old days

just watched a special on Windover, which is actually very close to here--in the 80's in the middle of a proposed development, artifacts were discovered especially in a pond that had apparently been in existence for thousands of years. the newly discovered (as if they had been lost) Native Americans were called the Windover Culture and it was discovered that they had used the pond as a burial/entombment site beginning 7-9000 years ago where they would stake out the bodies so they wouldn't float, place things that must have been important to them, and then over the years, the tannic acid would preserve unbelievable amounts of remains. The archaeologists were actually able to not only discover brain tissue but brain tissue that had useable DNA, as did teeth, bones, bone marrow, etc. This was a large burial site but so far the scientists have only discovered one young man that died as a result of violence--apparently he was hit with a thin spear---thrown with a carved stick or bone called an atlatl(or woomera in Australia) that would increase the velocity and distance of the spear-- the researchers were able to determine that this young man died a quick death and received the same burial as others---i wonder if they considered that perhaps the young man died accidentally---hmmm--anyway, other burials included a teenager with spina bifida, which would have left the young person with perhaps an open spine, but certainly paralyzed and in constant pain---the scientists said that this debunked the idea that all ancient peoples would either kill such a person at death or allow them to die---also there were bodies of folks in their mid-60's-perhaps later--again, common belief was that older members of the group were allowed to starve or just die at the mercy of nature----now the big controversy is that some scientists think the dna proves that these people came from Europe instead of Asia---now that would indeed be interesting---so again the one thing proved was that we never know as much as we think we do
peace
-will-