|
|
|
|
|
|
Honoring the Ancient People
|
|
|
|
The glaciers broke down. Masses of ice, 10,000 feet thick, broke down. The ice, that had swept aside mountains in Canada and sculpted the Great Lakes, broke down. |
|
|
 |
Species after species disappeared. Mammoths, mastodons, two species of bison, horse, llama, ground sloths, and many more were gone from the scene. Many species of shellfish went extinct. Tides crept in, swallowing villages within everyone's memory.
Choked with melt-water of glaciers, the Mississippi River, cut off migration routes to the west.
98 feet down in the Little Salt Springs sink hole, a giant land tortoise was found, laying on its back, on a limestone shelf. Of course, the tortoise could not have ended up that way by itself.
Giant tortoises went extinct around the same time as these powerful climatic changes. They were part of the world known by the ancient people who lived here. Were they a symbol of something meaningful to those ancient people?
I imagine these ancient people climbing down into that hole in the earth. They knew of their connection to the Mother Earth.
|
|
|
If you listen, they will teach you.
The Windover site, in near Titusville, Florida, offers a wonderful story. We have come to believe in Social-Darwinism. It's an insidious notion - "The survival of the fittest," easily translated into "might makes right." It was the very foundation of the "master race" notion of Nazi Germany.
|
|
From Windover, a different message travels to you over 7 ,400 years. It is a message of love and it leaves Social Darwinism in the attic where it belongs.
There was a child born to those people. That child was born with a gaping hole in the vertebrae of his lower back. The bones never grew together. Spina bifida, stole this child's use of his legs. The world of 8'000 years ago was truly challenging.
|
And yet, this child lived until he was fourteen years old. His people cared for him. They did not vote him out and discard him. They did not throw him away. They carried him with them on their migrations
Darwinian evolution is a paradigm. It is but one phase in the wonderful story of change. Of course, there is evolution, but there are more mechanisims at work than the most obvious.
www.nbbd.com/godo/history/windover/#TOP%20Windover
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Although humans were weak and could easily be killed by a Short-faced bear or an American lion, they could kill these animals too. Humans found strength in the tools and weapons they could create. Their songs filled the mysterious night with the stories of their bravery. They reached out to that Great Mystery. Their mouths formed the words and the words rose with the smoke. Their struggle for survival connected them to their landscape in an intelligent way, and it was with that intelligence that they reached out.
Did the throat of Little Salt Springs vibrate with their chant, their hope?
