A marine archaeologist at SFU is launching an ambitious study to find evidence of how people first migrated to North America over 15,000 years ago.
The trick is that what used to be the coastline is now ocean floor.
B.C.B次元官网网址檚 landscape was wildly different before the Holocene epoch, which began over 11,000 years ago after the Ice Age. There werenB次元官网网址檛 cedar trees, there were no salmon. In some places the coastline has moved inland by more than 40 kilometers.
B次元官网网址淔ifteen-thousand years ago you could walk from Haida Gwaii to what we now call the mainland. Same for Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands,B次元官网网址� said Rob Rondeau. B次元官网网址淲e know this because weB次元官网网址檝e found remains of animals like mastodon and mammoths.B次元官网网址�
Rondeau has been a marine archaeologist for decades, mostly searching for ship wrecks and other relatively large objects. Now heB次元官网网址檚 looking for a needle in a 2.5 million square-kilometre haystack of what was Beringia.
Archaeologists have various theories on how people came to North America, the most common is that they migrated westward from Siberia as mammoth and mastodon herds followed the grasslands. From there they either migrated down the coast, or followed the middle of the continent into the interior plains.
Rondeau thinks the coastal route is more likely, and is setting out to find evidence in his three-year PhD project.
ItB次元官网网址檚 the first time heB次元官网网址檚 approached this topic, and heB次元官网网址檚 the only person looking for formerly terrestrial archaeological sites to find out how the First Peoples migrated.
HeB次元官网网址檚 starting by using sonar and other technology to map the shape of the ocean floor. Then he can identify where river valleys and lakes would have been. HeB次元官网网址檒l combine knowledge gained from archaeological sites in Alaska to identify areas most likely to have been inhabited by humans.
From there, heB次元官网网址檒l drill core samples and look for evidence of habitation.
Even if he doesnB次元官网网址檛 find artifacts, the research will still be useful for what the core samples will be able to tell us about the environment back then, he said. But heB次元官网网址檚 hoping to come back with at least a stone tool, or a charred bone for evidence.
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