On Your Knees Cave

Timothy Heaton next to the entrance of the On Your Knees Cave (2000)

The On Your Knees Cave is considered the most important archaeological and paleontological place throughout Southeast Alaska. More than 40,000 year old bear bones and especially the oldest human remains in northern North America - they are around 9800 years old - seven years of excavation have been brought to light in the course. Genetic studies suggest that the dead man was not the ancestor of today's Alaska Natives, but is more closely related groups living today between California and Tierra del Fuego.

The cave is located in the north of Prince of Wales Island, near the Sumner Strait. On the other side of this waterway the Kupreanof Island is located. The cave on a hillside above a deep valley is about 125 m above sea level and about one kilometer from the coast.

It was discovered in 1993 in connection with felling. Seven years were always ten to twenty people worked, often there were students from South Dakota and Colorado, members of the local Tlingit and Haida, to employees of the Forest Service, visiting scientists and local volunteers from Port Protection and Point Baker.

Discovery and interpretation

The cave has today an input of two meters in diameter, which was originally only a meter wide. He was partially blocked by fallen rocks from the above lying wall. The cave itself consists of two 30 m long creepage distances. The left transition, the so-called Bear Passage, consisted of two small rooms that were connected by a narrow passage. In the second room there is a spring that drains through the lower portion of the Bear Passage. The right gear, the Seal passage, winds up to a second input, which is called Ed's dilemma. The Seal passage was so narrow that a reversal on the entire route was not possible. This was possible only at the end and at times could not even have a helmet be worn.

Timothy Heaton, Professor of Earth Science at the University of South Dakota, the cave was looking for the first time in 1994 along with the cavers Kevin Allred. They found few and fragmentary bones of brown bears, black bears, but also remains of otters and fish. The thigh bones of a brown bear could be dated to 35,365 radiocarbon years, the tibia of a black bear even to 41.6 thousand years. These were the so far by far the oldest bear bones in the USA.

In 1995 there was a second study, 1996 received Heaton and paleontologist Fred Grady material support from the National Geographic Society for excavation. The Forest Service flew the archaeologists to a camp at the Sumner Strait, was a rough path to the cave. A grid system was installed, retrieved sediments and dragged to the camp. Numerous bones were discovered to Grady found in the first room, a projectile point, probably the stone head of a spear. On the last Grabungstag, the July 4, 1996 Heaton found in the second room a human mandible, a pelvic bone and a bone tool.

The archaeologist Terry Fifield went to the local Tlingit groups, and they allowed the examination of the remains and the continuation of excavation on their traditional territory for the next year. The human remains were dated to 9730 and 9880 BP. Thus, they were the oldest in Alaska and Canada. The bone tool could be dated to an age of 10,300 years.

E. James Dixon, an expert on the early human history in southeast Alaska and 1994-2001 Curator of Archeology at the Denver Museum of Natural History in Denver, joined the project as Principal Investigator of Archaeology joined and received support from the National Science Foundation. With the support of the Forest Service was created a platform for a tent, trees have been shedding for a place that needed the helicopter, felled, removed the path to the beach. A part of the cave was illuminated. The excavations were conducted annually from 1997 to 2000, now supported by the Sealaska Corporation, a joint venture of the indigenous peoples of Alaska.

There were blasted by flints, a variety of stone tools and debris on the border between inorganic and organic layers. It was found that the tools had been made ​​in the cave. It was also found the lack of base discovered at the beginning of the excavation spearhead. The cave itself was at the time of its early inhabitants larger and visible from far away, because there was no forest. It was probably regularly to protect, visited on hibernating bears or other reasons for hunting.

Inside the cave was extended in places, especially the narrow passages. The organic deposits were less than ten centimeters thick and significantly disturbed the layers. Below, in the inorganic sediments is included bones of mammals, birds and fish that originated from the time of maximum glaciation, as well as from the next nearest interglacial. A total of 5985 sediment bags were excavated down the slope worn and washed more than 32,000 fossils have been identified, including addition to the aforementioned bears caribou, sea lions, seals, arctic foxes and red foxes, hoary marmots, lemmings the way Lemmus sibiricus, voles, to birds such as diving ducks, auks and puffins. The mammal bones were mainly registered by foxes, bird and fish remains more of otters.

Already in 1998, the camp of camera crews and journalists were inundated. In March 1999, a feature in the Mystery of the First Americans NOVA program aired, the National Geographic reported in the Post Hunt for the First Americans and entitled The Dawn of Humans. Who were the First Americans? . This attention in the mass media is probably connected with the fact that the Fund supported the hypothesis of an early migration along the coast. This suggest even more so than genetic testing relationship with tribes in Ecuador ( Cayapa ), California ( Chumash ) and Illinois ( Klunk Mound people), Mexico ( Tarahumara ), the Mapuche and Tierra del Fuego ( Yaghan ).