You know with each wave, things are washing away.
It's history that we've never learned and it's you know our roots to place that it's not there
anymore so that's why we think it's so important to you know be able to understand these landscapes
we are running out of time because sea level is rising very fast these storms are happening
every time more often every time or intense these are pages of history books that we have not read.
Welcome to Wavelengths, where we talk about our planet with experts from Scripps Institution
of Oceanography, covering everything from the deep sea to the edge of the atmosphere.
I'm Kate Furby, a marine biologist and journalist.
I got my PhD here a few years ago and now i'm back learning more about what's happening at Scripps.
Hi i'm here today with Isabel Rivera-Collazo. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks so much for receiving me
I'm really like excited to tell this story so i i know that your
research is on understanding people's history and their connections to place
and i was hoping we could start by having you tell us a little bit about this place where we
are today well we are in the ancient territory of the Kumayaay peoples it stretches from
about Escondido south all the way into Mexico. They are the ancestral owners of
this place actually there are several ancient sites of their ancestors right under this area
I know you were just in Puerto Rico doing field work and you went you
got like emergency authorization to go so tell me what brought you into the field this year?
Because i work on climate change one of the impacts that climate change is having over Puerto
Rico's cultural heritage is coastal erosion like since 2015 i have been keeping an eye out on the
how erosion is affecting the archaeological sites we designed our survey to walk along the coast
looking for archaeological artifacts and that would include pottery fragments of pottery
stone tools food remains whenever we found something we could do two things either if
the objects were out of context which would mean just thrown on top of the sand we would collect
a point and register what there is but if the artifacts were in context and that would mean
inside layers in the area where the people in the past through them in areas that are archaeological
we would then use a grid to do an observation and that is one meter square that we would put on the
ground and do all of our observations inside that space because that way we could be systematic
about the process of observation we would also take zooming photos of individual artifacts
and because when you take a photograph it could be very close up or very far away we put a scale
and the scale is just a piece of a ruler that marks sizes what does it feel like to pick up
an artifact yes is knowing that it's the first time that someone has seen and touched these
artifacts in maybe thousands of years so it's it's very exciting to have that link
to to the past and also to be able to tell a little bit of stories one thing about these
sites though is you said there weren't a lot of written records of the history so these some of
these sites are the sole recorders of the history that we have left yeah so these sites were coastal
settlements we think they may have been groups of roundhouses in pre-columbian style called boils
the boils would be grouped around the central open area called pate this village has covered the
entire landscape and in between the villages next to the river mouth there were ceremonial centers
with multiple plazas like Playa Machuca but it's been so many hundreds of years that not only
the abandoned settlements are now buried under sand but the coastline has changed dramatically
and with sea level rise and increased storms from climate change this is only getting worse
humans are transforming the planet so rapidly that we're losing things potentially before we've even
realized that they're there yeah and we see that constantly with archaeological sites we don't know
where the sites are and it they are so important they are so important for finding solutions they
are important for our identity they are important to rediscover our own voices the things that
happen in the past and they are washing away but we cannot sit back and wait but by partnering with
communities by partnering with the people that are living there for whom these things are important
we can get things done we can start answering questions we can start finding solutions we
can start talking about the importance of climate adaptation climate mitigation
we can start having those conversations about why we should change our behavior things might look
challenging we can do something it's just a matter of figuring out what we can do and start doing it
you