MIDLAND, Texas — Imagine it’s 1953, you’re a Midland oilfield worker working in the hot West Texas sun.
It seems like just another day... until all of a sudden your day turns from normal to historical.
"Well, in 1953 a fella was out looking around in one of the blowout sand areas, and he found some old bones and they appeared to be human," Midland Historical Society President Jim Collett said. "And so he wanted to see if they were, and talk to some people who were professionals. They came in and excavated and what they did find were parts of the human skull, some finger bones and some others, and they turned out to be a woman's skull, but it was many thousands of years old."
The man who found the bones was Keith Glasscock, and little did he know not only would he be making Midland history, he'd be making American history.
"Like many of us, like myself, Keith was an amateur archaeologist," Collett said. "He had a job working in the oil business. And so when he could, he would wander around looking, you know, in sites possibly looking for artifacts and see what he could find there."
With a skull that’s been sitting underground for some time, it was anyone’s guess just how old it was.
"They began to speculate," Collett said. "Some of the speculations got all the way up to 50,000 to 500,000."
Luckily the experts had us covered.
"It turned out to be a woman's skull about 8 to 10,000 years old," Collett said.
Which at the time, made it the oldest skull found in the United States.
And it was right here in Midland.
"Well it was an exciting thing at the time because it was the oldest skull found at that time," Collett said. "It got written up in several national magazines, and I think Midland for a time thought it would kind of be a big thing, a tourist attraction."
Since then, much older skulls have been found, but for a while, Midland was the talk of the country for archaeologists.
"I just think it was cool that it was featured in Life Magazine, Time Magazine, National Geographic, all in those years. It was, in it's own way, was a big deal," Collett said.
Now the question becomes, who was this mystery woman?
"It was a woman in her 20s probably mid-20s," Collett said. "They’re much smaller, just a few feet, 4-5 feet high at the best. They would have been hunter gatherers who would have wandered across this area foraging for game, maybe pursuing the horses, things like that to eat. And they would have been nomadic, they wouldn't have stayed in one place very long."
While the historic skull lived in Midland for a bit, the Smithsonian Museum took the skull in the 60s.
But while the physical skull is not in the Permian Basin anymore, the Midland County Historical Museum has an exhibit with all sorts of information about the skull, and even a mold of it.
"This exhibit was opened about three years ago," Collett said. "It's called 'Paleo Midland', and every October there’s Texas Archeology Month where we focus on archaeology in Texas. So we put it together as part of that month, and we find people like to come in and look at the artifacts."
Despite this being such a historical feat, most people have no idea this happened right in their hometown.
"Most people don't know," Collett said. "It’s been a while since that skull was found and those events so a lot of people do not know anything about this story."
So take in history that was made right in the Tall City, and while it’s not the oldest skull ever found anymore, for a while it was.
For a significant amount of time, Midland was a scientific haven, and Keith Glasscock went from just a normal West Texan to a piece of scientific history.
It goes to show that you never know what history you can make by digging through an everyday sand dune. You might just find the next oldest skull in the United States.