While walking along the Jersey Shore, a beachgoer stumbled upon incredible discovery: spearhead, that according to experts may be 10,000 or 11,000 years old. This ancient artifact may be holding some clues into prehistoric life in the Americas, reports abcnews.
Audrey Stanick — a 58-year-old woman from Lanoka Harbor, New Jersey made this discovery while walking with her sister along a Seaside Heights beach, looking for sea glass after a storm that occurred recently.
The artifact was examined by curators at the New Jersey State Museum, this past Thursday.
“I noticed it because it was very dark and shiny, and my sister from Florida who likes to collect sharks’ teeth taught me to always look out for dark and shiny things at the beach,” Stanick said . “Then, I remembered a boy made a similar discovery last year, so I got in contact with the museum.”
Stanick said she “had a great experience” watching one of the state museum’s curators study the spearhead.
“I looked at it under the microscope, took measurements with calipers and another colleague determined the point was made out of flint,” the museum’s assistant curator Dr. Gregory Lattanzi told ABC News “It’s a pretty rare find. There are actually professional excavations to try and find points like these, so to be along the shore and see it washed up is pretty incredible.”
Lattanzi said that this may be one of the oldest artifacts he’s seen from the Paleo-Indian period.
This amazing artifact is “significant because we now have another piece of evidence from prehistoric habitation sites from land previously exposed but now covered in water,” Lattanzi explained. Stanick’s “finding will help us get a better idea of just how far these sites may be located out in the ocean.”
According to ABCnews, Stanick has decided to keep the spearhead.
“I read that a boy who found a similar spearhead last year in New Jersey donated it to the Smithsonian,” she told ABCnews “If I do ever end up donating it, I want to donate it to a New Jersey museum because I found it here and it belongs here. But for now, I’m going to keep it. Trust me, these places have a lot of artifacts, and I don’t think they’re going to miss mine.”
source: ABCnews