Divers unearthing prehistoric secrets

In the pitch-black depths of an isolated North Port spring sits a silt-covered ledge that is revealing secrets about a prehistoric nomadic people, secrets held in murky silence for 100 centuries.

Now, with diving gear and artifact-collecting bags, archaeologists with the University of Miami and The Florida Aquarium are sweeping away the muck and uncovering that distant past.

This stuff could be as much as 13,000 years old, when wandering tribes traversed Florida. Their travels included stopovers at what is now known as Little Salt Spring, 90 minutes south of Tampa.

Artifacts are delicately uncovered from a ledge 90 feet below the surface, archaeologists say, offering up glimpses of what life was like for people believed to have been Florida's first human residents.

John Gifford, an underwater archaeologist with UM's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, along with aquarium divers are working together to gather the artifacts.

"In the last ice age, between about 10,000 and 13,000 years ago, the water level was 90 feet lower then than it is today," Gifford said. "It's generally thought that along that early beach area, those early humans left their tools or whatever artifacts they found at that site."

The site has been under excavation by scientists sporadically during the past three years, and only about 6 percent of the submerged ledge has been scoured.

"Little Salt Spring," Gifford said, "is where we have at least a fighting chance at finding some traces of human activity say 9,000 or 10,000 years ago."

The work is painstaking and somewhat dangerous but worth the effort, archaeologists say. Little Salt Spring, they say, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the state, and perhaps the nation, for its wealth of information about the dawn of civilization here in Florida.

The sinkhole's water chemistry and temperature have helped create a one-of-a-kind, prehistoric submerged site where late Paleo-Indian and Archaic artifacts are unusually well-preserved.

The site was donated to UM in 1982. Archaeologists had suspected since the 1950s that it was a treasure trove of artifacts.

Little Salt Spring dips more than 200 feet into the ground and was frequented by nomadic, prehistoric people, scientists say. They hunted animals such mastodons and giant ground sloths. The first major find, more than three decades ago, was a giant tortoise shell about 12,000 years old that appeared to have been pierced by a spear.