The Chumash are a Native American people who historically inhabited the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south. They also occupied three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source.
The Channel Islands form an eight-island archipelago along the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Southern California. Five of the islands are part of Channel Islands National Park, and the waters surrounding these islands make up Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The islands were first colonized as early as 13,000 years ago. Human remains from that period have been discovered.
Channel Islands National Park is an American national park that consists of five of the eight Channel Islands off the coast of the U.S. state of California, in the Pacific Ocean. Although the islands are close to the shore of densely populated Southern California, their isolation has left them relatively undeveloped. The park covers 249,561 acres (100,994 ha) of which 79,019 acres (31,978 ha) are owned by the federal government. The Nature Conservancy owns and manages 76% of Santa Cruz Island, the largest island in the park.
The island fox is a small fox that is native to six of the eight Channel Islands of California. There are six subspecies, each unique to the island it lives on, reflecting its evolutionary history. Island foxes are generally docile, show little fear of humans, and are easily tamed. Island foxes played an important role in the spiritual lives of native Channel Islanders. Island foxes have been likely semi-domesticated as pets, used as pelts, or for other functions like pest control.
Santa Cruz Island is located off the southwestern coast of California, United States. It is the largest island in California, and largest of the eight islands in the Channel Islands archipelago. Forming part of the northern group of the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz is 22 miles (35 km) long and 2 to 6 miles wide with an area of 61,764.6 acres (249.952 km2).
Santa Barbara Island is a small island of the Channel Islands archipelago in Southern California. It is protected within Channel Islands National Park, and its marine ecosystem is part of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
San Miguel Island is the westernmost of California's Channel Islands, located across the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, within Santa Barbara County, California. San Miguel is the sixth-largest of the eight Channel Islands at 9,325 acres (3,774 ha), including offshore islands and rocks. Prince Island, 700 m (2,300 ft) off the northeastern coast, measures 35 acres (14 ha) in area. The island, at its farthest extent, is 8 miles (13 km) long and 3.7 miles (6.0 km) wide.
The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is a sanctuary off the Pacific coast of Southern California. The National Marine Sanctuary program is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Arlington Springs man is a set of Late Pleistocene human remains discovered on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands located off the coast of Southern California. The Arlington Springs archeological site is protected within northern Channel Islands National Park, and in Santa Barbara County.
The Santa Barbara Channel is a portion of the Southern California Bight and separates the mainland of California from the northern Channel Islands. It is generally south of the city of Santa Barbara, and west of the Oxnard Plain in Ventura County.
Santa Rosa Island is the second largest of the Channel Islands of California at 53,195 acres. Santa Rosa is located about 26 miles (42 km) off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in Santa Barbara County and is part of Channel Islands National Park.
The island scrub-jay also island jay or Santa Cruz jay is a bird in the genus, Aphelocoma, which is endemic to Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California. Of the over 500 breeding bird species in the continental U.S. and Canada, it is the only insular endemic landbird species. The island scrub-jay (ISSJ) is closely related to the California scrub-jay – the coastal population found on the adjacent mainland – but differs in being larger, more brightly colored, and having a markedly stouter bill. They will bury, or cache, the acorns in the fall and may eat them months later. They also eat insects, spiders, snakes, lizards, mice and other birds' eggs and nestlings.
The pygmy mammoth or Channel Islands mammoth is an extinct species of dwarf elephant descended from the Columbian mammoth of mainland North America. This species became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event in which many megafauna species became extinct due to changing conditions to which the species could not adapt. A case of island or insular dwarfism, from a recent analysis in 2010 it was determined that M. exilis was on average, 1.72 m (5.6 ft) tall at the shoulders and 760 kg (1,680 lb) in weight, in stark contrast to its 4.3 m (14 ft) tall, 9,070 kg (20,000 lb) ancestor. Another estimate gives a shoulder height of 2.02 m (6.6 ft) and a weight of 1,350 kg (2,980 lb).
Juana Maria, better known to history as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, was a Native American woman who was the last surviving member of her tribe, the Nicoleño. She lived alone on San Nicolas Island off the coast of California from 1835 until her rescue in 1853. Scott O'Dell's award-winning children's novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) was inspired by her story. She was the last native speaker of the Nicoleño language.
The California mussel is a large edible mussel, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Mytilidae.
Mytilus is a cosmopolitan genus of medium to large-sized edible, mainly saltwater mussels, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Mytilidae.
Jon M. Erlandson is an archaeologist and Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, and the director of the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Erlandson’s research interests include coastal adaptations, the peopling of North America, maritime archaeology and historical ecology and human impacts in coastal ecosystems.
Chipped stone crescents are a class of artifact found mainly associated with surface components of archaeological sites located in the Great Basin, the Columbia Plateau, and throughout California. Although their distribution covers a large portion of the western United States, crescents are often found in similar contexts in close proximity to water sources including playas, lakes, rivers, and mainland and island coast lines. Crescents are generally thought to be diagnostic to the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene and are representative of assemblages that include fluted and stemmed projectile points.
The coastal migration hypothesis is one of two possibilities in the settlement of the Americas at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. It proposes a migration route involving watercraft, via the Kurile island chain, along the coast of Beringia and the archipelagos off the Alaskan-British Columbian coast, continuing down the coast to Central and South America. The alternative is the "interior route", which assumes migration along an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum.
The skull and bones of a man buried between 9,800 and 10,200 years ago on San Miguel Island, in California's Channel Islands, were exposed by beach erosion and discovered and preserved in 2005 by University of Oregon archaeologists. The remains were dated by way of radiocarbon dating and evaluation of artifacts which had been intentionally buried with him. They were analyzed, but it was not possible to extract the Tuqan Man's DNA, though increasingly better testing techniques and methods became available and were utilized over the 12 years that passed after his original discovery. The remains were studied before their return to the island, which was delayed by resolution of tribal identification and ownership issues contingent on resolution of the precedent-setting Kennewick Man case from Washington State. Analysis of the bones indicated that he was in his forties when he died, and had spent time some distance east of what is now the Santa Barbara coastal region. Under procedures in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), in May, 2018, they were restored to the claiming Chumash tribe, for reburial on the island. The Chumash people had long occupied the island before the arrival of the first European explorers, and the find was given the place name of the island in the Chumash language.
