United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Again we find mealing-stones and much broken pottery, and up on a little natural shelf in the rock back of the ruins we find a globular basket that would hold perhaps a third of a bushel. It is badly broken, and as I attempt to take it up it falls to pieces. There are many beautiful flint chips, also, as if this had been the home of an old arrow-maker. August 21.
The little houses were there, the smoke-blackened stains of fires, the pieces of pottery scattered about cold hearths, the stone hatchets; and stone pestles and mealing-stones lay beside round holes polished by years of grinding maize lay there as if they had been carelessly dropped yesterday. But the cliff-dwellers were gone! Dust!
Evidences of this are quite abundant; on our way here yesterday we discovered fragments of pottery in many places along the trail; and, wandering about the little farms to-day, I find the foundations of ancient houses, and mealing-stones that were not used by nomadic people, as they are too heavy to be transported by such tribes, and are deeply worn.
Then they were roasted in the same trays. Burning coals and seeds were mixed in the basket trays and kept in motion by a tossing process which fanned the coals until the seeds were done; then they were separated from the coals by dexterous manipulation. Afterwards the seeds were ground on mealing-stones and molded into cakes, often huge loaves, that were stored away for use in time of need.
Only there was laughter here once and now there's silence. There was life and now there's death. Men cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads and mealing-stones, plaited the ropes we found, and left their bones to crumble in our fingers. As far as time is concerned it might all have been yesterday. We're here to-day. Maybe we're higher in the scale of human beings in intelligence.
Word Of The Day