A Short Background
In 2016,
Dr. Jessi Halligan
, a FSU archaeologist who spent years investigating an
underwater sinkhole known as the
Page-Ladson site
, located in northern Florida east
of Tallahassee, made a startling announcement.
Her team had discovered evidence of
human habitation much older than the Clovis Culture.
T
he
theory of the Clovis people
populating the Americas around 13,000 years ago by coming across the Beringia land
bridge has been widely accepted since unearthing their artifacts in the 1930’s near
Clovis, NM.
Dr. Halligan’s find predates the Clovis people by more than 1,000 years.
Her research, and
others
, have left anthropologists scratching their heads about
where
the first humans in North America
came from, and when they first populated
the Americas.
BTW – Florida has laws against
excavating artifacts (
Alachua County
man arrested for excavating artifacts
).
There are over 50 “weasel words” used in just the Introduction
and the Results &
Discussion
sections of the article, e.g.,
suggests, is thought, should be, inferred
, etc.
These words/phrases highlight the nature of scientific research, are very common in
scientific literature, and are not pejorative as the phrase implies.
Scientists never use
absolute words like
proves, shows that, reveals, demonstrates
, etc., because there are
precious few absolutes in our world.
If you recall from a previous unit,
law
is the
highest level a hypothesis can achieve, but even
The Law of Gravity
does not work at
the quantum mechanics level.
Science is the
SEARCH
for truth and enlightenment
about our natural world.
It is important because testing and revising hypotheses
makes for more reliable knowledge.
This assignment includes the spring at the Page-Ladson site as well as many other
springs that flow from the
Floridan Aquifer
.
It suggests that there may be a link in
organic sediments issuing from these springs to past environmental changes in the
area.
The Pleistocene & Holocene are geologic Epochs (time periods).
The
Pleistocene, AKA the last Ice Age, begins about 2.5 million BP and ends about 10,000
BP.
10,000 BP is also when the Holocene begins and is our current Epoch.
ASSIGNMENT
After perusing the attached research article (Tanner, et al) answer the
following questions (20pts each):
1.
Read the first sentence of the Introduction.
Why are glacial periods correlated to
global sea level
changes?
Glaciers are denser than water, they take up more space in the water causing
2.
Why are “anaerobic deposits” important to this study?
Organic material is maintained by a process known as anaerobic deposits. They are significant because they
serve as a record of alterations to the environment. Numerous years of deposition, paleoenvironmental
proxies, and organic material that can be radiocarbon dated were all captured by this procedure.
3.
As seen in the following graph, Florida’s population has grown from under 5 million
in 1950 to
