Ancient Hunting: Evidence of 9,000-Year-old Caribou Hunt Found beneath Lake Huron

Researchers have found what may be an ancient caribou hunting site buried beneath Great Lakes.

Archaeologists have made a significant discovery of a prehistoric caribou hunting site roughly 9,000 years old buried beneath the Great lakes. This discovery offers deep insight into the social and seasonal organization of ancient people in the Great Lakes regions.

Found beneath Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, the newly discovered ancient hunting site is made of stone lanes and V-shaped structure on a limestone bedrock.  It was discovered by researchers at the University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropology.

The hunting drive lane was found on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge at a depth of 121 feet, about 35 miles southeast of Alpena Mich.

"This site and its associated artifacts, along with environmental and simulation studies, suggest that Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic caribou hunters employed distinctly different seasonal approaches," said John O'Shea, lead author of the article. "In autumn, small groups carried out the caribou hunts, and in spring, larger groups of hunters cooperated."

The ancient hunting lane dubbed Drop 45 Drive Labe is one of the most complex hunting structures ever unearthed till date from the Great Lake region.  Though autumn stands as the most preferred hunting season for caribou, the direction of Drop 45 reveals that it would have been effective only if the animals were heading toward the northwesterly direction, which they do during spring migration from present day Ontario.

"It is noteworthy that V-shaped hunting blinds located upslope from Drop 45 are oriented to intercept animals moving to the southeast in the autumn," O'Shea said. "This concentration of differing types of hunting structures associated with alternative seasons of migration is consistent with caribou herd movement simulation data indicating that the area was a convergence point along different migration routes, where the land form tended to compress the animals in both the spring and autumn."

The find is even more exciting as the researchers found chipped stone debris around the hunting site that they assume was for repairing.  These structures offer a strong clue about intentional human construction and the advanced techniques they used for hunting. Apart from this, they generate valid information on the social and economic organizations of the prehistoric hunters. The bigger size and several divisions of the drive lanes call for a larger group and more co-operation to  hunt.

The finding was documented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.