as small as a world and as large as alone

8:25am June 27, 2013

clatterbane:

nativeamericannews:

U.S.’s Oldest Cave and Rock Art Discovered in Tennessee

At more than 6,000 years old, prehistoric cave and rock art found in what is today Tennessee is easily the oldest discovered yet within the United States. The art is also the most widespread collection found anywhere in the U.S., according to a new paper in the journal Antiquity that documents the art. The extensive cave and rock art provides intriguing clues about what life was like for Native societies more than 6,000 years ago.

Funny how when they look, they keep finding stuff like this. (And then come up with some weird interpretations, but yeah.)

I get grumpy, coming from an area where it’s been more politically convenient to pretend there aren’t even mounds or surviving rock art. And where a lot of both have been destroyed because of this. The entrance to Adams Cave (in City of Radford, not Montgomery County) is right over the side of the mountain from my old house, and the levels of fuckery there are amazing. It also wasn’t “official" until the ’90s when somebody carted bones of what may well have been some of my direct ancestors out of there and took them to the local university. Most of the art has been destroyed over, oh, the past century and a half of douches traipsing in and out of there. At least the city finally blocked it off.

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