Arlington Springs Woman
Arlington Springs Woman |
Found: 1959, at Arlington Springs, Santa Rosa
Island, California
Age: 13,000 years
Discoverers: Archaeologists
Significance: Evidence that people had arrived on that island by
13,000 years ago demonstrates that watercraft were in use along the California
coast at that early date and lends support for a theory that the earliest
peoples to enter the Western Hemisphere may have migrated along the Pacific
coast from Siberia and Alaska using boats. The Arlington Springs woman lived
during the end of the Pleistocene era when large herds of bison and woolly
mammoths roamed the grassy plains and other extinct native American animals
such as camels, horses, and saber-toothed cats were still around. The remains
of Pleistocene-era animals have been discovered on Santa Rosa Island where
the Arlington Springs woman was found. In 1994, the world's most complete
skeleton of a pygmy mammoth, a dwarf species, was also excavated here.
