Miles below the surface of the earth are some of the most dangerous caves in the southeastern United States.
“You are in an alien world,” Jan Simek, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told McClutch News. “It’s a very different world from where we live. In fact, it’s a dangerous world. Your perceptions are different. Your experience is different.”
Simek refers to the dark zone of a cave deep underground that is “unaffected by outside light.” It’s here that he and his team discovered Native American art hundreds of centuries ago.
According to Simek, they have already explored nearly 100 cave sites, most of them in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. They also visited some of Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, and Florida.
According to Simek, new caves, including four, were still discovered earlier this year.
There are thousands of caves on the Appalachian Plateau, which stretches from southwestern New York to Alabama, Simek said. It also includes the world’s longest cave called the “Mammoth” in Kentucky.
The cave in the Appalachian region was “a very important part of the landscape for Native Americans of their ancestors,” Shimek told McClutch News. “They used those caves as they used other parts of the landscape as sacred places.”
Types of ancient Native American art in the cave
According to Simek, ancient cave paintings include:
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Mud glyph: A drawing traced on the surface of mud.
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Petroglyphs: Drawings embedded in limestone on the walls of a cave.
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Emoji: A painting composed of charcoal-based pigments.
The oldest cave with art inside is Almost 6,500 years ago — The site is rare and lies between the Kentucky and Tennessee states, but Simek said earlier this month in a news release at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
“We found that cave paintings have strong ties to the historic tribes that occupied the southeastern part of Europe during the invasion,” Simek said in a news release.
For example, according to a news release, a mid-19th century Cherokee inscription was found on the walls of caves in Alabama and Tennessee.
The writing system was created by the Cherokee scholar Sekwoia between 1800 and 1824 and became the “main means of written expression,” the news release said.
“Cherokee archaeologists, historians, and linguists” often consult with him “to document and translate the books in these caves,” Simek said in a news release.
Ruins found in a cave 3,000 years ago
According to a news release, Native Americans produced art in the southeast, “until the historic period when the Trail of Tears witnessed the evacuation of indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi River in the 1830s.”
Some of them died due to dangerous cave conditions.
For example, 3000-year-old Native American ruins were found in Mammoth and Saltcave, Kentucky, Shimek told McClutch News.
“If we went into the dark zone to make artwork, we had to carry a light source and food with us,” says Simek. “It wasn’t a simple task. Many things can go wrong today.”
Since the first Dark Zone Cave was discovered south of Knoxville in 1980, Simek and his team have turned to studying and discovering more ancient art.
In fact, four new caves were discovered “in the first half of 2021”, Simek said in a university news release.
“In a way, by following in the footsteps of (Native American) and stepping into these places, you can feel the essence of the experience they have experienced and bring people a little closer,” Simek told McClatchy News. rice field. “You can feel their spirit.”
The photo shows a thick fog filling the Kentucky cave with a rare sight. “Portal to another world”
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