Episode 203
Man and Mammoth in the Carolinas
(Statewide)

Children and adults are often surprised to learn that the first human inhabitants of North Carolina and the Southeast were well established thousands of years before the construction of the Parthenon in Greece (2,500 years ago), the rule of Egypt's King Tut (3,300 years ago), or the building of the famous Stonehenge monument in England (5,200 years ago). This important episode will examine the evidence that shows Paleoindians living in the Carolinas and Virginia between 10,000 and 12,500 years ago. and possibly thousands of years earlier. Paleoindians were nomadic people who lived in the region after the last Ice Age and the ancestors of today's American Indians.

The Carolinas of 12,500 years ago was similar in landscape and had most of the same plants and animals we know today. Like today, the region provided a huge variety of fruits, berries, nuts, fish, small mammals, and fowl to early inhabitants. Viewers will learn, however, that sea levels were much lower than today because much of the Earth's fresh water was still locked up in the great glaciers of the last Ice Age. Twelve-thousand years ago the coastline of North Carolina was many miles east of its present location.

Perhaps the biggest difference was that the earliest human inhabitants of this land shared the land with mega fauna--- wooly mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloth, North American lions, giant tortoises (think Galapagos-sized tortoises), and beavers the size of bears. With the help of experts from across the region ENC will show viewers the remains of giant animals, now extinct, that until about 10,000 years ago roamed Virginia and the Carolinas. ENC will also examine the most prominent theories relating to the demise of these mega fauna in the Southeast and North America.