Veritas, Vol. 19, No. 11, February 12, 1979

              Vol. 19 No. 11	February 12, 1979
For Faculty, Staff and Friends of the University of Miami
Earliest evidence of humans in Florida
UM scientists discover 12,000 year-old remains
by Sanford Schnier
Five scientists, including two from the UM, unearthed remains from a society of Paleo-Indians and Archaic-Indians who lived on Florida’s West Coast more than 12,000 years ago.
The findings were reported for the first time in the current issue of Science magazine.
The scientific paper is entitled “Little Salt Spring, Florida: A Unique Underwater Site.” The paper is authored by Dr. Cesare Emiliani, chairman of the UM geology department, Dr. J. J. Stipp, UM associate professor of geology, C.J. Clausen of the Little Salt Spring Research Facility, A.D. Cohen of the University of South Carolina geology department, and J.A. Holman of the Michigan State University geology department.
Research was supported by General Development Corporation.
The article details “a vast array of human remains, vertebrate and invertebrate fossils and artifacts” which were preserved in a “natural time capsule.” It provides the earliest evidence of activity of humans in Florida.
The site is near Charlotte Harbor in Southwest, Florida, three miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and south of Tampa. Little Salt Spring consists of a shallow, water-filled basin above a deep, vertical underwater cavern. It was a freshwater cenote (a deep, large
Isaac Bashevis Singer
sinkhole) in the peninsula’s drier past.
Emiliani said that among the finds was a shell of an extinct species of giant land tortoise, Geochelone crasiscutata, found upside down with a sharply pointed wooden stake piercing the heart. It was surrounded by pieces of charcoal, indicating the tortoise was killed, cooked and eaten. The radiocarbon dating of the wooden stake, done at the UM department of geology laboratory, was listed as 12,030 years ago. V
Emiliani explained that during the last Ice Age, the sea level was some 300 feet lower than the present level. Some parts of Florida were on dry desert plateaus. Many sinkholes were formed. Some 18,000 years ago, the ice melted and the water level rose. At a point 12,000 years ago, the water level had risen half the way in the cavity at Little Salt Springs, forming in effect an enormous fresh water well when much of the land in Florida was a cool, windswept desert.
On a fenced ledge around the center much of the evidence of the early Indians was found. The sea level kept rising and the Indians 9,300 years ago left the area for a while and then returned.
What were the people like?
Emiliani admits it’s almost impossible to know, except that, “They hunted, they fished, they spent most of their time trying to survive.”
“We’ve also found segments of a nonreturning oak boomerang—T-Shaped and about a foot and a half long,” Emiliani said. “This is the'first time such a weapon has been found in the Americas—boomerangs are usually found in Australia, India, Egypt, and Western Europe. It is also the oldest in the world since it dates at 9,372 years. We believe it was used to break legs of game, including white-tailed deer, to wound prior to the kill.”
Also found were vertebrate food refuse, together with wood, bone, shell and stone artifacts, hickory nuts, 1,000 burial mounds in a cemetery in an adjoining muck-filled slough and in the presently drowned portions of the basin of the spring, an immature mammoth or mastodon and an extinct bison. A well-preserved human brain inside a skull, dating from 6,000 years ago, also was found.
New master's degree program in public administration starts
by Sanford Schnier
A master’s degree program in public administration was approved by the Board of Trustees’executive committee Jan. 16 and by the Board Jan. 24 and has been initiated this spring semester.
The 33 students in the first group include officials from Metropolitan Dade County, the cities of Miami, Hialeah, Miami Beach,.the State of Florida’s Corrections Department, and the federal agencies, the GSA, Civil Service and Justice Departments.
Dr. Westcfh H. Agor, chairperson, department of politics and public affairs, said the program is highly innovative, flexible and custom designed to meet the present and
Nobel laureate Singer will lecture Feb. 19
Isaac Bashevis Singer, distinguished professor of English and recipient of the 1978 Novel Prize in literature, will discuss “The Kabala and the Modern Mind,” on Monday, Feb. 19, at 8 p.m. in Maurice Gusman Hall on the University’s Coral Gables campus.
The lecture is open to the public without charge. It is being sponsored by
Conference planned
the English department, the Undergraduate Student Body Government, The Miami Hurricane, the UM bookstore and the American Institute of Polish Culture.
Singer is now teaching an advanced fiction-writing class through the department of English and will participate in the professional writer’s workshop March 5-9.
Higher education's autonomy and accountability is topic
. by Angela. Muir
Higher education professionals from across the nation will address the issues of “Autonomy and Accountability -Below the Bottom Line,” at a conference jointly sponsored by the University’s Higher Education Colloquium and Miami-Dade Community College.
The series of renowned speakers, panels and discussions commences on the UM campus Wednesday, Feb. 14, at 7:30 p.m. and continues through noon, Friday, Feb. 16.
UM education professor Dr. Robert Birnbaum, colloquium and conference advisor, explains the situation. “Institutions of higher education in the private and public sector are required to account for their performance. This is especially true when they receive federal, state or private grant monies and/or subsidies. Compliance with the increased regulations and bureaucratic red tape has resulted, to some extent, in a loss of control over the institution and its identity.”
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emerging needs of in-service professionals in middle and upper management level positions in public and semi-public agencies.
The program has also been designed to meet the highest quality standards of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.
“The size and complexity of governmental organizations has grown at an astronomical rate in recent years,” Agor said. “This presents significant management and administrative problems which can only be solved by personnel thoroughly trained in the techniques of modem management— for today and tomorrow.”
The program will provide students with knowledge of public policy analysis; program design, development, and evaluation; finance and budgeting, quantitative decision methodology; systems and procedures analysis; economic • incentives and control; organization development, legal processes, political processes, governmental institutions and their inter-relationship.
It will develop skills in management information systems and applications, management research, statistical and quantitative applications, change agentry and conflict management, application of appropriate models of leadership, oral and written communications and presentations, and methodology of public involvement.
Many of the courses students can take are offered Monday through Thursday in the evenings in downtown Miami at the Dade County Administration Building, 140 W. Flagler Street.
The teaching staff is composed of experienced in-service professionals from the various areas of public administration.
The program is individualized to best suit each student’s needs. Continual monitoring and review will insure each program is right for each student. Emphasis is on a “hands-on” approach, rather than abstract theory.
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