Photo Courtesy of Bullock Texas State History Museum

With the completion of a ground-floor renovation, the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin recently unveiled a new exhibit exploring more than 16,000 years of Texas history.

As writer Michael Barnes reports in the Austin American-Statesman, Becoming Texas: Our Story Begins Here, explores Texas’ pre-history and earliest days with artifacts including a 16,000-year-old stone projectile point excavated from the Gault Site in Central Texas and the reassembled remnants of La Belle, a French sailing ship that sank in Matagorda Bay in 1686.

The new exhibit is the culmination of a years-long project that magnifies the museum’s focus on Texas’ indigenous people and their exposure to European explorers.

“Our understanding of the history of Texas is always changing with each new discovery. It’s been influenced by who records it, and what memories are passed down through generations. In this exhibition, you’ll see how the people of the past, from so many diverse cultures, often faced the same challenges we do,” Bullock Museum Director Margaret Kochsaid in a news release. “You’ll witness the stories of tragedy, resilience, combat, and alliances that set the foundation for the state we would become. The amazing story of Texas is a global one, a human one, and through the artifacts gathered in this gallery, we hope visitors find the stories of their ancestors.”