A remote 'lost world' discovered off the coast of California could offer new clues about the origins of the first Americans, potentially rewriting the nation's history. The Channel Islands, an eight-island archipelago off Southern California, have long fascinated researchers, but a new documentary highlights them as a place where 'human history is frozen in time'.
Ancient Remains and Settlements
Hidden among the islands are human remains thought to date back around 13,000 years, along with ancient settlements and other evidence of human activity from that period. These findings suggest that Ice Age humans may have reached North America via a coastal 'kelp highway', using boats to travel along the Pacific shoreline and settling in places like the Channel Islands. This could overturn the decades-old theory that the earliest Americans traveled via a land bridge from Siberia before moving south through an ice-free corridor in western Canada.
The islands have also yielded discoveries such as the bones of pygmy mammoths and archaeological sites, indicating a forgotten maritime migration. The four northern islands—San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Anacapa, and Santa Cruz—were originally located further south before being carried by tectonic forces, which also rotated them around 110 degrees.
Arlington Springs Man
One of the most significant discoveries is Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island, whose bones were found 37 feet below ground in 1959. Testing in 2001 revealed these to be the oldest dated human bones in North America, from the same period as the Clovis culture, which existed between 13,050 and 12,750 years ago. The offshore location suggests that North America's earliest inhabitants may have been accomplished seafarers, challenging the notion that the Clovis people arrived via an ice-free corridor.
Dr John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, said: 'All the way from Japan to Baja California, there are kelp forest ecosystems that have very similar suites of animals. This connects with the whole idea of a coastal migration, an ancient coastal migration where people would have been using watercraft and going around glaciers when they encountered them and working their way down until they came to California.'
Implications for Early Migration
The discovery suggests seafaring technology may have existed much earlier than previously thought, throwing the ice-free corridor theory into question. Dr Johnson added: 'People showed up on this island 13,000 years ago or thereabouts and evolved through time into the group we know as the Chumash.' The Chumash people lived on the central and southern coast of California and the four northern Channel Islands for thousands of years until Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo reached California in 1542. Disease, colonization, and social changes eventually led to the islands being abandoned.
Undiscovered signs of early humans likely lurk beneath surrounding waters, as lower sea levels during the Ice Age exposed areas now underwater. The documentary, released on June 30 on the YouTube channel Timeline, explores these findings.
