Evidence of Native American life was discovered at the DeSoto archaeological site in Florida, the University of Central Florida’s Anthropology Department announced in a social media post last week.
The site, located near the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, dates back to the Malabar II period (approximately 900 to 1,565 CE), and is home to several midden deposits - mounds of ancient trash and refuse.
Researchers working at the site as part of UCF’s Cape Canaveral Archaeological Mitigation Project (CCAMP) uncovered pottery fragments, conch shell hammers and shark tooth knives believed to have been used to prepare food.
Sarah Barber, a UCF anthropology professor, told Fox News Digital that while the Indigenous residents of the site didn’t farm, research showed that “at least some people in the region had access to ground corn, which was being farmed by the Indigenous people of North Florida.”
Traces of several types of seafood have also turned up in the middens, including shark, fish, clams and seasonings for the food eaten.
"We have found the refuse of many dozens of meals. We know from our finds this year at DeSoto that turtles, shark, black drum, and coquina clams were on the menu,” Barber told Fox.
“Ancient people fished the lagoon and the beachfront,” she went on. “Once we can add in the plant remains, which take longer to process in a lab, we’ll know whether these animals were supplemented with plant foods like acorns and greenbriar."
Researchers also reportedly discovered the "complete vertebral column of a shark” and an unidentified object that is thought to be a fossil or whale bone near where the shark vertebra was found.
"We look forward to figuring out what that is," she said.
Hundreds of pottery shards were also found at the site and "the remnants of at least one hearth where food was likely cooked,” according to Fox.
Indigenous people had less impact on enviroment then we do today
The remains show that “Indigenous people made deliberate choices about what they ate, with shark remains found at the site but little evidence that dolphins were hunted.”
"The Indigenous people of Cape Canaveral lived in relatively dense communities and relied 100% on locally obtained food," Barber said. "They did it for thousands of years, and they didn’t put the kind of stress on the local environment that we have in far less time."
"Our sites show an abundance and diversity of food, time to produce pottery when needed, and the opportunity to either travel or interact with people in distant regions.”