High-tech undersea search for the first Americans

In 1997, Daryl Fedje of the Canadian Parks service pulled up a stone tool from the seafloor 170 feet down. The tool could have fallen there, but the seafloor itself, which was dotted with tree stumps and littered with pine cones, was clear evidence of an inhabitable ice age forest along the coast. Early seafarers could have occasionally pulled up to land during their migration.

But nothing has complicated the picture more than genetic evidence. Studies of native American groups indicate that up to five waves of people arrived at different times. Four of them – A, B, C, and D – are related to populations in Asia. Several of these groups share genetic markers with people in modern-day Indonesia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands – places scientists think were settled by seafaring people.

Further confusing the picture, this fifth group, called "X," also shares genetic markers with European populations. Although controversial, this evidence lends credence to another, stranger possibility: Stone Age Europeans sailed west and made landfall in what was, even then, a land of immigrants.

"Sometimes methodology explodes and theory plays catch-up," says James Adovasio, executive director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., and the archaeologist who excavated Meadowcroft. "We're living at a time when the methodological techniques are exploding, and as they generate new, higher-resolution data, we have to reformulate how we think about stuff."

At stake in any undersea archaeological find is more than just the timing and chronology of the peopling of the Americas, says Professor Adovasio. Evidence of a seafaring culture in the Americas before the Clovis culture would overturn longstanding notions of our Stone Age forebears. Rather than a society of fur-clad, spear-wielding hunters stabbing mammoths, the first Americans may have been coastal dwellers, he says, a difference with great implications for everything from the division of labor in their society to the tools they used.

"Let us suppose that they find offshore campsites that are 16,000 years old," says Adovasio. "It would put yet another nail into the Clovis sarcophagus."

In 1979, Robert Ballard found the first "black smokers," undersea vents spewing black sulfides near the Galapagos Islands. In 1985, he cemented his fame with the discovery of the Titanic in the north Atlantic.

Now, Dr. Ballard wants to change – and enhance – how everyone from scientists to schoolchildren explores the planet. Using a combination of remotely operated vehicles and cameras, he sees a future where "electronic travel" lets anyone look in on Earth's hard-to-reach corners with minimal cost and effort.

"It's not critical that your gall bladder gets to the Serengeti," he says. But "your spirit has no mass; you can move your spirit around cheaply."

On expeditions, remotely operated vehicles will scour the seafloor thousands of miles away 24/7. Individuals on rotating shifts will monitor the images. Only when something interesting comes into view will an on-call scientist assume command.

For the layperson, remotely operated cameras left behind will provide live video of everything from African plains to ocean canyons. Not only will this "telepresence" give the average student real-time access to the planet's mysteries, it will also lessen humanity's impact on the natural wonders we so eagerly wish to view.

None of this would be possible were it not for the emerging Internet2 protocol, says Ballard. Enabled by a nationwide network of fiber-optic cables, the I-2 is up to 10,000 times faster than the average broadband connection – 10 gigabits per second – and allows for the live transmission of high-definition video.

In 2002, Ballard installed his first remotely operated camera in California's Monterey Bay. Children at his Institute for Exploration at the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Conn., could control an underwater vehicle 3,000 miles away. Remote cameras are slated for the Channel Islands off California, Hawaii and in the Florida Keys.

On the Flower Garden Banks expedition to the Gulf of Mexico (see main story), the public could tune in to one of the four live broadcasts online daily and submit questions in real time.

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