Deep in the heart of Salado, marked only by a small sign, a seemingly normal plot of land holds something that's quite literally changing international ideas of the world.
"Everything in the elementary school textbooks is wrong," says Dr. Clark Wernecke.
He runs the archeological dig site called the "Gault Site." Students and professors join him in Central Texas to unearth treasures and change history.
In their latest excavation, layers of dirt reveal a gaping hole in the ground. Inside, they've found artifacts dating earlier than we ever thought humans lived on this continent.
"This would be a little piece that came off when they were making a biface tool," Dr. Steve Howard said from the deep hole, holding up a small artifact, probably 15,000 years old.
That's a time period so old, they don't even have a name for it yet.
The tools they use look more like chopsticks than shovels. That way they don't damage the age-old goods.
And it's the only place in Texas where water is a bad thing. They constantly pump it out of deep the hole to get it out of their way. On the property they've uncovered 2.6 million artifacts over the years. Art, mammoth bones, even a stone floor has come from here.
Everything is measured and tagged with meticulous notes before its shipped off to the lab.
Here, time is measured in layers.
"We're trying to understand ourselves better in the past, so we can understand ourselves better now and where we're going," Wernecke said.
The dirt may be the key to our past, but it also determines how we develop into the future.
For more information about the Gault site visit www.gaultschool.org
