A new article in Science proposes that coastal migrants might have reached North America as much as 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Ancient bison bones have been discovered on Vancouver Island and on Orcas Island in Washington State, suggesting to a team of researchers that plenty of food was available to hunters on the Pacific coast 14,000 years ago. One of the bones from the 14 sites appears to have been butchered.

Charred starch granules from domesticated corn have been found on 5,000-year-old pottery from western Ecuador. “It has long been thought that maize may have been used south of Panama at this time for ritual purposes but this shows it was also being consumed as food,” said archaeologist Scott Raymond of the University of Calgary.

Carbonized sweet potato dating to 1000 A.D. has been found in the Cook Islands, long before European contact could have spread the root vegetable. A new computer model shows that “accidental drift voyages” may have been responsible for its dispersal from South America to Polynesia.  

Human remains were found in a cave in Columbia, Tennessee, by a man out for a walk. The police department has called in archaeologists to help them determine whether or not they’ve got a crime scene or an American Indian burial.  

A white 1966 Lincoln Continental with a black top has been restored and is traveling from Indiana to Memphis, Tennessee, where it will go on display at the National Civil Rights Museum. The car is one of the few known to have been used by Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Seahenge, a 4,000-year-old timber circle, emerged from the sands in Norfolk, England, at Holme-next-the-Sea nine years ago. The circle will soon go on display at Lynn Museum.  

Anglo-Saxons are known for their lavish burials, but “The latest discoveries from cemeteries show that portable and quite modest artifacts, such as carefully wrought combs made of deer antler, and small tweezers, shears and razors made of iron or bronze, were of clear importance in the commemoration of the dead,” according to Howard Williams of the University of Chester.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, March 25, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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