Where the Ice Age Caribou Ranged
Searching for prehistoric hunting grounds in an unlikely place
By JASON DALEY
Monday, December 18, 2017
A herd of caribou begins its autumn migration to wintering grounds in the Yukon. During the end of the last Ice Age, caribou are known to have similarly migrated along a still-frigid land bridge that is now submerged beneath Lake Huron.
University of Michigan archaeologist John O’Shea was reading a book, some 10 years ago, about modern-day reindeer herders living in the Subarctic and some of the elaborate stone structures they use to manage their animals—usually called caribou in North America. O’Shea studies not only prehistoric cultures, but also nineteenth-century shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. That’s why at around the same time he was reading up on human interactions with reindeer, he was also examining new underwater topographical maps of Lake Huron. Those charts showed that a rocky underwater feature known as Six Mile Shoal was actually a continuous underwater ridge stretching 112 miles from northeastern Michigan to southern Ontario.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/281-1801/features/6162-where-the-ice-age-caribou-ranged
