Underwater archeology reveals clues about Ice Age humans
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Why do archaeologists dive underwater to study Ice Age sites?
Hey, it's Flora and you're listening to Science Friday. We're headed to a dig site where archaeologists are looking for relics from human civilization dating back 12,000 years to the last ice age. But don't picture researchers in wide-brimmed hats under the scorching sun with trowels and tiny brushes. Imagine them in scuba gear, because this archaeological site is deep under Lake Erie. Why go looking there? And how do you do archaeology underwater? Here to tell us more is reporter Reed Frazier from the Allegheny Front in Pittsburgh, who recently tagged along on this expedition. Hey, Reed.
Hey, Flora.
This setup sounds wet and wild. Tell us what it was like.
So we go out on a boat on a rainy morning from Erie, Pennsylvania, into the middle of Lake Erie. And the rain is coming down. Everyone sort of wraps tarps around all of their equipment on this research boat. And we hunker down and we're out going into the lake for a couple hours. And at one point I looked at my GPS and realized we were very close to the Canadian border, which apparently you're not supposed to cross or you will get in trouble. And the captain of the boat goes in these straight lines for like seven kilometers where they drag this sonar equipment behind the boat to scan for suitable sites to dig. And it's... Pretty monotonous. You know, if you've been on a long boat ride, there's a lot of just sitting around.
And one of the students, there's a lot of students on the boat. And one of the students in the cabin is reading like hard copy of War and Peace, which I know takes a long time because it took me a year to read it. So if that gives you any idea of the kind of downtime there was.
How did Reid Frazier’s Lake Erie expedition locate a buried Ice Age riverbed?
Yeah, I mean, this seems like a very different scene than the one we usually imagine, right?
Yeah, the sort of...
For archaeologists.
Yeah, digging down into sandstone in some dry desert somewhere. And yeah, this is definitely not what I thought archaeology was all about.
What was the team looking for?
So they have this sonar equipment that could kind of tell them what the soil's like at the bottom of the lake. And they know that there is a geographic feature at the bottom of the lake, about 60 feet down, that at one time was above ground and would have been... a likely place where people came and tried to hunt and fish and get enough food to survive about 10, 8, 12,000 years ago in that range. And so they are looking for places to dig down, which pieces of mud to stick their pipes down into to take the coring samples.
Did they find anything useful that day?
Yeah, I mean, I think they did. You could kind of tell when they're Antenna go up and they're all looking at the lines on the screen, which to you and me are probably just gibberish, but to them, they kind of all sort of start noticing a weird line here or there. And I asked, okay, so what are you guys finding? And one of the researchers said nothing. This is an old riverbed and we wouldn't dig here in the riverbed, but not far away. You know, there could have been somebody's camp where they made their tools or they hunted for caribou or big game and did lots of other things that people do.
You know, I know you report on climate change. Did working on this story change your perspective at all?
I mean, absolutely. I think one of the things that struck me when I was talking to one of the researchers is she said, you know, there aren't any shorelines from 10 or 12,000 years ago anymore that you can dig into that are above ground. And it made me think, yeah, of course. And people live around water or they spend a lot of time around water at least because that's where a lot of our resources come from.
What did the sonar scans and core samples reveal about ancient shorelines?
And kind of puts it in perspective how rapidly things on planet Earth can change and some of the changes that we're seeing now that we're responsible for through climate change and burning fossil fuels. It just kind of makes you kind of sit up and realize how none of the things that we think of as fixed, including like lakes and rivers and shorelines, you know, those are temporary changes.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do archaeologists dive underwater to study Ice Age sites?
0:02–1:57
2
How did Reid Frazier’s Lake Erie expedition locate a buried Ice Age riverbed?
1:57–4:10
3
What did the sonar scans and core samples reveal about ancient shorelines?
4:10–6:49
4
How does the discovery in Lake Erie change our view of early human settlement?
6:49–8:40
5
What does the submerged Florida landscape tell us about Ice Age ecosystems?
8:40–11:32
6
Why is the 14,550‑year‑old Paige‑Ladson site a game‑changer for Clovis chronology?
11:32–13:36
7
How do wet, constant conditions preserve organic artifacts better than dry sites?
13:36–16:25
8
What challenges and rewards do underwater archaeologists face when excavating with scuba gear?
16:25–18:08
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Science Friday
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