northwest.

01:18:58.689 --> 01:19:02.120
In terms of the scientific and
historical imagination of today,

01:19:02.589 --> 01:19:07.199
picturing a society of sophisticated
early sea-adapted people

01:19:07.200 --> 01:19:09.599
better explains how the stone alignments

01:19:09.600 --> 01:19:13.419
could appear to originate along the
edges of the outer Atlantic coast.

01:19:17.359 --> 01:19:22.189
These remnants of ceremonial stone
traditions can still be found all along

01:19:22.200 --> 01:19:25.700
the Atlantic shores and the connected
water systems of northern Europe.

01:19:26.100 --> 01:19:28.100
They were begun long before farming,

01:19:28.240 --> 01:19:32.859
and they continued to evolve gradually
into the Neolithic and later Bronze Ages.

01:19:34.799 --> 01:19:38.998
The connection to ancestors which
is often found at ceremonial sites

01:19:38.999 --> 01:19:41.259
extends back through time immemorial,

01:19:41.600 --> 01:19:45.470
but the monumental stones are also
evidence of a sophisticated

01:19:45.479 --> 01:19:49.180
sense of place chosen in relation
to the land and the water.

01:19:50.950 --> 01:19:55.529
For example, the Ring of Brodgar,
also in the heart of Neolithic Orkney,

01:19:55.729 --> 01:19:59.380
was built in a true circle and
constructed with carefull attention

01:19:59.382 --> 01:20:01.660
to its alignment with
the natural environment.

01:20:02.580 --> 01:20:06.289
In the 1970s, it was discovered
that the Ring of Brodgar

01:20:06.290 --> 01:20:08.999
could be used to predict
astronomical events like

01:20:09.001 --> 01:20:12.100
the major and minor
standstills of the moon,

01:20:12.100 --> 01:20:15.770
the moon, of course, being essential
in predicting the tides of the ocean,

01:20:16.020 --> 01:20:18.279
a key to the evolution of sea travel.

01:20:19.930 --> 01:20:23.149
It might be that as humans
adapted to life on the ocean,

01:20:23.299 --> 01:20:27.709
existing for extended periods
navigating beyond the sight of land,

01:20:27.990 --> 01:20:31.990
they developed a new physical
and spiritual sense of place,

01:20:32.270 --> 01:20:35.669
a new relationship to the
landscapes they sailed away from

01:20:35.700 --> 01:20:38.009
and returned back to.

01:20:38.399 --> 01:20:41.689
It is easy to underestimate
the cultural effect of this

01:20:41.690 --> 01:20:43.220
ancient technical development,

01:20:43.540 --> 01:20:46.998
but perhaps we can get a better
sense of the emotional impact

01:20:46.999 --> 01:20:49.998
by comparing the ancient
adaptation to the sea

01:20:49.999 --> 01:20:54.580
with our own civilizations' experience
of adapting to travel in outer space.

01:20:57.259 --> 01:21:00.901
The effect on our Stone Age ancestors
of seeing their landscapes

01:21:00.902 --> 01:21:04.001
from across a distant
sea for the first time

01:21:04.002 --> 01:21:06.998
might not have been very different
from our early astronauts'

01:21:06.999 --> 01:21:09.569
first vision of the Earth
from outer space.

01:21:11.080 --> 01:21:15.649
And we now understand how that
physical vision of the big blue marble

01:21:15.770 --> 01:21:18.998
has begun to alter our modern
civilization's perspective

01:21:18.999 --> 01:21:20.819
on so many different levels.

01:21:28.379 --> 01:21:33.149
The effect of the Ice Age maritime revolution
on the development of civilization

01:21:33.279 --> 01:21:37.929
needs to be understood as the
powerful cultural force it was,

01:21:37.930 --> 01:21:40.520
especially along the Atlantic
coasts of North America,

01:21:40.729 --> 01:21:43.459
where so far it has
barely been recognized.

01:21:45.259 --> 01:21:49.649
One of the interesting features of the
Maritime Archaic in Labrador, at least,

01:21:49.650 --> 01:21:53.899
is the association between
ceremonial sites, burial sites,

01:21:53.900 --> 01:21:56.209
and imminent prominent locations.

01:21:56.330 --> 01:21:58.959
And it seemed as though people were

01:21:59.060 --> 01:22:02.879
selecting these locations
for qualities of the land,

01:22:03.919 --> 01:22:07.998
high hills, sweeping vistas,
magnificent scenery,

01:22:07.999 --> 01:22:11.490
as well as conditions that were
suitable for excavating burials,

01:22:11.500 --> 01:22:13.729
sandy terraces and things like that.

01:22:14.379 --> 01:22:16.540
The early Maritime Archaic
mounds seem to be

01:22:16.549 --> 01:22:19.819
individual structures with
single burials in them,

01:22:20.129 --> 01:22:21.839
on these prominent locations.

01:22:22.600 --> 01:22:25.759
The very early Native
ceremonialism discovered along

01:22:25.760 --> 01:22:27.580
the Atlantic coast of North America

01:22:27.759 --> 01:22:31.020
has been one of the most
perplexing mysteries that suggest

01:22:31.029 --> 01:22:35.419
our knowledge of Indigenous eastern
civilization is far from complete.

01:22:36.549 --> 01:22:40.234
These people were really amazing
cultures and civilizations that were

01:22:40.250 --> 01:22:45.294
able to travel long distances in large
boats from Florida to the northeast,

01:22:45.305 --> 01:22:47.995
from the northeast to
Newfoundland and Labrador.

01:22:48.095 --> 01:22:51.999
We're being able to link these up
gradually to the early mound cultures

01:22:52.001 --> 01:22:54.998
of 4,000 or 5,000,
6,000 years ago

01:22:54.999 --> 01:22:57.555
in the northeast and in
the Great Lakes region.

01:22:57.805 --> 01:23:02.064
So archaeological work is producing
revolutionary new information

01:23:02.075 --> 01:23:04.584
about the identity and
history of American Indians.

01:23:12.890 --> 01:23:16.149
Some researchers point out
that the architectural remains

01:23:16.160 --> 01:23:20.998
of very early coastal civilizations
found in the northern Scottish isles

01:23:20.999 --> 01:23:23.998
appear more advanced than
the early indigenous remains

01:23:23.999 --> 01:23:25.740
on the east coast of North America.

01:23:26.569 --> 01:23:30.409
The comparisons seem to point to
obvious cultural inequalities

01:23:30.410 --> 01:23:33.739
that preclude or at least
discourage people

01:23:33.740 --> 01:23:37.198
from imagining similarly advanced
Native civilizations existing

01:23:37.199 --> 01:23:39.549
along the ancient coasts
of North America.

01:23:43.330 --> 01:23:47.029
One obvious reason is that the
northern Scottish islands are endowed

01:23:47.040 --> 01:23:51.609
with a sedimentary type of rock
that breaks easily into flat, stable,

01:23:51.610 --> 01:23:55.109
nearly perfect building blocks that
last for thousands of years.

01:23:57.240 --> 01:24:01.250
In northeastern North America,
except for their ceremonial purposes,

01:24:01.259 --> 01:24:05.299
Native peoples created their domestic
architecture primarily with wood,

01:24:05.540 --> 01:24:09.270
a substance that doesn't usually preserve
well through archaeological time.

01:24:11.459 --> 01:24:14.720
But there are recent and
little-known discoveries

01:24:14.721 --> 01:24:17.919
of very early northeastern
Native habitation structures

01:24:17.930 --> 01:24:20.759
that defy all of our
textbook interpretations.

01:24:21.839 --> 01:24:24.970
On the Mashantucket Pequot
reservation in Connecticut,

01:24:25.189 --> 01:24:27.459
Kevin McBride led an excavation

01:24:27.620 --> 01:24:31.180
that started out as a typical
investigation before a road construction.

01:24:32.490 --> 01:24:33.660
This site...

01:24:35.620 --> 01:24:40.479
...was really a surprise upon its
discovery and informed us of

01:24:40.919 --> 01:24:44.399
not only certain aspects of prehistory
of the region we were missing,

01:24:44.740 --> 01:24:47.799
but also informed us of
the potential problems with

01:24:47.810 --> 01:24:50.879
archaeologists and archaeology
in the northeast as well.

01:24:51.290 --> 01:24:54.869
And we had a pretty good
handle on the early period of

01:24:54.870 --> 01:24:57.200
Native occupation and use here,
the Paleo-Indian Period,

01:24:57.390 --> 01:25:00.419
We have Paleo-Indian sites
in the general location,

01:25:01.599 --> 01:25:03.399
scatters of Paleo-Indian tools around

01:25:03.859 --> 01:25:07.080
that certainly indicate the landscape
was being used pretty early.

01:25:08.830 --> 01:25:11.659
You know, around me here you see
the casino and parking garage.

01:25:11.659 --> 01:25:13.319
There's a lot of activity.

01:25:13.319 --> 01:25:14.940
Well, we did our, you know,

01:25:14.945 --> 01:25:19.700
a fairly intensive testing program
out front of this site on a flat area.

01:25:20.209 --> 01:25:23.299
And I make that distinction
because we're on a hillside now,

01:25:23.310 --> 01:25:27.538
probably sloping in excess of,
you know, 10%,12%, 15%.

01:25:27.539 --> 01:25:28.839
It's a fairly steep slope.

01:25:30.500 --> 01:25:33.869
In our testing program out front,
we found a lot of sites,

01:25:33.872 --> 01:25:34.680
a lot of features.

01:25:34.680 --> 01:25:36.240
We did not test the slope.

01:25:37.229 --> 01:25:41.810
And we did not test the slope because
who would live on a slope that severe?

01:25:42.759 --> 01:25:46.700
And I think most archaeologists
go with that paradigm.

01:25:46.839 --> 01:25:50.339
We never test on slopes
because there's no sites there.

01:25:50.709 --> 01:25:52.249
Well the reason there's no sites found

01:25:52.250 --> 01:25:53.998
is because we don't test on slopes.

01:25:53.999 --> 01:25:56.930
It's sort of a circular,
circular argument there.

01:25:57.250 --> 01:26:01.479
But one of the things we do before
completion of any project is

01:26:01.480 --> 01:26:06.998
we strip an area that we've
excavated or studied, surveyed,

01:26:06.999 --> 01:26:07.999
to make sure we haven't missed anything,

01:26:08.100 --> 01:26:12.001
features, burials,
anything of that nature.

01:26:12.007 --> 01:26:14.609
And fortunately,
during the stripping process,

01:26:14.610 --> 01:26:17.999
the machine cut into this hillside,

01:26:18.180 --> 01:26:20.910
and it was fairly dramatic what we saw.

01:26:21.089 --> 01:26:24.129
And in this profile on the hillside,

01:26:24.370 --> 01:26:28.850
we saw a series of these
dark rectangular stains

01:26:29.790 --> 01:26:31.839
that eventually turned out
to be pit houses.

01:26:31.850 --> 01:26:36.020
What we discovered essentially
was very substantial structures.

01:26:36.120 --> 01:26:39.990
These were not sapling frame structures,
they seem to be timber framed.

01:26:41.210 --> 01:26:43.189
Quite an investment of labor and effort,

01:26:43.899 --> 01:26:49.399
and it's happening in a period of
time that we just had no concept.

01:26:49.410 --> 01:26:51.839
We're looking at a degree of permanency,

01:26:51.899 --> 01:26:54.299
predictability and resource
in the environments,

01:26:54.500 --> 01:26:58.189
fairly sophisticated
scheduling of activities,

01:26:58.589 --> 01:27:03.589
and they're returning here year after year
for generation upon generations.

01:27:03.729 --> 01:27:08.040
One of the surprises at the Sandy Hill
site was the radiocarbon date,

01:27:08.660 --> 01:27:10.759
around 10,000 years ago.

01:27:11.589 --> 01:27:17.301
I don't think any of us had anticipated
that in this particular time period,

01:27:17.302 --> 01:27:20.609
we would ever find
evidence for settled life.

01:27:21.799 --> 01:27:25.999
The pit houses, the types of structures
that these people are living in

01:27:26.002 --> 01:27:28.220
are very much unexpected
here in New England.

01:27:28.390 --> 01:27:30.240
The interpretation has always
been that the people that

01:27:30.250 --> 01:27:33.899
were living in southern New England
at that time were very highly mobile,

01:27:34.069 --> 01:27:37.339
they were very small
numbers of people in total,

01:27:37.470 --> 01:27:39.799
and they moved across the
landscape very frequently.

01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:41.259
And so the sites that we recover,

01:27:41.270 --> 01:27:45.169
we don't necessarily anticipate finding
large amounts of materials because

01:27:45.180 --> 01:27:47.529
they just simply didn't stay
in any one place long enough.

01:27:47.859 --> 01:27:52.080
Sandy Hill clearly represents
something very different going on.

01:27:52.370 --> 01:27:56.919
After all of the excavations that
we've conducted at this site,

01:27:57.160 --> 01:28:01.629
we have well over 200,000 artifacts that
have been recovered from here,

01:28:02.339 --> 01:28:06.069
The tool assemblage, it is not anything
like we've ever seen before.

01:28:06.080 --> 01:28:08.439
It's a quartz microblade industry,

01:28:10.100 --> 01:28:13.870
and what makes that interesting is it's
only seen at this period of time.

01:28:14.100 --> 01:28:17.001
It follows shortly after the
Paleo-Indian Period with their

01:28:17.450 --> 01:28:21.149
you know, beautifully
bi-facial flake industry.

01:28:21.560 --> 01:28:23.669
So it looks to be like a
different cultural tradition.

01:28:24.500 --> 01:28:27.609
Unlike the Paleo-Clovis
big game hunters,

01:28:27.620 --> 01:28:32.569
the sedentary communities at Sandy Hill
were focused on the exploitation of

01:28:32.580 --> 01:28:36.850
plant fiber from the Great Cedar Swamp
that still exists next to the settlement.

01:28:38.410 --> 01:28:41.830
This is the technology at Sandy Hill.

01:28:42.549 --> 01:28:45.529
And how far from Clovis can you get?

01:28:48.729 --> 01:28:52.310
If the people who inhabit
Sandy Hill 9,000 years ago,

01:28:53.049 --> 01:28:55.470
are the descendants of a
much earlier population,

01:28:55.479 --> 01:28:58.629
that means when the fluted point
tradition arrived here 11,000 years ago,

01:28:58.640 --> 01:29:00.830
there may well have been other
people on the landscape already.

01:29:02.249 --> 01:29:04.749
And that's important,
because it really changes

01:29:04.750 --> 01:29:09.020
the way we view people entering
what was traditionally seen as

01:29:10.459 --> 01:29:11.909
an environment devoid of humans.

01:29:12.810 --> 01:29:16.799
I think the Sandy Hill site has
profound implications on

01:29:18.149 --> 01:29:23.620
the way in which Native people used
the landscape 9,000 years ago,

01:29:24.100 --> 01:29:28.129
and has profound implications on

01:29:28.910 --> 01:29:32.859
how archaeologists view that record
and how they really need to rethink

01:29:33.100 --> 01:29:38.970
their old models of Native presence
on this landscape that early.

01:29:40.729 --> 01:29:42.129
You know, if we're--

01:29:44.439 --> 01:29:48.609
If you sort of review what
archaeologists used to think about

01:29:48.620 --> 01:29:52.500
what's going on 9,000 years ago
or even 11,000 years ago,

01:29:53.729 --> 01:29:57.939
we tend to look at the Native presence on
the landscape as somewhat ephemeral,

01:29:58.930 --> 01:30:02.160
and that's where the
model stood for 40 years.

01:30:02.689 --> 01:30:04.310
And then we find Sandy Hill,

01:30:04.439 --> 01:30:07.430
and everything we thought
about the past is wrong.

01:30:07.870 --> 01:30:10.299
Profoundly, fundamentally wrong.

01:30:11.580 --> 01:30:20.089
And what Sandy Hill represents is a
very, very complex settlement pattern,

01:30:20.520 --> 01:30:24.129
social network, subsistence system.

01:30:24.959 --> 01:30:27.700
The complexity of the
site is incredible

01:30:28.779 --> 01:30:30.899
in terms of the infrastructure.

01:30:30.999 --> 01:30:36.109
They're building these massive timber
frame structures into a hillside.

01:30:38.279 --> 01:30:44.109
And the whole idea of them focusing
on plants in the wetlands suggests

01:30:44.750 --> 01:30:47.449
a degree of plant manipulation encouragement

01:30:47.450 --> 01:30:49.999
that borders on cultivation,

01:30:50.450 --> 01:30:51.419
which you know,

01:30:51.430 --> 01:30:55.919
I'm probably being heretical to even
suggest such a thing at 9,000 years ago.

01:30:56.999 --> 01:30:59.549
But we have to consider that.

01:31:03.689 --> 01:31:06.979
The breakthrough discoveries in terms
of understanding the age

01:31:06.990 --> 01:31:09.859
and the importance of these
early sea-adapted cultures

01:31:09.870 --> 01:31:14.140
are occurring on the sea floor along
the submerged ancient coastlines

01:31:14.141 --> 01:31:15.870
on both sides of the North Atlantic.

01:31:17.060 --> 01:31:18.490
Along the coasts of Denmark,

01:31:19.009 --> 01:31:21.998
the search for submerged
archaeological sites offshore

01:31:21.999 --> 01:31:23.799
has been flourishing for years.

01:31:25.040 --> 01:31:28.819
Government agencies and corporate
development work closely together

01:31:28.970 --> 01:31:31.509
and report their findings
to a general public

01:31:31.520 --> 01:31:33.620
that is eager to know
more about their past.

01:31:35.250 --> 01:31:39.080
The Roskilde Museum is the center of
underwater archaeology in Denmark.

01:31:40.589 --> 01:31:43.279
The program was directed
by Jørgen Dencker,

01:31:43.290 --> 01:31:46.370
who has been conducting underwater
research for over 30 years.

01:31:47.430 --> 01:31:50.790
Every year, we are finding
three or four or five new

01:31:51.129 --> 01:31:52.489
submerged Stone Age sites in Denmark.

01:31:53.200 --> 01:31:57.799
A lot of them are found
because of construction work.

01:31:57.800 --> 01:32:01.211
This piece of wood was
found like this today.

01:32:01.212 --> 01:32:04.999
It has been preserved,
so it's very light.

01:32:05.002 --> 01:32:10.939
But this shows us that everything,
all the artifacts, all the tools

01:32:10.940 --> 01:32:16.330
which were made of wood had
been preserved until today.

01:32:16.850 --> 01:32:21.001
They have also been fishing
with the fishing hooks like this.

01:32:21.002 --> 01:32:23.509
You can see it's only four
or five centimeter long,

01:32:23.839 --> 01:32:26.189
and we have different shapes.

01:32:27.540 --> 01:32:33.439
One of them we found still with
the knot on a piece of the string.

01:32:34.069 --> 01:32:39.289
Both of these things are about
7,000 years old, 7,000 years.

01:32:39.799 --> 01:32:43.055
And I'm totally sure that you can find

01:32:43.056 --> 01:32:47.259
exactly the same things
in North America,

01:32:47.459 --> 01:32:50.970
because from my visits in Rhode Island

01:32:51.259 --> 01:32:57.500
we can pinpoint out where we have
had the same conditions and so on.

01:32:58.290 --> 01:33:01.150
Maybe we could talk a little bit
about what you see in Denmark

01:33:01.151 --> 01:33:03.680
on the submerged sites
that are close to shore.

01:33:03.689 --> 01:33:07.999
The best sediments preserving

01:33:08.001 --> 01:33:10.101
are those that are anaerobic.

01:33:10.401 --> 01:33:12.090
Can you define "anaerobic"?

01:33:13.189 --> 01:33:17.290
Anaerobic simply means
without oxygen.

01:33:18.189 --> 01:33:22.599
We excavate it in
just 20 centimeters,

01:33:22.600 --> 01:33:26.839
30 centimeters beneath
the present sea level.

01:33:27.669 --> 01:33:31.999
They were green,
and I tell you, green,

01:33:32.001 --> 01:33:34.399
light green leaves from trees,

01:33:34.689 --> 01:33:37.620
green like you have them
on the trees today.

01:33:38.299 --> 01:33:42.480
And they have been there
for the last 7,000 years.

01:33:43.580 --> 01:33:47.999
And because of getting
fresh water with oxygen in it,

01:33:48.005 --> 01:33:53.979
in two minutes they
turn gray and brownish.

01:33:56.290 --> 01:33:59.888
So, very good example of this

01:34:00.009 --> 01:34:03.999
anaerobic, no-oxygen conditions

01:34:04.109 --> 01:34:06.409
which make the good
preservation conditions.

01:34:07.439 --> 01:34:11.998
But we were lucky that we have
an underwater camera with us,

01:34:11.999 --> 01:34:17.430
so before it turned gray or brown we
have really fantastic pictures of this

01:34:18.998 --> 01:34:21.990
of green, green leaves,
green like in the springtime.

01:34:22.370 --> 01:34:28.149
If the anaerobic environments there
in Denmark and here are similar,

01:34:29.479 --> 01:34:35.229
do you think it's likely, Dave,
that we will find burials intact

01:34:35.430 --> 01:34:38.220
in the anaerobic environments
that we'll be dealing with?

01:34:39.370 --> 01:34:41.589
I don't see why we wouldn't,

01:34:42.180 --> 01:34:45.790
I mean, if the conditions in
Denmark are any indication.

01:34:47.560 --> 01:34:50.029
I would say it's exactly the same.

01:34:50.040 --> 01:34:54.810
There is no reason to believe
that you can't find exactly

01:34:54.811 --> 01:34:57.540
the same preservation
conditions and with that,

01:34:58.520 --> 01:35:02.500
exactly the same well-preserved
artifacts and information.

01:35:14.470 --> 01:35:15.899
What's the potential?

01:35:15.901 --> 01:35:18.500
What's the possibility of
finding physical evidence

01:35:18.500 --> 01:35:22.998
for this kind of complex
maritime behavior,

01:35:22.999 --> 01:35:25.169
craft technology, really early,

01:35:25.949 --> 01:35:30.120
perhaps early enough to be found
along the continental shelf

01:35:31.129 --> 01:35:34.830
you know, 10,000, 15,000,
20,000 years ago?

01:35:35.209 --> 01:35:38.998
We have the technology
to locate landforms

01:35:38.999 --> 01:35:42.101
where these craft may be preserved
conducive for preservation,

01:35:42.102 --> 01:35:45.810
the lee side of an island or an estuary,
those kinds of contexts.

01:35:46.725 --> 01:35:51.001
So once we can begin
to develop a model

01:35:51.002 --> 01:35:54.984
of where these might be preserved,
identify those land forms,

01:35:54.995 --> 01:35:57.524
I have absolutely no doubt
these are gonna be found.

01:35:58.101 --> 01:36:02.674
I mean, could you imagine finding
an ocean-going craft

01:36:02.895 --> 01:36:06.998
40 miles, 50 miles out on the
continental shelf that dates to,

01:36:06.999 --> 01:36:09.998
you know, who knows
how far back, 20,000 years ago?

01:36:09.999 --> 01:36:11.875
Astounding, absolutely astounding.

01:36:11.875 --> 01:36:13.375
But I have no doubt that they're there.

01:36:22.669 --> 01:36:26.998
Back in the 1970s,
a scallop dredge called the Cinmar

01:36:26.999 --> 01:36:28.998
was dredging the bottom
of the continental shelf

01:36:28.999 --> 01:36:32.401
about 40 miles off the coast
of Virginia when it picked up a

01:36:32.402 --> 01:36:36.939
complete mastodon skull with the tusks,
and in the basket with the skull

01:36:36.940 --> 01:36:39.090
was a stone biface blade.

01:36:40.390 --> 01:36:45.029
For decades, the blade and a piece
of the tusk sat in a small museum,

01:36:45.160 --> 01:36:49.140
until Dennis Stanford and Darrin Lowery
of the Smithsonian Institution

01:36:49.259 --> 01:36:51.770
recognized what might be one of the most

01:36:51.771 --> 01:36:54.660
extraordinary finds in
American archaeology.

01:36:55.509 --> 01:36:59.899
The mastodon tusk that came up in
the dredge basket with the human tool

01:36:59.901 --> 01:37:03.490
was radiocarbon dated to more
than 22,000 years ago.

01:37:05.189 --> 01:37:10.001
Narragansett is not the only place
where people apparently were

01:37:10.003 --> 01:37:12.850
using the outer continental shelf,
were living out there.

01:37:13.560 --> 01:37:16.060
And it would appear
to me that if in fact

01:37:16.069 --> 01:37:20.450
we look more closely at what has
been found in recent times,

01:37:20.669 --> 01:37:22.859
that we'll have this all
up and down the coast.

01:37:23.919 --> 01:37:29.850
Yeah, Cinmar is right out on the
edge of the continental shelf.

01:37:30.500 --> 01:37:33.899
And Captain Sean, when he hit it,
primarily he recorded it

01:37:33.901 --> 01:37:36.379
in what they call a hang log,

01:37:36.379 --> 01:37:40.839
so Darrin was able to interview him
and get the hang log data.

01:37:41.140 --> 01:37:44.839
And the first question I asked him,
I said, "Do you collect artifacts?"

01:37:45.240 --> 01:37:46.080
And he said, "No."

01:37:46.819 --> 01:37:49.799
And I said, "The thing that you
found in that museum,

01:37:50.209 --> 01:37:51.279
"what depth was it?"

01:37:51.430 --> 01:37:52.899
He said, "38, 40 fathoms."

01:37:54.459 --> 01:37:56.250
And I didn't hesitate.

01:37:56.649 --> 01:37:58.459
Through the University of Delaware,

01:37:58.509 --> 01:38:02.959
we went out there with
underwater mapping capability

01:38:04.459 --> 01:38:08.720
and went right to where he said he found
it and started going back and forth,

01:38:09.290 --> 01:38:10.160
and that's what we hit.

01:38:10.360 --> 01:38:15.339
So our plan now is to go out
there with an underwater rover

01:38:15.339 --> 01:38:19.560
and have it go down and
look around and see if there's--

01:38:20.370 --> 01:38:24.189
make sure that isn't somebody's
refrigerator they threw overboard.

01:38:24.959 --> 01:38:26.740
You could still cut with this thing,

01:38:27.479 --> 01:38:33.100
so it was never on a shore face tumbling
around being moved by wave energy.

01:38:33.279 --> 01:38:38.001
So what is the source of this blade

01:38:38.002 --> 01:38:40.999
that was found with
the Cinmar discovery?

01:38:40.589 --> 01:38:45.899
An outcrops in a pretty large region

01:38:45.900 --> 01:38:48.999
in a pretty large region
of an area most commonly

01:38:49.001 --> 01:38:52.480
in an area called South Mountain
in Pennsylvania,

01:38:52.481 --> 01:38:56.099
maybe it slips over into Maryland,
I'm not sure of its entire extent.

01:38:56.999 --> 01:39:01.100
But it's 250 miles away from
where this knife was found.

01:39:01.979 --> 01:39:06.049
The discovery of the blade source
in the mountains 250 miles away

01:39:06.050 --> 01:39:09.998
from where it was dredged up
with the mastodon skull suggests

01:39:09.999 --> 01:39:12.999
that over 20,000 years ago,
people were living in

01:39:13.001 --> 01:39:16.999
eastern North America who already
had a profound knowledge of the

01:39:17.001 --> 01:39:20.319
landscape and its
environmental resources.

01:39:20.319 --> 01:39:24.339
So, with what kind of frequency
do you think these are surfacing?

01:39:24.520 --> 01:39:26.870
Well, when I clammed in
the Chesapeake Bay--

01:39:26.879 --> 01:39:29.109
now apparently we didn't go to
the depth that these guys did--

01:39:29.359 --> 01:39:32.679
every day we dredged up
something Native American.

01:39:32.680 --> 01:39:33.999
Every day.

01:39:34.104 --> 01:39:38.020
Now, it might be a lowly piece of
bipolar core that somebody,

01:39:38.979 --> 01:39:40.649
you know, tried to
get a flake off of it,

01:39:41.040 --> 01:39:44.850
or it could be a Native American burial.

01:39:45.509 --> 01:39:47.069
And we have dredged those up.

01:39:48.209 --> 01:39:52.609
The Cinmar find is controversial and
the problem is that no archaeologist

01:39:52.620 --> 01:39:56.220
ever saw the blade and the
tusk together on the ocean floor.

01:39:56.350 --> 01:39:59.629
But no matter how the science
eventually sorts itself out,

01:40:00.000 --> 01:40:03.549
this is the kind of discovery that
points to what the future holds

01:40:03.551 --> 01:40:08.750
as development and research expand out
onto the submerged continental shelf.

01:40:10.879 --> 01:40:14.889
Cinmar has told us
that there's a high,

01:40:15.169 --> 01:40:17.310
extremely high probability

01:40:17.600 --> 01:40:22.819
that the entire continental shelf
has Native American archaeology.

01:40:25.140 --> 01:40:28.370
The existence of an indigenous
Ice Age civilization

01:40:28.379 --> 01:40:31.270
that was capable of navigating
the North Atlantic Ocean

01:40:31.500 --> 01:40:33.950
is a concept that
doesn't fit easily into the

01:40:33.959 --> 01:40:37.720
popular image or the currently
accepted history of Native America.

01:40:41.220 --> 01:40:43.160
At the beginning of the 20th century,

01:40:43.290 --> 01:40:46.759
most archaeologists believe
that Indians had existed in the

01:40:46.770 --> 01:40:50.200
western hemisphere for
only 3,000 or 4,000 years.

01:40:53.370 --> 01:40:57.599
But in the 1920s, it was also
an unexpected discovery

01:40:57.600 --> 01:41:00.998
of a stone blade among the bones
of an extinct giant mammal

01:41:01.001 --> 01:41:04.950
that first shatterred the glass basement
of Native American history.

01:41:06.790 --> 01:41:11.560
This feature article in a Denver
newspaper announced the scientific proof

01:41:11.569 --> 01:41:15.319
that humans existed in the western
hemisphere during the Ice Age,

01:41:15.500 --> 01:41:18.129
and tried to introduce
the concept to the public.

01:41:19.919 --> 01:41:22.750
At the time,
before radiocarbon dating,

01:41:22.899 --> 01:41:26.620
researchers had no idea how
old the artifacts actually were.

01:41:27.459 --> 01:41:29.729
But in terms of the
public's imagination,

01:41:30.060 --> 01:41:33.959
the typical primitive stereotype
image of crude clothing

01:41:34.129 --> 01:41:37.069
has subconsciously shaped
generations of thinking

01:41:37.080 --> 01:41:39.390
about the intelligence
of Paleo cultures.

01:41:40.419 --> 01:41:43.008
Look how fine this thread
is that we pull through

01:41:43.009 --> 01:41:46.819
this bone needle made
some 10,800 years ago,

01:41:46.910 --> 01:41:49.520
how delicate the sinew must have been.

01:41:49.899 --> 01:41:53.149
I think this is one of the
most exquisite examples

01:41:53.160 --> 01:41:56.500
where you got something as commonplace,
as simple as a bone needle.

01:41:56.569 --> 01:41:59.580
But boy, the story that
this small artifact tells you

01:41:59.819 --> 01:42:01.100
is just amazing.

01:42:01.279 --> 01:42:05.993
You go from sort of the stereotypic
images of loin cloths and hunters

01:42:05.994 --> 01:42:09.095
that are more primitive that
have been in the popular press

01:42:09.104 --> 01:42:10.075
for many, many years,

01:42:10.084 --> 01:42:13.884
and you find a small bone needle
carefully made such as this,

01:42:13.904 --> 01:42:17.935
and you begin to realize that the
delicacy of the hand movements

01:42:17.944 --> 01:42:21.075
the people used and the
beauty of the clothing.

01:42:21.294 --> 01:42:22.999
You can go from a needle such as this

01:42:23.001 --> 01:42:28.865
and imagine the tightly woven clothing,
waterproof, windproof and warm.

01:42:29.075 --> 01:42:31.104
All cultures have their work clothes.

01:42:31.410 --> 01:42:33.600
But the intensity of paleo design

01:42:33.609 --> 01:42:36.189
wasn't just limited to
practical considerations

01:42:36.200 --> 01:42:37.859
like warmth and waterproofing.

01:42:38.279 --> 01:42:40.998
It's made out of bone,
and it's probably one of the

01:42:40.999 --> 01:42:45.790
smallest archaeological
beads that I know of.

01:42:47.240 --> 01:42:49.500
And it really scares me
because I wonder,

01:42:49.502 --> 01:42:52.729
even though we do
flotation and fine screening,

01:42:52.729 --> 01:42:55.839
how many of these we might miss
just because it isn't recognized.

01:42:55.850 --> 01:42:57.680
Look how small and delicate it is.

01:42:57.689 --> 01:43:01.680
It points out of the real sophistication

01:43:01.681 --> 01:43:04.080
and complexity,
I think, of their society.

01:43:04.580 --> 01:43:06.998
Only through time, more discovery,

01:43:07.001 --> 01:43:10.279
and less prejudice about the
capability of our ancestors

01:43:10.500 --> 01:43:13.720
can we achieve a more accurate
picture of human history

01:43:16.229 --> 01:43:18.700
From the tribal perspective,

01:43:20.200 --> 01:43:23.580
we often mistrust the scientific process

01:43:23.581 --> 01:43:25.939
partially because we
don't understand it.

01:43:27.459 --> 01:43:31.109
And because Cinmar is so,
by its implications,

01:43:31.110 --> 01:43:37.309
is so significant for tribes,
it's projecting a tribal reality

01:43:37.310 --> 01:43:39.101
out on the continental shelf.

01:43:39.102 --> 01:43:40.540
It's important to us.

01:43:42.950 --> 01:43:43.999
It became exciting,

01:43:44.359 --> 01:43:47.740
because here the tribes
were in a position to

01:43:48.750 --> 01:43:55.250
to request and to
attempt to influence

01:43:59.060 --> 01:44:00.569
a political situation

01:44:03.630 --> 01:44:06.890
that from our perspective
is only political because

01:44:06.891 --> 01:44:08.729
we're used to our

01:44:11.669 --> 01:44:13.250
cultural concerns

01:44:14.109 --> 01:44:18.710
that point away from us
coming across the Bering Straits.

01:44:18.712 --> 01:44:21.379
But having been here
since time immemorium

01:44:21.382 --> 01:44:25.200
we're used to those political concerns
being pushed under the rug.

01:44:25.879 --> 01:44:29.600
Now, that may be an overly
sensitive tribal perspective,

01:44:29.609 --> 01:44:31.939
and I'm sure that there are
many scientists who would say,

01:44:31.940 --> 01:44:32.950
"That's not the case."

01:44:32.950 --> 01:44:35.220
You know, "We only do it
by the scientific book."

01:44:35.879 --> 01:44:39.740
But best practices, as I have
learned about best practices

01:44:39.741 --> 01:44:43.601
working with the
scientists off Rhode Island,

01:44:44.069 --> 01:44:46.109
establishes a level playing field.

01:44:47.129 --> 01:44:50.998
It establishes an environment
where one set of rules

01:44:50.999 --> 01:44:56.060
is how you approach determining what
the evidence is and what the facts are.

01:44:57.229 --> 01:44:59.770
And if we can learn, as tribes,

01:45:01.279 --> 01:45:06.299
that one set of rules that is being
tested offshore Rhode Island,

01:45:06.560 --> 01:45:10.970
and then can be applied in a
situation that's very controversial,

01:45:10.979 --> 01:45:13.583
then we're excited
about the possibilities

01:45:13.584 --> 01:45:15.778
of it being applied anywhere.

01:45:32.189 --> 01:45:34.850
Sometime around 20,000 years ago,

01:45:34.851 --> 01:45:37.701
when the Macedon dredged up
by the Cinmar died near

01:45:37.702 --> 01:45:40.998
the edge of the now-submerged
Ice Age Atlantic coast,

01:45:40.999 --> 01:45:45.169
the Delmarva Peninsula was an upland
region about 40 miles to the west.

01:45:47.680 --> 01:45:50.889
When Stanford and Lowery
began working on the peninsula

01:45:50.890 --> 01:45:52.020
around the turn of the millennium,

01:45:52.399 --> 01:45:54.459
there were already
hints that the Delmarva

01:45:54.470 --> 01:45:56.620
might be an important
archaeological region.

01:45:58.350 --> 01:46:00.840
Chesapeake Bay was once just a valley

01:46:00.841 --> 01:46:03.130
with the Chester River
running through it.

01:46:03.830 --> 01:46:07.950
Fishermen dredging for clams on
the bottom of Chesapeake Bay

01:46:07.951 --> 01:46:12.270
accidentally uncovered a 7,000
to 8000 year old Native cemetery

01:46:12.271 --> 01:46:14.679
that had extraordinary preservation.

01:46:14.979 --> 01:46:19.240
Interestingly, a number of Archaic Period
woodworking tools were discovered.

01:46:19.620 --> 01:46:22.080
Because of the good
anaerobic preservation,

01:46:22.339 --> 01:46:26.000
not only did they find ground
stone gouges for boat building,

01:46:26.069 --> 01:46:28.799
but they also found gouges
that were made from bone.

01:46:31.160 --> 01:46:33.540
Toward the middle of
the Delmarva Peninsula,

01:46:33.549 --> 01:46:37.500
this large biface blade was found
at a Native cemetery site

01:46:37.501 --> 01:46:39.040
on the Nanticoke River.

01:46:39.240 --> 01:46:41.439
Made out of Ramah chert from Labrador,

01:46:41.759 --> 01:46:46.250
the discovery connected this region to
the larger Ramah chert trading system

01:46:47.310 --> 01:46:49.540
At the southern tip
of the Delmarva Peninsula,

01:46:49.609 --> 01:46:53.020
there is a ridge of exposed land
called Mock Horn Island.

01:46:55.140 --> 01:46:57.859
Stanford and Lowery explored
the island because it was

01:46:57.870 --> 01:47:02.289
a location where Lowery had previously
excavated several Ramah chert artifacts.

01:47:04.759 --> 01:47:08.940
This small spit of land is an
extraordinary archaeological resource

01:47:08.942 --> 01:47:13.140
because each red triangle represents
an archaeological excavation

01:47:13.310 --> 01:47:16.998
that has yielded many
paleolithic Clovis artifacts,

01:47:16.999 --> 01:47:20.299
including what are thought
to be early boat-building tools.

01:47:21.299 --> 01:47:24.600
What makes Clovis different
than pre-Clovis, I suspect,

01:47:24.609 --> 01:47:28.009
is the fluted projectile point,
and why they developed that

01:47:28.010 --> 01:47:31.109
and it became such a popular way

01:47:31.110 --> 01:47:34.220
to manufacture a weapon tip,
we don't know.

01:47:34.910 --> 01:47:38.490
Certainly it's a hafting device,
but why is it so more

01:47:38.879 --> 01:47:42.970
a significantly better hafting
device than unfluted point?

01:47:44.779 --> 01:47:46.290
We haven't a clue.

01:47:46.590 --> 01:47:48.930
My own guess is it has to
do with the fact that

01:47:48.930 --> 01:47:51.890
these projectile points
are actually in blades

01:47:52.250 --> 01:47:57.139
of a very composite artifact
such as the harpoon gear

01:47:57.140 --> 01:48:02.909
that we see with the Eskimos
within blades, sockets, foreshafts.

01:48:03.002 --> 01:48:05.459
And this, I think,
is the tip of a foreshaft,

01:48:05.470 --> 01:48:08.889
and there's another piece
that comes out at the end.

01:48:08.999 --> 01:48:11.620
And here's what I think
that piece looked like.

01:48:12.310 --> 01:48:15.069
This one's from Indiana,
found in a peat bog,

01:48:15.520 --> 01:48:19.399
radiocarbon dated to
around 10,000 plus years.

01:48:19.779 --> 01:48:21.999
And see how it's slotted here,

01:48:22.001 --> 01:48:24.600
and it's got a hole
drilled into this side?

01:48:24.600 --> 01:48:28.626
And if you note this hole
fits in like that,

01:48:30.260 --> 01:48:33.649
you can fit the foreshaft in,

01:48:34.490 --> 01:48:36.709
and then you can
take a Clovis point

01:48:38.430 --> 01:48:39.430
and put that,

01:48:43.009 --> 01:48:44.570
have that all together.

01:48:45.270 --> 01:48:47.569
And it's basically a harpoon system.

01:48:47.569 --> 01:48:51.770
It's a delivery system that's
intended to come apart.

01:48:53.549 --> 01:48:56.850
The Clovis people,
with their unique fluted points,

01:48:56.859 --> 01:48:57.999
were thought to be the first Americans

01:48:58.001 --> 01:49:00.379
to reach the Atlantic
Ocean from Siberia.

01:49:01.379 --> 01:49:03.919
When Stanford and Lowery
began their work,

01:49:03.930 --> 01:49:06.879
few people understood
how extensive or deep

01:49:06.890 --> 01:49:09.479
the Clovis tradition was
along the Atlantic coast

01:49:10.149 --> 01:49:13.209
because the origins of Clovis were
supposed to come from the west.

01:49:14.240 --> 01:49:14.390
Yeah,

01:49:14.399 --> 01:49:18.959
The Choptank Watershed is only about
60 miles long and about 20 miles wide.

01:49:18.961 --> 01:49:21.870
Compared to some of the big
watersheds out in the west or,

01:49:21.879 --> 01:49:24.069
you know, it's sort of
like a little stream.

01:49:25.240 --> 01:49:28.998
So this little teeny
dinky watershed has,

01:49:28.999 --> 01:49:33.998
you know, 89, has produced 89
diagnostic early Paleo-Indian artifacts.

01:49:33.999 --> 01:49:36.060
And what you got to
take in consideration

01:49:36.359 --> 01:49:39.159
is that this sample is
biased by sea level rise.

01:49:39.999 --> 01:49:44.719
You lower the sea level by 300 feet,
lord only knows what's out there

01:49:44.720 --> 01:49:47.580
underneath of that
watershed out there.

01:49:48.190 --> 01:49:52.001
To me, that indicates that people
have been here for a long time,

01:49:52.002 --> 01:49:55.310
and some of the radiocarbon dates,
although we don't have enough,

01:49:55.311 --> 01:49:57.399
but some of them begin to support that

01:49:57.870 --> 01:50:00.998
Clovis may be earlier here in the east.

01:50:00.999 --> 01:50:04.119
And it may well be that
the Clovis developed in the east.

01:50:04.779 --> 01:50:07.379
Now when we compare that to the west,

01:50:07.839 --> 01:50:10.000
you know, right here on
Del Marvia Peninsula

01:50:10.001 --> 01:50:14.929
we probably in the last two days
seen more Clovis points

01:50:14.930 --> 01:50:19.090
then you would see in Wyoming,
Colorado and New Mexico combined.

01:50:19.091 --> 01:50:22.859
It, it just, it staggers your mind
when you think about it.

01:50:25.250 --> 01:50:27.189
And I think it's telling us something.

01:50:27.200 --> 01:50:29.790
It's telling us that the
population really was here.

01:50:31.850 --> 01:50:35.629
We're right in the heartland of
Clovis and pre-Clovis right here.

01:50:37.250 --> 01:50:39.998
It is the action of the
sea that both saves

01:50:39.999 --> 01:50:43.620
and sometimes reveals its
hidden cultural resources.

01:50:44.839 --> 01:50:48.959
The Ice Age hills that once rose up
from the valley of the Chester River

01:50:49.060 --> 01:50:52.998
are now just low, sandy
dunes being washed away

01:50:52.999 --> 01:50:56.290
by tides, storms and
ever-rising sea level.

01:50:58.870 --> 01:51:03.820
First settled around 1640,
this is the mapping of Parsons Island

01:51:03.821 --> 01:51:06.939
from the official U.S.
coastal survey of 1847.

01:51:07.770 --> 01:51:12.470
At that time, the mapped area
of the island totaled 177 acres.

01:51:15.910 --> 01:51:18.729
Official coastal surveys and
measurements have continued to

01:51:18.740 --> 01:51:21.209
document its vanishing
shoreline ever since.

01:51:26.379 --> 01:51:29.879
This is a photo looking east toward
the southern tip of Parsons Island

01:51:29.890 --> 01:51:31.959
that was taken in 1969.

01:51:33.450 --> 01:51:36.870
Here is a photo taken from
the same angle in 2016.

01:51:37.580 --> 01:51:39.998
We can see that large
portions of the island

01:51:39.999 --> 01:51:42.600
have vanished beneath the rising sea.

01:51:42.600 --> 01:51:46.680
Today, shoreline is being lost at
the rate of about 9 feet per year.

01:51:48.629 --> 01:51:51.359
This southwestern site on the
island is the location of

01:51:51.370 --> 01:51:54.500
an archaeological excavation
overseen by Darrin Lowery.

01:51:57.259 --> 01:52:02.279
This picture shows the original area of
excavation near the shoreline in 2005.

01:52:04.560 --> 01:52:09.580
The powerful wave action
continued, and by 2010

01:52:09.839 --> 01:52:12.950
part of the excavation area
began to be lost to the sea.

01:52:15.310 --> 01:52:19.430
A 19th century brick well near the
excavation is a good marker

01:52:19.439 --> 01:52:22.370
to be able to see how the ocean
has been eroding the shoreline.

01:52:24.660 --> 01:52:26.069
All through this period,

01:52:26.109 --> 01:52:29.529
Native American artifacts were
eroding out of the sandbank.

01:52:32.169 --> 01:52:35.779
Many different kinds of Paleolithic
artifacts have been recovered

01:52:35.790 --> 01:52:39.229
washed out onto the beach and
still embedded in the sandbank.

01:52:40.919 --> 01:52:44.140
Smithsonian teams excavated
test units of the site.

01:52:45.060 --> 01:52:48.609
They found a quartz flake and they
found charcoal with the flake.

01:52:48.859 --> 01:52:52.569
The charcoal was carbon dated
to over 22,000 years ago.

01:52:53.799 --> 01:52:58.040
All the artifacts have come from a single
archaeological level in the sandbank,

01:52:59.640 --> 01:53:02.379
and the charcoal samples
found in this level have been

01:53:02.390 --> 01:53:06.937
radiocarbon dated to a range
between 20,000 and 23,000 years ago.

01:53:11.259 --> 01:53:15.860
Darrin Lowery is pointing to the darker
visually distinctive strata, or layer,

01:53:15.863 --> 01:53:17.620
that all the artifacts were found in,

01:53:18.080 --> 01:53:20.700
but he's calling attention
to a stone biface blade

01:53:20.720 --> 01:53:23.100
that is still embedded in the sandbank.

01:53:26.020 --> 01:53:28.609
This artifact may be
especially important.

01:53:29.000 --> 01:53:32.200
It is strikingly similar to
the biface blade that was

01:53:32.209 --> 01:53:35.569
recovered with the mastodon
tusks by the Cinmar dredge.

01:53:36.089 --> 01:53:40.250
It appears to have been made in the same
style with the same knapping technique.

01:53:41.939 --> 01:53:45.000
And like the knife preserved
on the cold ocean floor,

01:53:45.319 --> 01:53:48.270
the analysis of this blade
and others found at the site

01:53:48.419 --> 01:53:52.009
indicated that it still had a
microscopic residue,

01:53:52.010 --> 01:53:55.100
proving that the blades were used
to butcher Ice Age mammals

01:53:55.101 --> 01:53:57.101
like giant bison and musk ox.

01:53:58.250 --> 01:54:01.490
And the bones of both these
extinct species were found at the site.

01:54:03.919 --> 01:54:08.220
Since the Delmarva blades found on
the beach were over 20,000 years old,

01:54:08.430 --> 01:54:10.340
and similar technologically to the blade

01:54:10.341 --> 01:54:13.100
found by the scallop dredge
on the sea floor,

01:54:13.470 --> 01:54:18.339
these newly discovered artifacts provide
a context for the possibility that

01:54:18.350 --> 01:54:22.500
the Cinmar blade might fit into an
early history of Native America

01:54:22.689 --> 01:54:24.770
that hasn't been seriously imagined yet.

01:54:27.990 --> 01:54:29.649
Over 100 years ago,

01:54:29.890 --> 01:54:33.729
a farmer on the coast of Maine
made an archaeological discovery

01:54:33.740 --> 01:54:37.810
that started the fantastical
story of a lost race in America.

01:54:38.049 --> 01:54:42.339
The myth of the Red Paint People
kept the mystery alive for decades

01:54:42.540 --> 01:54:46.470
until more environmental and
archaeological evidence could be added,

01:54:46.620 --> 01:54:49.930
until eventually the
story became scientific.

01:54:53.060 --> 01:54:56.740
What amazing discoveries will
the next 100 years offer us

01:54:56.742 --> 01:55:00.999
if we can begin to thoroughly explore
the ancient coastlines and river systems

01:55:01.001 --> 01:55:03.680
all along the submerged Atlantic shelf?

01:55:11.029 --> 01:55:13.350
And there is one more
surprise to this story.

01:55:13.990 --> 01:55:15.700
In October of 2020,

01:55:15.779 --> 01:55:19.589
there was another discovery of an
artifact eroding out of the sandbank,

01:55:20.140 --> 01:55:24.379
situated in the 20,000 to 23,000
year old archaeological level

01:55:24.390 --> 01:55:26.120
along with a bit of red ochre.

01:55:26.379 --> 01:55:29.490
Researchers found a
constructed stone feature.

01:55:30.379 --> 01:55:34.339
It's significant that all the geological
layers of this beach terrace have been

01:55:34.350 --> 01:55:38.120
built up over thousands of years
with windblown sand and clay.

01:55:38.640 --> 01:55:42.520
You can see that large chunks of
compressed clay fall to the beach,

01:55:42.750 --> 01:55:47.200
but no boulders cobbles or natural rock
formations exist in these dunes.

01:55:48.759 --> 01:55:51.140
But this unusual stone construction

01:55:51.270 --> 01:55:55.049
appears to be an unmistakable
example of human design,

01:55:55.250 --> 01:55:59.709
created with carefully chosen stones
that had to be carried to this location.

01:56:01.689 --> 01:56:07.189
What if people did live along the Atlantic
coast of America over 20,000 years ago?

01:56:07.700 --> 01:56:11.629
And what would that shattering of
another level in the glass basement of

01:56:11.640 --> 01:56:16.939
Native history mean to our long-accepted
ideas about the Indigenous American?