Underwater Closet Gives Up Skeletons
October 29, 1988|By Lisanne Renner of The Sentinel Staff
(Page 3 of 4)

Using scuba gear, video cameras and two-way radio communication, Cockrell has undertaken the world's deepest underwater archeological mission done by scuba divers carrying their own equipment. He and his crew can sift through items at the sinkhole's bottom only briefly before being forced to surface to avoid decompression sickness. It is easier to excavate two other areas -- a stalactite-draped ledge 45 feet below the water's surface where Friday's specimens were collected, and dry land surrounding the springs.

In 1972, while Cockrell was Florida's state underwater archeologist, Sarasota County's historian called asking him to prevent plundering at the springs. That's when he first dived at the site. In 1958, Lt. Col. William Royal explored the springs, but Cockrell was the first to apply an archeologist's methodical approach.

His early explorations uncovered the oldest intentional human burial in North America and the first proof that man shared North America with the giant ground sloth and the saber-toothed cat, said James Delgado, the National Park Service's maritime historian.
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''The information Sonny is getting from Warm Mineral Springs is going to add a tremendous amount to our knowledge of early man in the New World,'' said Cal Cummings, a National Park Service senior archeologist in Denver.

In 1973, Cockrell found a nearly complete skeleton of a Paleo-Indian tucked into a niche in the sinkhole wall 43 feet underwater. The Indian -- about 30 years old, 5 feet 4 inches tall, 110 pounds and buried in the fetal position beside a spear-thrower -- had been put there about 11,000 years ago. Stalactites had been broken off a ledge and placed in front of the niche, probably to keep scavenging animals at bay.

From this clue Cockrell reasons that when this man walked Earth, the sinkhole's water level was at least 90 feet lower than it is now, putting the now-underwater ledge and burial site on dry land. During the Ice Age, when much of the ocean was trapped in glaciers, sea level was 300 feet lower than it is now, Florida's peninsula was twice as wide, and Warm Mineral Springs was 160 miles east of the Gulf Coast instead of 10 miles.