"There’s nothing else like this on the planet ... and it’s offshore Manasota Key."

Historian John McCarthy, executive director of Historic Spanish Point, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people in Englewood, Florida Tuesday night. McCarthy was talking about the recent discovery of an ancient burial site found off Manasota Key. Sea levels were 30 feet lower during the Archaic Period, McCarthy told his riveted audience. Forests, swamps and marshes existed miles off where the Manasota Key shoreline is today. Native Americans lived, raised their families and buried their departed loved ones on land now submerged in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read more at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Related: Ancient Native American burial site found in Gulf of Mexico off Venice, Florida(with video)