About 4000 years ago prehistoric people in what is now Kentucky began
exploring portions of the world's longest cave -- the
Mammoth Cave System, 350
miles mapped and still going. Between 2800 and 2300 years ago, these ancient
explorers intensively mined many miles of cave passages, removing large
quantities of cave minerals apparently for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Since 1963, faculty and student archaeologists of the Washington Univ. Anthropology Department have been collaborating with the Cave Research Foundation and with Mammoth Cave National Park officials in a long-term study of the prehistoric activity in these caves.
During Fall Semester 1995, a team of
archaeologists, paleoethnobotanists, and speleologists journeyed to the lower
levels of Salts Cave where they obtained a small core from a 3 m long,
beautifully preserved climbing or scaling pole (identified as the trunk of a
small red/black oak tree by paleoethnobotanist/wood identification specialist Lee
Newsom, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale) left in a remote passage by the
ancient cavers.
Paleoethnobotanists Lee Newsom (light shirt) and Kitty Roberts (dark shirt) prepare to extract a core from the climbing pole (on the ledge in front of them). Lower Salts Cave, KY. Original photo by caver and cave photographer Charles Swedlund, SIU-Carbondale.