ONCE THERE WAS A people here who numbered, at their greatest concentration, perhaps two hundred. It has been determined by a close examination of their bones and careful reconstruction of muscle tissues that although they looked as we do they lacked vocal cords. They lived in caves ranged in tiers in the bluffs to the east on the far edge of the desert and because of this some of their more fragile belongings, even clothing, can still be examined intact. The scraps of cloth that have been found are most frequently linen, some of them woven of over a thousand threads to the inch, cloth the thickness of human hair. As nearly as can be determined, there were no distinctions in clothing between the sexes; everyone apparently wore similar linen robes of varying coarseness and sandals made of woven sage. Also found in the caves were the usual implements: mortars and pestles, cooking knives, even some wooden bowls that, like the cloth, are oddly preserved. The knives are curious, made of silver and inlaid with black obsidian glass along the cutting edge. A number of glass and crystal shards have been found in the dirt on the floors of the caves, along with bits of bone china and porcelain. Some intact pieces have been uncovered and the workmanship is excellent. A pair of heavily worked pewter candlesticks together with scraps of beeswax were also located.
The caves, though with separate entrances, are linked by an odd and, it seems, needlessly complicated maze of interconnecting hallways. Nothing has been found in these hallways except where they juncture with caves; here a storage area seems to have existed, a sort of back porch. It has been theorized that the maze itself might have been a defensive network of some sort.
Other than the sharp implements apparently used in the preparation of food, there are no other weapons of any sort to be found. This at first puzzled archeologists, who had determined by an examination of shallow refuse pits that the cave people lived on a mixed and varied diet of meat and vegetables. Not only were no hunting implements found (not even ropes or materials for building snares), there were, it has been determined, too few animals nearby to account for the abundance revealed in an examination of the refuse pits and larder areas. Further complicating the issue of sustenance is the lack of evidence that soil suitable for farming was available to provide the many cultivated varieties of melon, tomato, cucumber, celery and other vegetables for which we have found fossilized seeds. Nor could there have been enough water without some form of irrigation (and there was no river at that time for that) to support such agriculture. In fact, a series of drillings has revealed that only enough water was available to support perhaps sixty to eighty people over the course of a year without exhausting the water table.
Radiocarbon dating has pinpointed the time of inhabitance at 22,000 ± 1430 years BP. Again, a projection of game populations and climatic conditions for this period indicates that the cave people were living a life of apparent plenty in an area that, clearly, could not support such an existence. It has been suggested that these people hunted and farmed abroad but preferred to live at the edge of the desert and traversed great distances in order to do so, but this suggestion has not been taken seriously. The nearest area with sufficient water and soil suitable for farming lies sixty miles to the northeast. Also there is this: the major source of meat, after rabbits and, strangely, geese, was a diminutive antelope, an extremely wary creature so widely scattered that it could not be effectively hunted by men on foot. Only very occasionally could such animals be tricked into running off a cliff or trapped in a piskun. It has been conjectured that they traded for their food but this is highly unlikely.
The question of how they provided for themselves remains unanswered.
Other questions also remain. For instance, no cause of death has been determined for the 173 sets of remains, but it is believed that they all died within the period of a year. All but one was arranged in a crypt in the walls of the caves. The one who was not was found sitting on the floor with his back against an intricately woven cedar bark backrest. This man was in his forties and was apparently working on a piece of beaded cloth when he died. It has never been suggested where his white alabaster beads came from.
What these people did is also a mystery; just as there are no hunting implements, so there are no agricultural tools. Nor is there evidence of elaborate religious ceremonies nor extensive artwork nor are there tools or ovens to work the glass and metal objects found in the caves (and it is extremely unlikely that these were obtained in trade as we know of no other cultural group with such skills in existence at this time).
Some believe that a key to understanding these people lies in determining the purpose of a series of blue earth mounds. These mounds of deep blue-grey dust are about a foot high and are perfectly conical in shape but for the rounded tops. One was found in each cave and the remains of four of them have been detected out on the desert, approximately a mile from the caves. At the heart of each one, toward the base, a hard white stone was found, perfectly round, smoother than dry marble, as if it had been washed for hundreds of years in a creek bed. These stones are gypsum-like but of a different crystalline structure and extremely light. There is some reason to believe that they are the fossilized remains of some sort of organism.
It is for this reason, of course, that these people are referred to as the People of the Blue Earth or the Blue Mound People. They cannot be associated, either geographically or by the level of certain of their crafts with any of their supposed contemporaries. And a number of questions continue to pose themselves. In spite of their anatomical inability to speak, we find no evidence of any other system of communication. No paintings, no writing, no systems of marking, no sequences of any sort. And there is, of course, no source for the linen cloth. There are no objects which might be called toys or evidence of any games, although several lute-like instruments have been found. Almost everything else is quite common in design but the materials from which some things have been made are unusual. There are, as I have indicated, pieces of china and glass, even sterling silver, but, as I have noted, no evidence of their fabrication. A careful sifting of cave soils has revealed fragments of oak and leather furniture but no evidence of fire pits, as, indeed there was at that time apparently no wood or other fuel close by. As nearly as can be determined, food was prepared on rock slabs outside the caves with perhaps some glass device to concentrate the rays of the sun. Inside the caves there was, it seems, no source of heat.
A single scrap of papyrus-like paper has been found and objects for which no explanation has been set forth (among them a smooth red sandstone disc and an enormous turtle shell) have also been appearing.
Further analysis of the cave soils and a closer examination of the surrounding area continues, but you can see the problem. We are dealing here with a people entirely out of the order of things and, for this reason, we should be forgiven any sort of speculation. An artist with an eastern museum, for example, has completed a series of drawings based on anatomical studies; he has given these people blue-grey skin and white hair with soft grey eyes. His pictures are very striking; the eyes have a kind, penetrating quality to them. He is perfectly free to do this.
But I have my own ideas.
The alkaline desert was here at the time these people were, this I have on the best scientific authority, even though the area surrounding the desert was swamp-like and no reasons can be given for the existence of a desert in this area at that time. It is obvious to me, then, that these people lived with some unusual arrangement in this desert; conditions were harsh in the extreme, and their food and water (not to mention linen, silver, and glass) had to come from somewhere else. I do not think it facetious at all to suggest, especially to anyone who has seen these caves, then, that in exchange for food, water, and other necessities these people were bound up in an unusual relationship with the desert. I have examined the caves closely enough myself to have determined that these were both a comfortable people, free from want, and a sedentary or perhaps even meditative people. This seems most reasonable.
I think it will be found too that the blue mounds with their white stone hearts have more to do with the desert than they have to do with the people alone. I think they might even be evidence of a bond between the people and the desert. I assume that the desert was the primary force in this relationship, but I could be wrong. It could have been the people who forged this relationship; we have no way of knowing exactly what they were capable of doing. Perhaps they were blue-skinned, and each had the thought of the desert at his heart, like the white stone in the blue earth, maybe this is the meaning. Perhaps this is what they are trying to say, that the desert is only a thought. I don’t know.
There have been other suggestions, of course, mostly of a religious nature, but it is all conjecture. Many, of course, have avoided any mention of the blue mounds. In the years since I first discovered the caves I have noticed that they have been shifting a little to the north each year although the wall they are set in seems solid. I am apparently the only one to have noticed this. I have also been here recently when the caves were gone.