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Old May 23rd, 2011 #49
Alex Linder
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[did a search, this came back from an old stormfront page. don't know where it comes from originally.]

Spirit Cave Man: He has a long, narrow face with narrow cheekbones, a narrow chin and a protruding upper jaw. He died in his 40s. Presently the remains are in a sealed box in the possession of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nevada. The BLM has an inventory of 145 sets of remains, representing at least 154 individuals, stored there. Many sets of human remains were turned over to the Indians for repatriation. (Lahontan Valley News/Fallon Eagle Standard, August 16, 2000.) The exact location of the cave is not disclosed by local archeologists in order to protect the site. The general location given is a few miles northeast of Hidden Cave or the West Side of the Stillwater Mountain Range.

The cave was excavated first by S.M. Wheeler during the 1940 field season. (Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, spring 1997, 15, 97, 117) Spirit Cave Man was buried under another burial site in split tule and cordage matting. There were also the remains of two additional human cremations carefully placed on top of the other. Both of these bodies were burned to small fragments and dated to over 9,000 years.

1996: The University of California, Davis, in cooperation with the Nevada State Museum, asks permission to do DNA tests and carbon-14 dating tests on 41 sets of human remains held at the museum, including the Spirit Cave Man. Indian leaders oppose the request. They say invasive testing is contrary to their spiritual beliefs and traditions.

1997 (March): The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, representing all Nevada tribal governments, formally claims the Spirit Cave remains for immediate reburial under the 1990 law. (NAGPRA)

2000 (January): The Nevada State Museum withdraws requests for DNA testing and says it will no longer be the lead agency in Spirit Cave scientific studies. State officials assure the tribes that the busts of Spirit Cave Man and Wizards Beach Man won’t be publicly displayed regardless of the outcome of the dispute over the remains.

2000 (July): Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution tell the BLM the remains are very significant in the investigation of ancient North America and should not be reburied without further testing.

2000 (August 15): The BLM announces a preliminary decision that the remains cannot be linked to the Paiutes or any group of present-day people. The remains will continue to be federal property. State BLM chief Bob Abbey says no requests for invasive testing will be considered until the Department of the Interior decides on regulations for dealing with unaffiliated remains that fall under the 1990 law.

Hidden Cave Tour and Petroglyphs Park: The Hidden Cave “Interpretive Trail” visitation is organized by the BLM on the second and fourth Saturday of each month. The tour begins at the Churchill County Museum in Fallon at 9:30 a.m. The museum is located at 1050 S. Main Street. Hidden Cave was excavated in 1940, 1951 and 1979-80. When I was taking the tour we have received a number of well-done, informative flyers, our guide was a sympathetic park ranger around 30 years of age who had very detailed information on all living and dead things that has ever existed in the area but when asked about human remains found at the site he suddenly started to show the advanced symptoms of severe Alzheimer disease and refused to answer any questions. (It was like his job depended on the issue—and very likely it did.) (Map P 42, C-10)

Stillwater Marshes, Nevada: As the water levels slowly were lowered by the new weather conditions following the last ice-age the surface of marshes and lakes was slowly shrinking, compressing the relatively large human population and pressing them into competition for the best living environment. One of the last places where today there is a year-round lake in the area is Stillwater in western Nevada. In 1985 unusually high water levels washed off the topsoil around the lake and the marsh and exposed thousands of human bones, gravesites, house floors, artifacts etc. People flying over the area in small planes have noticed thousands of bones, and many home sites sticking out of the mud. In all 45 sites were located within a six-square-mile area on a chain of islands and, ismuthses. They found circular home sites, some of them as large as 800 square feet. They have found a wheel-like clay disk with a central perforation. (The Paiutes are not known to have made pottery vessels before they were exposed to white people.) A deal was made with the Indian tribes: The bones that were 50 percent below ground were left there; those that were 50 percent above were collected. A total of 4,026 human remains, belonging to about 140 humans, were collected and, after almost no examination, all was handed over to the Indians for reburial. Six individual carbon datings were performed on this incredibly rich site—meaning that the traditional Indian attitude was ruling the day at the time: “We do not want to know.“ The bones, based on the associated items they were found with, were estimated to be up to 5,000 years old. (Many 10,000-year-old skeletons originally were estimated to be around 2,000 years of age at the time they were found.)

Ann Raymond, archeologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Stillwater Management area, said: “[T]hese people were quite tall, up to six feet, while Paiutes tend to be shorter.”

The residents of this marsh area also developed food storage technics, never used by the local Indian tribes. There is no doubt this area has an unusually rich concentration of prehistoric dwelling sites, waiting to be explored. (Map 43, A-10; 44. A-1.)

Wizard Beach Man. This skull was found in the mudflats of Pyramid Lake by avocational archeologist Peter Ting during a low lake stand in 1968 and carbon-dated to 9200 years. The skull was well preserved by calcification, and is a good subject for future DNA examinations unless the federal government and the Indians can destroy this rare item, presently in a sealed box in the possession of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nevada. The Paiute Tribe is claiming it for reburial. This skull of a male in his 30s, with Europoid features was dated to be between 9,225 and 9,515 years old. (Map 34, D-3.)

(Kennewick) Man’s Best Friend Comes to the Rescue.

There were a large number of skeletal remains of dogs located in the western Nevada area. The state museum has partial remains of about 27 dogs. All remains were found in the geographic area that was inhabited by the Lovelock Culture. Crypt Cave Dog was found in the 1950s in northern Nevada, a rare complete skeleton with remains of yellow hair. Crypt Cave Dog was carefully buried in a valuable fishnet about 6,360 years ago.

(Somebody must have loved this pup; he was kept alive years after he suffered a broken rear leg.) There were five remains of dogs that were older, one of them dated 9,500 years B.C. The general assumption was that these dogs must have been bred from the local wolf population, just like Eurasian dogs were bred from the Eurasian wolf population. Nobody has paid to much attention to these poor puppies, they were not incorporated in NAGPRA and neither did they receive special civil rights protections. There was nobody to stop the scientists, who had an easy run, doing DNA tests on them left and right. The results were presented at the 5th International Ancient DNA Conference by Jennifer Leonard in a lecture: “Origin of American Dogs, a separate domestication?”

The accumulated DNA evidence clearly shows that all the dogs examined had a close relationship to the Eurasian wolf and no relationship to American wolves, meaning that they must have been brought over by the incoming waves of immigrations to the New World, by the very same tribes who have left us Kennewick Man.

Stone Age Cultural War?

Wherever we go in western Nevada we will find rocks, covered with petroglyphs. Some of the local archeologists believe these unique symbols were left behind by the mysterious early inhabitants of the area based on geographical associations. For example just a very short distance from the Hidden Cave area there are a large number of rocks covered with petroglyphs at Grimes Point. At this time there are no dependable ways to establish the approximate time of the origin of these works. However, in the January 3, 2003 issue of Science News there was an article on a possible new method to calculate the age of petroglyphs by measuring the iron and manganese component in the “desert varnish” deposited in time on the surface of the petroglyphs (using X-ray fluoroscopy).

The Pebble Mound Mystery was brought to this author’s attention first by The Nevada Archaeologist (Vol. 3, No. 1, 1981) and some printed copies of pictures from 2001. It seems that larger rocks, covered with petroglyphs, were broken into fist-sized pieces and left in the desert, most likely at their original locations. These pebble mounds can be found at many different locations, spread out in western Nevada. Some of the pebble mound sites were occupied between 11,100 and 9,000 years ago, based on the tools recovered at the sites. It did take considerable effort to break up these rocks into small pieces—the most likely reason seems to be that one population group was trying to erase even the memory of an another group—a form of Stone-Age book burning, cultural war—if you like.

(The October and the November 1997 issues of THE BARNES REVIEW have excellent articles on prehistoric rock structures apparently built by Caucasians entitled “The Mysterious Megaliths of New England.”)

Black Desert Fabric Samples: Diamond plaited fabrics, a technique unique to the Lovelock culture, have been found all over in western Nevada. All Nevada diamond plaited fabrics have been carbon-dated to over 9,000 years of age. The technic is far more sophisticated than those used by the Indians in later centuries. It involves a set of wooden stakes used as a frame on the ground, that helps the maker to create a larger, more even, denser split tule and cordage matting. The local Indian population had never used this sophisticated technique. Eugene Hattori, a resident archeologist at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, and Catherine Fowler were working to compare these mat samples to woven textiles in other parts of the world.

Willow Creek Site: Located in the Modoc National Forest, outside Susanville in northeastern California, managed by the BLM. A number of petroglyphs were found here, symbols with astronomical meanings. The site has been partially built, manipulated so the user can predict certain important celestial events very precisely. (With the help of this site the user can track the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon.)

Browns Valley Male: a male, dated to 9,710 years ago, no relation to the Indians. Buried by the Sioux on October 2, 1999.

Buhl Woman: Found in a rock quarry in Buhl Idaho, in 1989, died in her teenage years about 12,800 years ago. No study was done before she was reburied by the Shoshone Bannock tribes in 1991. Based on photographic evidence Dr. Owsley has calculated the skull’s dimensions and concluded that she had no relation to the Indian population.

Grimes Point Child: A 10-year-old girl who died about 10,800 years ago. Presently at the Carson City Museum, claimed by the Paiute.

Minnesota Woman: From Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, 1931. Dated: 6,775 years B.C. No relation to Native Americans. DNA test was successful. The Sioux Tribe in South Dakota buried her on October 2, 1999.

The Hour Glass Cave Male: About 9,140 years old, found in the Colorado Rockies in 1988. No research was done. Reburied by the Southern Ute Tribe.

Winnemucca Lake: Dry lakebed northeast of Reno. Walter Cronberg discovered a cave high up in the hills, overlooking the dry lakebed in February of 1947. (Nevada Sunday Morning, Aug. 1, 1948) They found the caves “on the southeast fringe of mountains that circle the dry lakebed.” About 30 caves had been explored in the area. They have found “two complete skulls,” “10 or 15 thigh bones and fragments of other skulls” and “numerous artifacts.”

The caves were explored again by Dr. Richard Shutler in 1961. (Nevada State Journal, July 23, 1961) Large number of items recovered from ten different caves. (Map 34. F-5.)
“Paleo Kid.” The bones of a child, presently in the possession of the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, the 10,600-year-old “Paleo Kid,” a girl nine or 10 years old with the same long skull shape as Spirit Cave man, also has a Carabelli’s cusp, a Caucasoid trait, discussed by Dr. Chatters.

On June 4, 1963, A local newspaper in western Nevada declared G.C. Rollins of Lovelock, Nev., “Mr. Treasure Hunter of 1963” for finding a “mummified man, which Columbia University has carbon-dated as being 35,000 years old.”