In Search of the Old Ones by Anthony D. Fredericks

Author:Anthony D. Fredericks [Fredericks, Anthony D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

~7000 BCE, Central Utah

Long arcing plateaus and statuesque mountain ranges dominated the landscape some 1,900 miles (3,060 km) to the southwest of the Canadian canyon. The ever-present ice that blanketed this geology resulted in a dearth of vegetation. Beneath, the landscape was a potpourri of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks along with more than five hundred minerals. It was a dynamic land, subject to earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, floods, and other geological forces spread across four billion years. Also sculpted by glaciers and the subtle imprint of erosion, rocks folded and faulted, buckled and bent, and changed into vast conglomerates that were, at once, magnificent, and later, gone.

Human footprints crossed this land at least ten thousand years ago, during the Pleistocene. These nomadic people, traveling in small family groups, followed herds of woolly mammoths and bison and captured rabbits and ducks. A menagerie of megafauna, including giant sloths, camels, and now-extinct horses, also populated this land.

Around 9700 BCE the climate slowly shifted and changed. A once-frigid environment became a little warmer, a little dryer. Animals that could not adapt died off, as did plants that couldn’t acclimate. Changes in the zoology and botany of the area also forced changes in the lifestyles of the Paleo-Americans who inhabited the region. Their tools changed, their lifestyles altered, and their customs modified. It was a slow, evolutionary process dictated by unseen forces in a changing environment. Central Utah was in flux.

Even so, a vast sheet of ice stretched beyond the horizon. Although it was slowly receding from south to north, its influence was omnipresent. Botanical life was scant, with not a tree to be found anywhere. As the ice retreated, it left behind a rough and scarred terrain. Broad lakes, eroded mountains, and a gorged geography of rounded hills and alluvial sediments were the remnants of its existence.

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