Skip to comments.Discoveries might reveal origins of
Southeastern N.C.'s first inhabitants Posted on 05/10/2010
4:19:52 AM PDT by Palter WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH | A local captain
and his crew have discovered a unique rock and nearby artifacts
that might help reveal how the first people came to Southeastern
North Carolina thousands of years ago. Geologists said the rock,
called black chert or novaculite, was previously thought to only
be available in vast quantities in the mountains of Arkansas.
Zulu Discovery, a local underwater exploration company, found a
very dense version of the rock dozens of feet below the surface
of the Atlantic Ocean off Wrightsville Beach. Chert was used by
the first people in North America, called Paleo-Indians, to
create the stone tools they needed to survive. The discovery of
black chert off local shores could rewrite America's prehistory
by supporting a theory that Paleo-Indians might have come to the
continent via a coastal route rather than by land, said Phil
Garwood, a geology inst