What started out to be just another regular day at the University of Washington became something completely different when freshman Ellen Van Wyk found a small stone point close to the UW Botany Greenhouse in 2009. In itself, the object was unremarkable. However, after some investigation by archaeologists from the Burke Museum, the find proved to be evidence of human habitation in Seattle thousands of years prior to the construction of the university.
This incredible discovery happened because the artifact did not go unnoticed. Specialists documented the object, dug up the soil around it, and related it to a much longer history of Native Americans being present in the Pacific Northwest.
