History Lesson
by Sean Ryan
8/04
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is easily the most historic cave in the country.
There's evidence of exploration and mining going back 4000 years,
including signatures, ladders, baskets, and even a mummy.
I went to Mammoth over the summer of 2004 for a week of volunteer
restoration work. Rick Olsen was the ranger organizing things with the
national park, and he had put together some 'education trips' for
volunteers. The park didn't like the term 'reward trips', so they became
'education trips' although only for those people who had hauled toxic
creosoted wood out of the mud of the Echo River.
Twelve of us met at the Historic entrance Saturday morning for the trip.
We met here mornings before venturing down to the work sites (except
Tuesday, when we worked at the El Ghor and Silliman Avenue passages
hauling old lights out of the passage).
As we passed through the tourist trail, Rick began the usual tourist
lecture. He was talking to cavers, so he gave us a little more than the
usual.
The average tourist didn't care much about the day to day life of Stephen
Bishop, the slave who did much of the groundbreaking exploration of
Mammoth. But we sure did, so Rick showed us where he burned his
signatures in the rock. Turkey bones were found in a back room just off
the main trail, along with a signature. Rick hoped this meant Stephen
snuck back here one night with his wife and had a romantic dinner.
Mammoth was converted into a mine for saltpeter - the primary ingredient
of gunpowder - during the War of 1812, when we all of a sudden couldn't
buy gunpowder from England. Afterwards, Mammoth was turned into a tourist
attraction. Slave labor built the flat dirt trails that made walking so
easy in these big touristy sections. At one time it was the second most
popular tourist attraction in the country, beat only by Niagara Falls.
By the time the Civil War broke out, Mammoth had been a show cave for
decades. Mining had long ago ceased, so when the South found itself in
the same situation the whole U.S. had been in before - their gunpowder
supply was now in enemy territory - they had to make their own again, but
in West Virginia�s Organ Cave and other caves.
Most of the history wasn't about Stephen Bishop or any other 19th century
explorer, however, but the real early visitors. Archaelogical evidence
points to Native Americans exploring Mammoth since 2000 B.C. They stopped
at 500 B.C., for reasons still unknown. For 1500 years they explored many
miles of Mammoth, and mined lots of crystal formations.
Did the Indians from back then stick to the big passages, or also check
out the smaller areas? Rick said the archaeologists could only go by the
evidence they found, so the exact paths they took weren't known.
"We do know that they thought this was a good place to take a dump," Rick
said, pointing to a spot right on the main trail. Some paleofeces - that
was the word Rick used - had been discovered there, dating back 4000
years. Some female scientists led an effort to chart the hormones of the
feces, hoping to show that they could have been deposited by women. All
the hormones correspond to males, though. It doesn't mean that only men
explored these caves, although it possibly justified that men are full of
crap.
A long wooden stick with branches lashed perpendicular was tucked thirty
feet up an alcove on the main trail. Wet birch bark was lashed around the
axis, which got the consistany of leather when dried. This was how the
Native Americans built ladders, state-of-the-art Stone Age technology.
There was a chance this ladder was not 2500 years ago, but just 150.
Maybe it was rigged to make a show cave a little more dramatic. Carbon
dating of the branch would be inconclusive, since there was a chance the
branch was washed in 2500 years ago and was just adapted for this purpose
in the 19th century. The bark lashing the cross bars, however, had to
have been tied while wet and fresh. The wood could be as old as the
hills, but that bark has to be accurate. The bark was tested, and sure
enough, it was definitely B.C. So this ladder was the real deal.
Why the Native Americans mined the crystals is still unknown. Some of the
crystals have laxative qualities, and others might have been believed to
have mystic qualities. For whatever reasons, they knocked them off the
walls and carted them out.
Occasionally the ceiling had black charring on it. This was the result of
previous cavers who had passed through. They weren't carbide cavers,
though - they were torch cavers.
The most likely light source for ancient native Americans were bundles of
hollow reeds. They burned slowly, but only gave 30 or 45 minutes of light
per torch. The theory is that groups entered the cave, each with numerous
torches, and several were burning at any given time. The fire constantly
needed a new part of the reed to burn, so these ancient cavers would
knock the top of the torch against the ceiling to knock off the charred
bit of reed.
These reed remains are still sitting in the cracks of Mammoth's floor -
thousands of years later. It was incredible to see them just lying on the
ground, undisturbed by so much as a gust of wind or drop of rain shower
in four millennia.
For most all of the week, I'd been caving with my first LED light, a
Petzl Tikka. It only took 3 AAA batteries, and had a ridiculous life of
120 hours (150 hours in blinking mode). The downside is that the bluish
light it throws out doesn't go that far compared to my Petzl Duo. For
picking up sacks of wood and walking through paved borehole, it was more
than enough light. This little blue glow wasn't getting the job done now
that we were off-trail. Even at the brightest setting I was squinting to
see the path in front of me. I had to go back to burning AAs with my Duo.
Well, at least I was seeing one of the most magnificent caves in the
world.
At certain points along the trail were bits of wood, or old newspapers
from the 19th century. To Mammoth, this was new. At some point it stopped
being litter. Note to litterers: pick a spot where your garbage won't be
disturbed for 100 years, and you'll be making your own archaeological
site. Try to stick stuff that�d be valuable in 100 years: the deed to
your house, maybe.
Further down the path, we came to the basket, one of the most impressive
things I�ve ever seen in my life. The basket was woven from grass, dated
at 2500 years old, and was perfectly preserved in Mammoth for most all of
that time - until some jackass spelunker put his hand through it when he
was shown it. Now no tourists get to see it. But our �education trip�
did. The basket was probably used for collecting the mined crystals and
rocks from the cave. The weave makes the basket look timeless, like
something you could pick up at the Rag Shop or an antique store. I guess
weaving was universal among cultures.
This trip was nominally to see Albert's Domes: all this neat history was
just along the way. Once history ran out, the path became thousands and
thousnads of feet of duck walking. The ceiling was five feet high at most
of these spots, although it dipped down for some spots and raised up for
others. Wearing the helmet adds two or three inches to your head, and
perpetually hunching over means you don't notice the ceiling has risen
until you've already wasted your chance to straigthten your back. When
the ceiling drops, you notce it just like in any other occasion: you bang
your head.
I had hurt my foot during the week, so I was walking with a slight limp.
Add that we were running through these passages and that I was one of the
taller people on this trip, and I was a gasping, hunched over mess coming
out of them.
This was a long trip, and at break points some thoughts naturally led to
the call of nature. Rick was understandable about this, and pointed out
the points of the cave that flooded. Unburden yourself all you want on
these sections, since they'll be washed clean the next time there's a
good rainstorm. No one's going to be studying your remnants 4000 years
from now, looking to see if you ate corn.
One place you would not want to relieve yourself near is Lost John's
resting place, the fabled mummy of Mammoth. He got separated from his
group during a trip in Mammoth, possibly while mining, and died alone in
the dark. The dry environment he picked for his final resting place
preserved him as well as Egyptian pharaohs. Any urine squirted there
wouldn't be washed away for thousands of years, making lifetimes of
future archaeologists have to smell your urine. You'd also have a ghost
literally pissed off at you.
After bathroom breaks, we resumed the duckwalking. Miles of it, it felt
like. It might have literally been miles, one you added up all the
terrain, and then doubled it to get out. There was no room to pass
anyone, and the pace was very quick, so you were forced to run little
marathons with your head craned down, occasionally smacking the ceiling.
It was never at a pace that let me catch my breath. If I was a foot
shorter I wouldn't have to duck for most of this. Chopping my head off
was sounding like a better and better idea.
The sight of the huge empty silos of Albert�s Domes made the duckwalking
almost bearable. A little bit of water plunged down from the top of these
connected domes, each one eighty or a hundred feet tall. We sat on the
breakdown around their edges, took a water and food break, and cracked
our backs. Not many people got to see this part of the cave.
We had the whole trip to do again, only backwards. This is a regular
occurrence in caving, as is the idle speculation that someone should
build an elevator. As it turns out, Mammoth does have an elevator,
leading into the Snowball Dining Room. (It�s closed to guests now, ever
since Mammoth�s humid air snapped one of its cables. But until that point
Mammoth was somewhat handicap accesible.) The elevator is nowhere near
Albert's Dome, but it was a little too tempting to imagine someone
sending a big drill into our ceiling just to save us an hour of mild
discomfort.
We popped out around 3:30 P.M., our backs weary from a good six or seven
hours underground. These big show caves have often felt like museums to
me, just because of the lighting and the scope. But now that I got loaded
with Mammoth lore, it stopped being historical display and started being
live history.
I had a long drive ahead of me back to New Jersey, and I was determined
to do it in one solid push. There would be a few breaks in the middle of
the night for snoring on the side of the road, as well as one 4:00 A.M.
interrogation by the Maryland Highway Patrol. But at least my back was
straight for it all.