You’ll find lots of hiking trails along the western coast of the United States. But archaeologists are looking for one more. It might have been hidden for thousands of years -- on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
There’s evidence that the first people reached the Americas perhaps 15,000 years ago or even earlier. They came during the last Ice Age, when sea level was hundreds of feet lower than it is today. That exposed a “bridge” of land between present-day Asia and Alaska. People might have crossed that bridge in search of game or other necessities.
Sailors’ lore about the ocean has captured popular imagination for centuries, from mermaids and sirens to the mythical Kraken. But often these stories are rooted in a case of mistaken identity. Tales of frightening sea serpents, for example, may have arisen in part from rare sightings of the elusive frilled shark, a long, slender fish that usually lives 400 to 4,200 feet below the surface.
