Travel Theme: Ancient

Ailsa’s Travel Theme challenge this week on Where’s My Backpack? at http://wheresmybackpack.com/2014/02/28/travel-theme-ancient/ is Ancient.

One definition of the word ‘ancient‘ is ‘belonging to the very distant past.’ I’ve very rarely come across anything really ancient in the USA, which is after all a comparatively young country, unlike back home in England when even a Sunday afternoon dig in our back garden yielded a handful of Roman coins.

One place that can claim to be ancient is the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village in South Dakota. Discovered in 1910, its origins go back more than 1,000 years.

The people, possibly 200 in number, who lived in this village were mostly farmers, growing corn, beans, squashes, tobacco and amaranth. They also hunted bison and lived in earthen lodges, 80 of which have been found on the site.

Another discovery of ancient bones in South Dakota was at the Hot Springs Mammoth site. A large number of woolly mammoths were trapped in a spring-fed pond more than 26,000 years ago and their remains were unearthed by chance during excavation for a housing development in 1974.

The site was subsequently preserved and is now in an enclosed area where further work is being done to uncover other remains. The building is open to the public and the guided tour provides an interesting insight in to what may have happened all those years ago.