08/20/2026
Oral history said their ancestors sheltered on a strip of coastline that never froze during the Ice Age. Archaeologists just found the fire pit to prove it.
On Triquet Island, off British Columbia's central coast, researchers from the University of Victoria and the Hakai Institute, working alongside the Heiltsuk Nation, excavated an ancient hearth buried 2.5 meters underground. Radiocarbon dating of the charcoal placed it at roughly 13,600 to 14,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known settlements in North America, older than the Great Pyramid of Giza by around 9,000 to 10,000 years. Fish hooks, spears, stone tools, and hand drills for starting fires were recovered alongside it. The find lines up closely with Heiltsuk oral tradition (núyṃ), passed down for generations, describing an ice-free coastal refuge during the last Ice Age, and adds support to the "Kelp Highway" theory that early humans may have migrated into the Americas by boat along the Pacific coast.
How many other stories passed down for thousands of years are still waiting for the archaeology to catch up?
