University of Michigan researchers find clues at bottom of Lake Huron to ancient hunters
by Tracy Davis | The Ann Arbor News
Wednesday June 10, 2009, 11:52 AM
University of Michigan researchers have found the first archaeological evidence of ancient human hunting activity preserved under the Great Lakes.
Using detailed government data on lake floor topography, a research vessel and a remote mini-rover equipped with a camera, scientists found what they believe are hunting pits, camps and rock structures called caribou "drive lines" on the bottom of Lake Huron.
Drive lines, also called drive lanes, are walls built of rocks that hunters used to lure caribou into ambush. A peculiarity of the deer species is that it readily follows linear cues, even though the rock walls are short enough to step over.
The structures were found on an underwater ridge that - about 9,000 years ago - was a land bridge above water. The 10-mile-wide Alpena-Amberley ridge stretches more than 100 miles from near Point Clark, Ontario, to Presque Isle.
The 1,148-foot "drive line" structure found by U-M researchers closely resembles one previously discovered on Victoria Island in the Canadian subarctic.
"The reason this is really significant is this is a really important time period in human history in North America," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the U-M Museum of Anthropology and a professor of anthropology.
Much land-based archaeological evidence about early North Americans has been lost to time. But the extreme cold and neutral fresh waters of the Great Lakes help to preserve such finds, O'Shea said.
"All sorts of organic material may well be preserved," he said. "Some groups have found whole forests basically preserved under water because it's so cold. It's the equivalent of Pompeii."
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