A New Jersey woman looking for sea glass on a New Jersey beach last week found an ancient Native American spear point believed to be about 10,000 or 11,000 years old.
Audrey Stanick, of Lanoka Harbor, brought the relic she found in Seaside Heights to the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton to have it analyzed. There, Gregory Lattanzi, assistant curator for the museum's bureau of archaeology and ethnography, confirmed the age of her finding.
Lattanzi explained that back in the Middle Paleoindian period, sea levels were much lower and that Native American villages close to the sea would have been 60 miles or so east of what is now the New Jersey coastline.
"Over time those would get reburied by sand and then the water levels would rise," Lattanzi said.
In recent years, similar spear points have been found elsewhere along the shoreline.
Stanick said she intends to keep the one she found.
"Just the thought that 10,000 thousand years ago somebody had this in their hand ... it's amazing," Stanick said.
