The dugout canoe made out of cyprus or pine teetered in choppy seas. The lone paddler of this dugout was migrating down the North American continent, and decided to veer off to the mega island, Santarosae, which extended west approximately five to seven miles off the mainland of what is now Ventura. Today he’s now known as “Arlington Man,” and his two femur bones that are 13,200 years old are the oldest human remains discovered in North America.
As recently as 9,000 years ago, the islands were still connected. After the last Ice Age, the polar icecaps melted away, sea levels rose and with it the northern Channel Islands — Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa — were created.
Arlington Canyon on the west end of Santa Rosa Island supports a freshwater spring that feeds a marsh before spilling into the Santa Barbara Channel. It was here in 1959 where Phil Orr discovered Arlington Man, sometimes called “Arlington Springs Man.” Buried 32 feet below the surface, Orr found the two femur bones along with a treasure trove of other fossils belonging to pygmy mammoths, owls, salamanders, meadowlarks and giant mice.
“The cliffs are Pleistocene alluvial deposits that date back to the Ice Age,” said John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
“If you go to these cliffs today, you’ll see mammoth bones sticking out here and there.”
Where did Arlington Man live? He must’ve had friends. Where could there be evidence of this underneath all those deposits? Did he hunt pygmy mammoths to extinction or was there another reason for their downfall?
The search continues. In 2008, Johnson and other scientists spent two weeks at Arlington Canyon using radio carbon dating to hunt for further clues of Arlington Man. The expedition, which received partial funding from the National Geographic Society, revealed evidence of working stone tools and chert flakes. In July 2009, Johnson and a team of scientists boarded the Endeavour performing an underwater survey directly off Arlington Canyon of what was then dry land 13,000 years ago. A topographic and geographic map was recorded and put into context to see what land looked like at that time.
“The slope was gentle back then,” Johnson continued. “Underwater rock outcrops not far offshore have caves and may contain ancient shelters before sea levels rose.”
The story of Arlington Man is ongoing. What scientists do know is that there was never a land bridge connecting Santarosae with the mainland. To access the mega island, migrating peoples had to have some sort of boat to get there.
“This is an indication that way back 13,000 years ago, people were using watercraft to migrate along our coast,” Johnson said.
— Noozhawk contributor and local freelance writer Chuck Graham is editor of Deep magazine.