They Found a Cave Sealed for 2,000 Years in Nevada—Inside Was the Oldest of Its Kind

Eleven tule reed duck decoys sat untouched in a sealed pit inside a Nevada cave for roughly 2,000 years — and the archaeologists who first excavated the site in 1912 never even found them. When two guano miners broke into Lovelock Cave in Pershing County in 1911, they unknowingly opened one of the most artifact-rich sites in Great Basin archaeology. A second expedition in 1924 finally uncovered the decoys, now considered the oldest in the world by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. This video covers the full excavation timeline, the dating evidence, and what remains unresolved about this remarkable ancient Native American archaeological discovery.