Research Shows Early North Americans Made Eyed Needles from Fur-Bearers

Archaeologists from the University of Wyoming have found bone 13,000-year-old eyed needles crafted from the bones of various furry animals. The discovery sheds light on the lives of these early inhabitants of North America.

The important find comes from an important archaeological site in Wyoming, where, about 13,000 years ago, the early humans hunted a Columbian mammoth or ate its carcass.

The study, led by archaeologist Spencer Pelton, reveals that these primitive inhabitants made needles from the bones of animals such as foxes, hares, rabbits, bobcats, mountain lions, lynx, and the now-extinct American cheetah to create garments necessary for survival in a cool climate.

Paleolithic humans used the entire animal for much more than just food, which is not surprising given the harsh environment that required warm clothing. However, the 32 bone needles that were recently found provide an intricacy of craftsmanship and detail into the lives of our human ancestors.

Additionally, they identify an intriguing relationship between innovation and clothing that allowed early humans to migrate to and even survive in colder climates.

“Our study is the first to identify the species and likely elements from which Paleoindians produced eyed bone needles,” the researchers wrote. “Our results are strong evidence for tailored garment production using bone needles and fur-bearing animal pelts. These garments partially enabled modern human dispersal to northern latitudes and eventually enabled colonization of the Americas.”

The LaPrele site in Converse County preserves the remains of a killed or scavenged sub-adult mammoth and an associated camp occupied during the time the animal was butchered almost 13,000 years ago. Also discovered in the archaeological excavation — led by UW Department of Anthropology Professor Todd Surovell — was a bead made from a hare bone, the oldest known bead in the Americas.

To determine the origins of both the bone bead and the bone needles, the researchers used advanced techniques, such as zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS), to analyze the collagen deposits in the bones and identify the animal bones from which they were carved. The amino acids of animals in these artifacts were compared with those of animals between 13,500 and 12,000 years ago.

In presenting evidence for tailored garment production, researchers are highlighting a crucial innovation, as clothing that binds closely to the skin traps heat more effectively than draped clothing, along with stitched seams.

“Despite the importance of bone needles to explaining global modern human dispersal, archaeologists have never identified the materials used to produce them, thus limiting understanding of this important cultural innovation,” the researchers wrote.

Previous research has shown that, in order to cope with cold temperatures in northern latitudes, humans likely created tailored garments with closely stitched seams, providing a barrier against the elements.

While there’s little direct evidence of such garments, there is indirect evidence in the form of bone needles and the bones of fur-bearers whose pelts were used in the garments.

“Once equipped with such garments, modern humans had the capacity to expand their range to places from which they were previously excluded due to the threat of hypothermia or death from exposure,” Pelton and his colleagues wrote.

“Our results are a good reminder that foragers use animal products for a wide range of purposes other than subsistence and that the mere presence of animal bones in an archaeological site need not be indicative of diet,” the researchers concluded.

Early Paleoindian use of canids, felids, and hares for bone needle production at the La Prele site, Wyoming, USA, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313610

University of Wyoming

Cover Image Credit: An eyed needle made from the bone of a red fox found at the LaPrele archaeological site in Wyoming’s Converse County. Photo: Todd Surovell

Oldest US firearm unearthed in Arizona, a 500-year-old bronze cannon linked to Coronado expedition

Independent researchers in Arizona have unearthed a bronze cannon linked to the 16th-century expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, and it is marked to be the oldest known firearm found in the continental United States.

The 42-inch-long, roughly 40-pound sand-cast bronze cannon was discovered at the location of a Spanish stone-and-adobe structure in the Santa Cruz Valley that is thought to have been a part of the short-lived settlement San Geronimo III.

To finance an expedition to North America in 1539, Vázquez de Coronado took out large loans and mortgaged his wife’s possessions. The Spanish conquistador and his 350 soldiers intended to locate the legendary (and nonexistent) Seven Cities of Gold north of Mexico. By 1541, they had reached southern Arizona, where they established a settlement they called San Geronimo III, or Suya. San Geronimo was the first European town in the American Southwest.

 Rather than accumulating immense wealth, Coronado and his men plied, and spent the next three years plundering, enslaving, and murdering their way across the region.

These transgressions did not go unanswered. In the predawn hours of one fateful morning in 1541, the native Sobaipuri launched a surprise attack on the town. Many settlers were killed in their beds, and the survivors fled in disarray. The cannon — meant to intimidate and protect — was never even loaded.

Although Coronado was bankrupt and facing war crime charges when his expedition came to an end in Mexico City, his impact on North America would last for many generations.

One site in particular has produced a large number of artifacts associated with the explorers, according to the authors of a study published on November 21st in the International Journal of Historical Archeology.

Researchers found European pottery, weapon parts, including a 42-inch-long bronze cannon, and glass and olive jar fragments in the ruins of a stone and adobe building in Arizona’s Santa Cruz Valley.

“Not only is it the first gun ever recovered from the Coronado expedition, but consultation with experts throughout the continent and in Europe reveal that it is also the oldest firearm ever found inside the continental USA,” Archaeologist Deni Seymour explained.

The early firearm also called a wall gun, was typically used as a defensive weapon positioned on a wooden tripod on fortification walls and required two operators. However, in Coronado’s case, such a cannon would have been used offensively, typically to pierce the weaker walls of buildings in Indigenous communities.

Archaeologists were able to date the cannon to Coronado’s time using radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence techniques, and the other artifacts matched descriptions of the supplies and possessions of his expedition.

However, the wall gun’s simple casting suggests that, in contrast to more elaborate Spanish cannons, it might have been built in Mexico or the Caribbean—and possibly even acquired from Ponce de León’s previous expedition.

Seymour, D., Mapoles, W.P. Coronado’s Cannon: A 1539-42 Coronado Expedition Cannon Discovered in Arizona. Int J Histor Archaeol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-024-00761-7

Cover Image Credit: A bronze medieval-style wall or rampart gun, believed to have been part of the Francisco Vázquez de Coronado expedition found in southern Arizona. Credit: Deni J. Seymour

The Oldest Known Tombstone in the US Originally Came from Belgium, New Research has Shown

Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607 and was the first English permanent settlement in North America.

The region has been the focus of numerous historical and archaeological investigations, such as the one conducted recently by Prof. Markus M. Key and Rebecca K. Rossi, who sought to ascertain the origin of the tombstone of the black “marble” knight of Jamestown.

The Jamestown’s black “marble” tombstone was erected in honor of a knight but the origins of the stone and the history of the knight were both unknown to historians and archaeologists. The stone dates from 1627 and is the oldest tombstone of its kind in the USA’s Chesapeake Bay area.

The tombstone is covered with carved depressions (once filled with brass inlays) that depict the outline of an English knight with a sword and shield. It was first put in place in 1627, where it remained until the 1640s when the church’s southern entrance was built.

Broken by the time it was rediscovered in 1907, the slab has been repaired and relocated to the chancel of the present-day Memorial Church.

The tombstone has undergone innumerable inspections and analyses; however, Rebecca K. Rossi and Professor Markus M. Key conducted a fresh investigation, which was just released in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology. They wished to determine the origin of the black polished limestone, commonly mis-termed “marble” that was used for the Jamestown knight’s tomb.

What they discovered was unexpected, Professor Key said.

Researchers used fossils found inside the stone to uncover a type of microfossil called foraminifera. The specific origin and time of these foraminifera species may become clear with their identification. Microfossil analysis can therefore be used in forensics to pinpoint geographic locations and is also utilized in geological studies to fine-tune the dating of rock layers.

There were six species of foraminifera identified. Many existed in what is now Belgium during the Carboniferous Period, specifically during the Viséan Age, and Middle Mississippian Epoch (which lasted from about 345 to 328 million years ago).

This shows with certainty the stone and the microfossils it contains do not actually come from the Chesapeake Bay, the USA or even North America.

According to the latest findings, the knight’s tombstone had to have been transported from Europe by sea. Based on historical evidence, it is more likely that this originated in Belgium and was shipped to London before being delivered to Jamestown, USA.

From Roman times until the present, Belgium has been recognized as the source of this Lower Carboniferous “black” marble for centuries.

“It was particularly popular among the wealthy in England during Knight’s life,” the professor said.

“Little did we realize that colonists were ordering tombstones from Belgium like we order items from Amazon, just a lot slower.”

Of the two knights who died in Jamestown in the 17th century, one was Sir Thomas West, Virginia’s first resident governor, who died in 1618 while crossing the Atlantic to Jamestown.

The second was Sir George Yeardley, who was born in Southwark in 1587 and reached Jamestown in 1610 after surviving a shipwreck near Bermuda.  Knighted on going back to England in 1617, he was appointed Governor of Virginia in 1618 and returned to Jamestown where he held this post until 1621.  He resumed the post in 1626 and died in 1627.

The tombstone is the possibility it belonged to knight Sir George Yeardley, according to historical records.

The secret of the mummy in the Crystal coffin found in a garage in San Francisco

Mysterious mummies are a symbol of ancient lost times, which we often associate with Egypt and other ancient civilizations. Therefore, the discovery of a  coffin made of crystal with the body of a girl come from under the floor of a garage in  San Francisco is absolutely shocking.

In 2016, while remodeling an old garage in San Francisco, California, workers found a strange object that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a child’s coffin with an extraordinary design.

Rusted bolts held a metal object together that resembled a large shaped casket, and it was only by unscrewing the bolts that it was possible to identify what it was. Bolts fixed a sheet of metal that covered two windows made of thick glass. Looking inside the box, the workers were taken aback — inside lay the body of a small blonde girl, almost untouched by decay.

The discovery of an old coffin containing the body of a child terrified the people of San Francisco and perplexed scientists. It took them a long time to figure out the mystery of an unusual burial.

In the coffin inside lay the body of a blond girl dressed in a lace dress. Her hair was decorated with lavender petals, and on her chest lay a wreath in the form of a cross of blue bindweeds. In her hands, she held a large purple nightshade flower.

There were no details inside the coffin that would help identify the body.  The body was examined, described, and photographed, after which the experts drew up a protocol, placed the metal coffin containing the child in a wooden box, and… handed it over to the garage owner. According to the law, if the corpse is not a criminal and the relatives are unknown, the burial duties are assigned to the owner of the land where the body was discovered.

During the paperwork, the police gave the deceased the name Eva. And the mistress of the garage, where they found the burial, named the child Miranda.

But how did the coffin with the little dead girl end up under the garage? This was not a surprising occurrence given that the structure stood on the grounds of Odd Fellows Cemetery, San Francisco’s largest cemetery. When the rapidly growing metropolis came close to the extreme graves, a large city churchyard was closed for burials in 1890.

When the cemetery started to negatively impact the neighborhood over time, it was decided to close it down in 1923. Most of the remains were exhumed and buried in common graves, while some of the bodies were taken by relatives for reburial. The coffin with the girl was obviously forgotten in the confusion and remained in the ground, which was handed over to developers.

Tissue and hair samples were taken from the deceased girl for DNA analysis. Erica Karner was busy burying Eva-Miranda while the examination was taking place. The girl’s body began to decompose after the airtight coffin was opened. It was impossible to delay the burial.

Tissue analysis revealed that the baby’s mother was born in the British Isles. Even more interesting were the results of the hair study.

“Hair DNA analysis showed that the child had a protein deficiency and severe malnutrition.

And experts said that most likely this arose due to some kind of illness or due to the amount of medication that the child used,” the lawyer said.

Volunteers explored the city archives. They found a record of the burial of a two-year-old girl who died due to severe exhaustion. Her name is Edith Howard Cook. The child died in October 1876.

The parents’ names were Horatio Nelson and Edith Skaufi Cook. Scientists have even found living relatives of the “girl from the crystal  coffin.”

Thus, volunteers and scientists were able to solve the mystery surrounding the mysterious burial and give the girl’s name back who passed away nearly 150 years ago.

Parents often embalmed their dead children’s bodies centuries ago. The famous mummy of a child is kept in Palermo’s Capuchin catacombs. Rosalia Lombardo, the daughter of a Sicilian official, died of pneumonia in 1920. The girl’s body was so well preserved that she was nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty”.

Researchers Discovered Wreckage of a Schooner that Sank in Lake Michigan in Late 1800s

Maritime historians from the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association discovered the wreckage of a schooner that sank in Lake Michigan in the late 1800s.

The Margaret A. Muir – a 130-foot, three-masted ship built in 1872 – was found under about 50 feet (15 meters) of Lake Michigan water off Algoma, Wisconsin, according to a Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association (WUAA) news release.

The Muir was built at Manitowoc, Wisconsin by the Hanson & Scove shipyard for Captain David Muir.  It was intended primarily for the Great Lakes grain trade, although it carried many diverse cargoes, frequenting all five Great Lakes over her 21-year career.

The ship was en route from Bay City, Michigan, to South Chicago, Illinois, with a cargo of bulk salt. It had almost reached Ahnapee, which is now known as Algoma, when it sank during a storm on the morning of Sept. 30, 1893.

According to the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association, the six-member crew and Captain David Clow made it to shore in a lifeboat, but Clow’s dog went down with the ship. Captain Clow, a 71-year-old Lake veteran, had seen many wrecks in his day, but exclaimed “I have quit sailing, for water no longer seems to have any liking for me.” 

The Captain was particularly grieved at the loss of his dog, described as “an intelligent and faithful animal, and a great favorite with the captain and crew.”  The Captain remarked, “I would rather lose any sum of money than to have the brute perish as he did.”

The team, including Brendon Baillod, Robert Jaeck and Kevin Cullen used historical records as well as a high resolution side scanning sonar to locate the vessel, finding its remains on May 12th, 2024.

The Margaret A. Muir was lost to history until Baillod began compiling a database of Wisconsin’s missing ships around twenty years ago.  The Muir stood out as being particularly findable. 

In 2023, Baillod approached the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association to undertake a search for the vessel, narrowing the search grid to about five square miles, using historical sources. 

Baillod, Jaeck and Cullen were on their final pass of the day and in the process of retrieving the sonar when they ran over the wreck in approximately fifty feet of water only a few miles off the Algoma Harbor entrance.  It had lay undetected for over a century, despite hundreds of fishing boats passing over each season.

After informing Wisconsin State Maritime Archeologist Tamara Thomsen of the discovery, the team worked for weeks to gather thousands of high-resolution photos of the location. Zach Whitrock then used these photos to create a 3D photogrammetry model of the wreck site, which enables virtual site exploration. 

The vessel is no longer intact, its sides having fallen outward after deck collapsed, but all its deck gear remains, including two giant anchors, hand pumps, its bow windlass and its capstan.

The Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association now plans to work with the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Archeology Program to nominate the site to the National Register of Historic Places.  If accepted, it will join the schooner Trinidad, which the team located in deep water off Algoma in June of 2023.

Comparison of American Languages Detects Waves of Migration

Indigenous people entered North America at least four times between 12,000 and 24,000 years ago, bringing their languages with them, a new linguistic model indicates. The model correlates with archaeological, climatological and genetic data, supporting the idea that populations in early North America were dynamic and diverse.

Nearly half of the world’s language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.

In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.

Nichols surveyed 16 features of these languages, including syllable structure, the gender of nouns and the way consonants are produced when speaking.

The languages split into two main groups: an early one where the first-person pronoun has an “n” sound while the second-person pronoun has an “m” sound, and a later group with languages that incorporate a sentence’s worth of information in just one word.

Further linguistic analysis indicated that people arrived in the Americas in four distinct waves.

The first occurred around 24,000 years ago, when massive glaciers covered much of North America. Nichols found no unique language features, suggesting a diverse set of people and languages entered North America at that time.

A second wave of people around 15,000 years ago brought languages with n-m pronouns, while a third wave 1,000 years later brought languages with simple consonants. A fourth wave around 12,000 years ago then brought complex consonants.

Until relatively recently, researchers assumed that Indigenous people first arrived in the Americas via a land bridge from Siberia around 13,000 years ago.

But Nichols’ previous study of the linguistic data convinced her that this was not enough time for the nearly 200 Indigenous American languages to develop: Instead, she proposed people first arrived closer to 35,000 years ago.

A growing body of archaeological, geological and climatological and genetic research has since pushed back the dates of the earliest American arrivals, with a new consensus that, sometime between 30,000 and 25,000 years ago, several waves of people made their way into the Americas.

Adding linguistic studies to this work means that “the four fields confirm each other,” Nichols said. “Now I think the interpretation is very solid.”

Andrew Cowell, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that Nichols’ study is interesting because “the language data reinforces growing recognition in other fields that North America was populated much earlier than was assumed for many decades.” 

Cowell noted, however, that the study’s statistical analysis shows that two languages, “Yurok and Arapaho are classed quite differently, yet the two languages are known to be genetically related as part of the Algic language super-family.” (Yurok was spoken in far-Northern California, while Arapaho is spoken in Wyoming and Oklahoma.) 

Additionally, languages can be heavily influenced by their neighbors, which can blur how they were originally related, Cowell said.

While this new study presents a model for how languages entered and evolved within North America, it does not speak to their origins, which are still unknown. 

“It’s likely that the people who moved into North America left relatives in Asia,” Nichols said, “and possible that some of those languages survive and have remained in Siberia.” 

But the limits of the linguistic comparative method mean that we may never know for sure, Nichols said.

Indigenous archaeologist argues humans may have arrived here 130,000 years ago

An old story about the “Old Stone Age” in North America is now giving way to new evidence — or to be precise, evidence that is much, much older than scientists used to accept.

Archaeologists long believed that the first peoples to set foot on this continent arrived by crossing a land connection, the Bering Strait, from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 to 12,000 years ago.

They are often called ‘Clovis people’ — named after the first discovery of stone tools used around this time, at a site near Clovis, New Mexico.

This period is relatively recent when compared to the history of homo sapiens, and it can conflict with the view of many Indigenous people who believe their ancestors have lived here “since time immemorial.”

“For many, many years, people thought the Clovis were the first people of North America, and that was the primary paradigm,” said Steven Holen, research director at the Center for American Paleolithic Research.  

That paradigm has now shifted, due to studies such as the 2017 analysis of fossilized footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, which suggested a human presence dating back at least 20,000 years. 

However, for those archaeologists who once faced aggressive pushback for challenging the so-called ‘Clovis First’ theory, the recent relaxing of archaeological dogma is too little, and too lacking in humility.

“This was an area that was an academic violence against Indigenous people,” said Paulette Steeves, author of The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere.

Her book gathers together the latest evidence and arguments in favour of believing the human presence in North America goes back many tens of thousands of years — at a minimum.

“We’re supposed to believe that early hominids got to northern Asia 2.1 million years ago and then for some reason didn’t go any farther north,” Steeves explained. “A few thousand more kilometres, they would have been in North America. So it does not make any sense whatsoever.”

Steeves is a professor of sociology at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, and a Canada Research Chair in Healing and Reconciliation. For her, the meaning of “time immemorial” need not conflict with the archaeological project of dating the initial peopling of this hemisphere.

“This is where their cultures grew,” she said. “This is where their languages grew. This is where they’re from. They can tell their story in any way they want.”

The Americas’ oldest known bead discovered near Douglas, Wyoming

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known bead in the Americas at the La Prele Mammoth site in Converse County, United States. The oldest known bead in the Americas was discovered by University of Wyoming archeology professor Todd Surovell and his team and is in the shape of a tube made of bone that is approximately 12,940 years old.

The campsite was located along Le Prele Creek near the North Platte River, not far from present-day Douglas.

Perhaps it is more appropriate to refer to it as a hunting camp. While that may not seem unusual, this camp was not for processing deer or elk, but rather a mammoth. 

The site was active approximately 13,000 years ago.

The bead measures 7mm in length by 1.6mm and was likely worn as a decorative item on clothing. Both ends of the bead are smoothed and polished, while the surface has a layer of red ochre.

Grooves found on the outside of the bead are consistent with creation by humans, either with stones or their teeth.

Professor Todd Surovell’s research is published in Scientific Reports; the paper is titled “Use of hare bone for the manufacture of a Clovis bead.”

Members of the research team included collaborators from UW, the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, the University of Manchester, Weber State University, and Chico State University.

The La Prele Mammoth site preserves the remains of a killed or scavenged sub-adult Columbian mammoth and an associated camp occupied during the time the animal was butchered.

By using mass spectrometry, or ZooMS, to extract collagen for zooarchaeology, the team was able to ascertain the origin of the bone bead and obtain valuable information about the chemical makeup of the bone.

The researchers concluded that the bead was made from either a metapodial (the bones that link the phalanges of the digits to the more proximal bones of the limb) or a proximal phalanx (a bone found in the fingers and toes of humans and other vertebrates) of a hare.

This discovery provides the first secure evidence for the use of hares during the Clovis period, a prehistoric era in North America that peaked around 12,000 years ago. It is named for the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico, where unique stone tools were discovered.