Recent findings from an isolated archipelago off California’s coast are surprising scientists as researchers uncover remnants of a “lost world”.
Located just offshore from Southern California, the Channel Islands hold the secrets of a vanished civilization, piquing interest that might even make Indiana Jones envious.
A significant discovery there is the Arlington Springs Man, whose remains date back 13,000 years, making it the oldest known adult found in North America.
A new documentary sheds light on this remarkable find, altering prevailing scientific theories about when and how humans first migrated to North America. The existence of Arlington Springs Man implies that humans could have arrived on the continent even before the Clovis culture, previously thought to be the earliest settlers.
The Arlington Springs Man was found on Santa Rosa Island, part of a group of four northern Channel Islands that also includes San Miguel, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa. Other significant islands in the Channel Islands include Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara, San Clemente, and San Nicolas.
Discovered at a depth of 37 feet, man’s remains were buried beneath sand, mud, and gravel back in 1959.
Evidence retrieved from the Channel Islands suggests that early humans may have reached the area by water rather than through an overland ice corridor. If this theory holds, it would challenge the widely accepted notion that Americans made their way south from Siberia across a land bridge.
Instead, early humans might have utilized the “kelp highway” to navigate by boat along the Pacific coast, reaching the Channel Islands.
“This aligns with the concept of coastal migration, where individuals might have used small boats to bypass glaciers and continue their journey down the coast to California,” explained John Johnson, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Johnson posits that those who settled on the Channel Islands eventually evolved into the Chumash people of the south-central California coast. “People arrived on this island about 13,000 years ago and gradually evolved into a group known as the Chumash,” he notes.
Additionally, other findings in the Channel Islands include the bones of a pygmy mammoth, a smaller species compared to the woolly mammoth, standing between 4.5 to 7 feet tall and weighing around 2,000 pounds.
In contrast, woolly mammoths were considerably larger, reaching 14 feet in height and weighing up to 20,000 pounds. It’s believed that these miniature mammoths went extinct around the time humans arrived in the islands and the global climate began to shift, although the precise reasons for their disappearance remain unclear.
Europeans first made contact in 1542, led by the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. After a storm prevented them from reaching San Francisco Bay, Cabrillo opted to spend the winter on the islands.
“This marked Europe’s furthest intrusion into a territory they knew nothing about,” one historian commented. Cabrillo died there in January 1543 after suffering severe injuries during a conflict with a local tribe.
