You may have heard of an ancient latte village that came to life after its discovery late last year. This and other heritage sites will be featured at a University of Guam seminar tomorrow that features Chamorro heritage, history, and culture.  Dr. Mike Carson says the recently discovered ancient latte village at Ritidian is the closest thing to seeing what ancient Chamorro civilization was actually like.

"What's so special about this is it's so nicely preserved of a whole village complex," he shared. "There's very few places in Guam where you can see that today - in places where people can have some kind of access." At a UOG seminar on Tuesday, he will discuss the preliminary findings into his research at the site, adding, "We will show the distribution of the site so you can see how the village was organized, how those houses related to one another, where different individuals and families lived, and how they related to each other as a village complex, as well as the unique architectural styles of each of those latte houses and the kinds of artifacts we found."

Among the artifacts are pieces of pottery, tools, fishing hooks, slingstones, and more here are just a few of the thousands of artifacts that have been found. Dr. Carson said, "We usually don't find slingstones but we did find one at a latte house so it may have been used there in fact it was broken right down the middle so probably upon impact so this tells us something about what happened in the last stages of people living at this place. And people also often ask about the fish hooks, and I can't show you everything we have but I can show you this one nice piece which is a fishing gorge. This is a v-shaped gorge intended to get caught in the fish's mouth."

Along with Dr. Carson's presentation, producer Rita Nauta will feature an advance screening of a community-based film. "It's a production of a documentary, we titled it Hasso I Guinahan Guahan, which means Hasso is a Chamorro term to think, to reflect, to imagine," she explained.

The project started two years ago when she found a cave at Ritidian that had been vandalized. "And that really gave us a sense of urgency that we needed to get the message out, especially to our younger generations that these sites, these are tangible evidence of our ancestors and how they lived," said Nauta.

She said the video will help the youth establish a connection with our history, and will hopefully inspire them to preserve our history and heritage. The event takes place Wednesday at 5:30pm, at the UOG Lecture Hall in Mangilao, and is free to the public.