Thursday, July 1, 2010

A Tribe of Neanderthals?


I felt this morning as if I had come upon evidence of a tribe of Neanderthals, right here on quaint Cape Cod. And that is not a slur, really. This week I read that an anthropologist studying caves in Portugal had found evidence that Neanderthals painted seashells and wore them as jewelry, a habit known to be fully human [no animal wears handmade jewelry] So Neanderthals, says this man, probably were just as smart, rational, emotional, etc. as home sapiens and the bad rap they've had really seems to be the usual arrogance of the conquerors who always call the vanquished beasts and less than human so they can justify their murderous invasions and taking over of territory.

Back to my morning walk. Yesterday I noticed that the cairn of last summer was partially rebuilt and and now included a carefully balance tower of stones. I had no camera yesterday. Today I immediately saw that it now has two towers. It's quite impressive, as you can see.
This is not a single effort. All around on the rounded headland there are other constructions [besides the ring of stones shown two days ago] Another ring of stones has been begun, there is a heart of the juvenile AB + CD type that get carved in tree trunks and school desks, and then there was the heart shaped construction, with it's stem [as if it were really an apple] but here, ah-ha! is a clue to the identity of these neo-Neanderthals. Those seem obviously to me to be Greek letters in the heart. A fraternity!

1 comment:

Kass said...

Love the rock art.