4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL October 12, 2016
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History
Oregon has been home since at least 12,400 B.C.
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
O
regon is a very young state. Its
oldest buildings – those whose
dates are known, at any rate – went
up in the 1850s; many a visitor from
the East Coast, where there are still
buildings constructed in the 1600s,
has gotten a chuckle out of the fuss
Oregonians make over architecture
and artifacts barely over a century
old.
But appearances are deceiving. As
far as is known today, Oregon takes
a back seat to nobody in a contest of
antiquity. The earliest evidence of
human habitation in North America is
here – in the form of DNA that’s lit-
erally 143 centuries old. And it’s far
from the only evidence that humans
have lived in the land we know as Or-
egon for a long, long time.
The DNA was recovered in 2008
by a team of archaeologists from the
University of Oregon, led by Dennis
Jenkins, during an expedition to the
Paisley Caves, near the town of Pais-
ley. Paisley is in north Lake County,
by the bed of what was, 13,000 years
ago, a massive freshwater lake called
Lake Chewaucan. (Over the millen-
nia, Lake Chewaucan slowly evapo-
rated and shrank, year after year, until
today all that is left are the shallow
alkali waters of Summer Lake and
Abert Lake).
Dramatic and important as the dis-
covery of this DNA was, though, it’s
not likely anyone is going to want to
see it on display in a museum. The
DNA was extracted not from a mum-
mifi ed skeleton like Otzi the Iceman,
nor a freshly fed mosquito encased in
amber like in Jurassic Park – but rath-
er from an artifact that goes by the
neat, clean, clinical term “coprolite.”
Coprolites are – simply and bluntly
put – feces. They’re ancient excre-
tions that have either fossilized or
been dried to the point that decompo-
sition stopped. These particular ones,
of course, were dried; and when they
were tested in the university’s labo-
ratory, they turned out to be 14,300
years old.
This was a big deal, because prior
to this discovery the oldest known
inhabitants of the Americas were a
primitive culture known as the Clovis
People, who lived 13,000 years ago.
It’s also a big deal because the last
ice-age glacial period ended roughly
10,000 years ago; so, whoever left
these “artifacts” behind lived (and
pooped) in the years of full ice-age
glaciation – 30 centuries before the
retreating glaciers loosed the Mis-
soula Floods tearing through the
Columbia River Gorge to form the
Willamette Valley, and 10 centuries
before the Clovis people.
Scientists were not slow to analyze
their fi nd. The DNA indicated that the
party who answered nature’s call 143
centuries before was of Siberian and
East Asian origin, lending support to
the “land-bridge theory,” which sug-
gests that North America was popu-
lated by people migrating over the ex-
posed seafl oor from Siberia to Alaska
during a time of low sea levels.
Since the coprolites were found,
their authenticity has been somewhat
hotly debated in the archaeological
community. One study analyzed the
old stools for diet content and con-
cluded that they were the feces of her-
bivores, and the human DNA there-
fore had to be the result of accidental
contamination by the sloppy Univer-
sity of Oregon researchers; those re-
searchers, naturally, found this claim
unconvincing. The debate continues,
although Jenkins and his team have
since returned to the site and found
more specimens along with artifacts
such as arrowheads.
Even if the evidence for the 14,300-
year claim were thrown out, though
– maybe the coprolites could turn
out to have been from the extinct Or-
egon Cave Elk, or perhaps the Great
Western Jackalope? – Oregon’s title
as prehistoric capital of the West will
still be safe, thanks to a pile of san-
dals found in a cave near Fort Rock
in 1938 by Luther Cressman, a Uni-
versity of Oregon professor remem-
bered today as the “father of Oregon
archaeology.”
Dr. Cressman – who’s also famous
for having once been married to Dr.
Margaret Mead – found the sandals
with the help of legendary Oregon
rancher-raconteur Reub Long, on
whose Fort Rock property the cave
stands. They’re made of sagebrush
bark and look not much different
from that type of modern beach san-
dal that’s woven out of ropes. These
were radiocarbon dated to an age of
9,000 years.
Actually, they almost weren’t ra-
diocarbon dated at all. After bringing
them back to the university for study,
Dr. Cressman carefully treated every
square millimeter of the ancient foot-
wear with a chemical preservative. A
few years later, when the radiocarbon-
dating technique was developed, Dr.
Cressman was doubtless vigorously
kicking himself for this. Once doped,
the sandals could not be dated. Luck-
ily, he had not found and “ruined” all
the sandals; a return visit yielded a
few more that he’d overlooked, and
the dating was done on those.
Some of these sandals can be
viewed in the Fort Rock Museum
in the nearby town of that name, or
– for
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 7A
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ARTICLE SUBMITTED BY
UNITEDHEALTHCARE
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The best foods for healthy eyes
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
A
s
This may be because carrots
(and other orange and yellow
vegetables and fruits) are abun-
dant in beta-carotene, which is a
provitamin A carotenoid, mean-
ing it is converted to vitamin A
in the body. Vitamin A is impor-
tant for eye health, especially
for night vision as it helps to
produce a pigment called rho-
dopsin in the retina, which helps
a
child, you
probably
heard that
carrots are
good
for
your eyes.
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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the eye detect low levels of light
and allows us to see at night. Vi-
tamin A defi ciency is known to
cause night blindness.
However, beta-carotene is
not the only carotenoid that
contributes to healthy vision.
Out of about 600 known carot-
enoids, twenty have been found
circulating in human blood and
only two are found in the eye.
They are lutein and zeaxanthin,
which cannot be synthesized
by the body and are primar-
ily found in green leafy veg-
etables. Once consumed, these
two carotenoids accumulate in
the macula, the inner portion of
the retina, which has a high con-
centration of photoreceptor (or
light receptor) cells. The typical
amount of lutein and zeaxanthin
in the macula (called “macular
pigment”) is quite low among
Americans, due to low intake
of leafy greens. The retina is
the most metabolically active
tissue in the body, and lutein
and zeaxanthin provide antioxi-
dant protection. Furthermore,
macular pigment reduces glare,
enhances contrast and visual
acuity, and acts as a fi lter to pro-
tect the macula from blue light
damage. Blue light is a part of
visible light (and sunlight), and
electronic devices and energy-
effi cient lighting increase our
exposure to it, especially in the
evenings.
The idea that leafy greens
benefi t vision began to gain
momentum about 20 years
ago in research on age-related
macular degeneration (AMD),
a disease in which the pho-
toreceptors in the macula are
progressively damaged or lost,
causing impaired vision. AMD
is the leading cause of blindness
worldwide. In 1994, a study on
AMD found that higher total
carotenoid intake was associ-
ated with lower risk of the dis-
ease, and lutein and zeaxanthin
were the specifi c carotenoids
most strongly associated with
decreased risk. When looking at
foods, higher intake of spinach
and collard greens (rich sources
of lutein and zeaxanthin) were
also associated with decreased
risk.More studies followed,
many reporting that higher
lutein and zeaxanthin intake
was linked to lower AMD risk.
Supplementation trials in AMD
patients also reported increases
in macular pigment (more lutein
and zeaxanthin in the eye) and
improvement in visual perfor-
mance.
These results sparked the
marketing of eye health supple-
ments containing lutein and
zeaxanthin. However, previ-
ous fi ndings on isolated carot-
enoid supplements should urge
us to be cautious; several trials
of beta-carotene supplements
have reported an increased risk
of lung cancer, cardiovascu-
lar disease or overall mortal-
ity. This is an unacceptable risk
for a nutrient we can easily get
from foods, which have no risk.
These nutritional benefi ts are
also enhanced by accompany-
ing phytonutrients in green veg-
etables that have further benefi ts
to the entire body.
The typical American diet is
dangerously low in leafy greens,
and the average adult’s intake of
lutein + zeaxanthin from foods
is a meager 1.5 mg per day. Just
a single cup of cooked spin-
ach or kale contains more than
20 mg of lutein + zeaxanthin,
and collards more than 14 mg;
commercial vision supplements
commonly contain 10-20 mg
of lutein plus two mg or less
zeaxanthin. So, a healthful diet
actually supplies more of these
benefi cial nutrients for the eye
than supplements do, and of
course leafy greens have several
advantages over supplements, in
particular a huge variety of ad-
ditional carotenoids and other
benefi cial nutrients, with no risk
of excess.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York
Times best-selling author and a
board certifi ed family physician
specializing in lifestyle and nu-
tritional medicine. The Eat To
Live Cookbook offers over 200
unique disease-fi ghting deli-
cious recipes and his newest
book, The End of Heart Disease,
offers a detailed plan to prevent
and reverse heart disease using
a nutrient-dense, plant-rich eat-
ing style. Visit his informative
website at DrFuhrman.com.
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