Now streaming: Finding the First Floridians FULL EPISODE
“This is the epicenter of submerged prehistory on the planet… From, say, the Wakulla (River), east to the Suwannee, is the densest concentration of submerged prehistoric sites anywhere in the world.”
Dr. Morgan Smith, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
One day in the spring of 2013, Morgan emerged from the black water of the Aucilla River holding a small stone knife. At the time, he was an undergraduate student at the University of West Florida, spending a second summer volunteering on the Page-Ladson archeological excavation. Two field seasons had to that point yielded no artifacts and the crew figured they might have to move on. Instead, they ended up in National Geographic.
Archeologists dated the knife to 14,500 years ago, a date that would once have been controversial. It was too early for humans to have been in the Americas. Archeologists working on Page-Ladson in the 1990s had arrived at a similar date, but since the site was submerged, their findings were disregarded. Their earlier work was now validated, as was the field of submerged prehistoric archeology.
Finding the First Floridians is the story of a new generation of archeologists who are finding the story of Florida’s ancient past in its abundant waterways. They’re building on the work of pioneers who figured out how to adapt techniques used by terrestrial archeologists to a challenging underwater environment, and do so scientifically.
Florida’s rivers, sinks, and springs- not to mention a wide, shallow continental shelf offshore- make our state an archeological hotspot. Through sites spanning thousands of years, we learn the story of a people coping with and adapting to an ever-changing landscape, watching Florida take its modern shape.
Chapter 1: Florida’s Ice Age Landscape
Were humans and mastodons in Florida at the same time? Florida was home to over twenty large mammal species that went extinct or vanished from the area just under 13,000 years ago. The dates didn’t line up with what had been the accepted timeline for humans in the Americas, but divers kept finding fossils with stone tools.
Those fossils can tell us a lot about Florida at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, the last ice age. It was a landscape like and unlike the Florida we know today.
Chapter 2: Rising Seas and Flowing Rivers
During the last ice age, much of the world’s water was frozen in glaciers. Sea level was lower, as were water tables; rivers weren’t flowing, and the coast was further out than it is today.
When people arrived in Florida, glaciers had been melting and would continue to melt for thousands of years. In many ways, it was an unstable environment.
Chapter 3: Early Florida cultures adapt to changes in the land
Page-Ladson is one of North America’s most significant sites, and yet a single knife and a handful of stone flakes are all we know of humans here. Using environmental clues and the items people left behind, archeologists try to find their story. How they adapted to change and instability would guide the evolution of their cultures.
Archeological sites in Finding the First Floridians
Simpson’s Flats: a mastodon skeleton erodes from the banks of the Ichetucknee River, not far from several projectile points. Were people here at the same time as the mastodon?
Page-Ladson: One of the oldest sites in the country had long been ignored. What did divers find in a layer of mastodon poop to change people’s minds?
Ryan-Harley: In the Wacissa River, recreational divers found two projectile points carved in the Suwannee style. Would researchers finally find out when the mysterious Suwannee culture occupied Florida?
Ladybug: Downstream of Page-Ladson, researchers investigate the source of stone tools and tool fragments found in the Aucilla River.
Econfina offshore: Oysters grow on the coast, but for thousands of years, Florida’s coast was on the move. Did people harvest oysters and other shellfish from an unstable coastline?
Windover: One of a handful of sites where indigenous central Floridians performed an uncommon burial practice.
Finding the First Floridians was commissioned by the Archaeological Research Cooperative, and funded by a grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources.