An Immortal Horse   by Robert Bruce Baird

AN IMMORTAL HORSE?

Egyptian scholars know there is little other than fiction that can be written about the civilization that lived on the banks of the Nile in far more recent times than the beginning of the `Old Copper Culture`. All these things are related and the old fictions are replaceable with the story of a worldwide culture with trading posts in each and every part of the world. Is there any remnant of cultural pride in Iran that treats the ancient metallurgists of their region with a different kind of respect than our history attributes to them? Does anyone think these nationalistic ideologues and pedagogues of today are real and honest presenters of fact? The whole concept of nationalism and most other `isms` (except ecumenicism) need close scrutiny. The area of the Snake River in east central Minnesota may have been the site of copper mining when the glaciers covered the Great Lakes. Would it be possible for people 20,000 years ago to have been mining these sites and lost their access due to the glaciers? We humbly suggest this is the case and that they then returned as the glaciers melted. Petaga Point and work by Peter Bleed in 1969 may offer a starting point for that kind of thinking. He wrote The Archaeology of Petaga Point: The Preceramic Component by the Minnesota Historical Society.

`Petaga Point is a multicomponent site in central Minnesota near Mille Lacs Lake. The earliest levels appear to have Old Copper affiliations. The stratigraphy of the site was badly disturbed by forest clearing and modern habitation, and the presented stratigraphy is basically a statistical reconstruction. In this book, Bleed is the first to suggest a possible native copper source in the area of the Snake river in east central Minnesota.`(1)

This area is included in the culture we call Aztlan and involves Wisconsin sites such as Reigh, Osceola and Riverside. These sites may explain why there are no burials on Isle Royale or the Superior copper mining sites to the north. In the case of Riverside it is much later according to the archaeologic data and 1045 B.C. would have been a period of the Dark Ages when much worldwide technology was lost after the Trojan War. Walter Kenyon wrote about a site on the shores of the present day Lake Huron which was further inland and relates to a time when the Great Lakes were far differently configured.

`The Inverhuron site, located on the east shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, was excavated in 1956. The archaeological materials are contained in beach deposits, with earlier materials farther back from the present shore. A conical copper point was recovered from the limited testing of the extensive Archaic component. Kenyon compares it to those found at Farquhar Lake (Popham & Emerson 1954:18). He also describes a stone adze with an unusual form which he feels may have been derived from Old Copper celts.`(2)

The next brief report raises the issue of the horse that was once native to North America. It disappeared around 8,000 B.C after the Carolina Bays Meteors that are responsible for many of the instrumentation effects in the lower to middle Bermuda Triangle region. The horse may thus have actually been used in native copper mining of America. But we are convinced the issue of who the natives are that did this mining, is significantly up in the air or an outright cover-up (If you are inclined to conspiracies other than `LOVE` as Father Pierre de Chardin who worked on Piltdown and with Black in China, asked us to begin.).

`1954 The Old Copper Assemblage and Extinct Animals. `American Antiquity` 20:169-170.

Quimby analyses an occurrence of deeply buried copper artifacts and associated animal bones near Fort Williams in southwest Ontario. The discovery, made in 1913 and 1916, was recorded in a geological report. Quimby reasons that the site may date to the Altithermal, approximately 3500-2000 B.C., and that the bones are those of the bison and the extinct native horse.` (3)

This extinct native horse is around later than other data unequivocally states the horse was extinct in North America. It is almost too hard to believe there would be no other horse remains over a period of even a thousand years unless they were all completely domesticated and the bones didn`t exist because their owners cremated them in reverence. That is indeed a possibility when one considers the relationship various Keltic peoples had for the horse (but highly unlikely due to the way horses thrive in the wild.). Might we suggest another alternative? The horses found here had been brought to America to work milling machines on the route to the Trent or other Ontario river system routes that were used once the Ottawa River was no longer the conduit for Great Lakes water? This is at the end of the Old Copper culture and the location the horse was found is in close proximity to Isle Royale. I don’t think this is a co-incidence.

In addition to the eastern routes including Lake Champlain and Memphremagog there appears to have been some overland western route that led to the Fox or Aleutian Islands and even to Vancouver Island. In collating this information a University of Minnesota researcher brings together many interesting facts that indicate southwestern Ontario became the site of processing or manufacturing for copper after the sites on the Ottawa River are reported as being no longer in use by J. V. Wright that we have spoken of often. There are many routes from Lake Huron to Lake Ontario that may have been taken during this period. One of them is only a few hundred yards or a little more than a mile from where I now live in Toronto. The Humber River may have connected with Georgian Bay. Lake Simcoe and the Trent system seem likely at certain times after 2000 B.C. when the trade may have shifted away from a heavy emphasis on copper. The horse being part of this in a period five thousand years after their extinction is hard to fathom unless we connect with the European contacts we are making.

Processing Centers of a Non-Indigenous Nature For each Route:

“1975 Taxonomic and Associated Considerations of Copper Technology During the Archaic Tradition. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

This source provides the first detailed information on four sites related to the Old Copper complex. PICKEREL LAKE (aka `Sarberg`), collected 1968-71, is located in Quetico Park, southwest Ontario. Copper artifacts were found along a beach and rocky shore by campers, along with corner notched lithic points. There were indications of copper manufacture. {N.B.!}Steinbring examines that possibility that this site, which strongly resembles the McCollum site, may represent the last vestiges of the Old Copper complex. TULABI FALLS, Whiteshell Provincial Park, Manitoba, was excavated in 1972. The site contained 4 copper artifacts, rich faunal remains and no signs of copper manufacture. WHITEMOUTH FALLS on the Winnipeg River in Manitoba produced 1 copper artifact. The site is deeply stratified, with a middle stratum radiocarbon date of 4860 +/-150 suggesting that the earliest strata may be 7000 years old. HOUSKA POINT on the Rainey Lake in Ranier, Minnesota was excavated in 1970-71. The stratigraphy was significantly disturbed. The site produced approximately 600 copper artifacts, all characterized as fragile. Two gracile socketed forms were found in ceramic strata, and a possible socket fragment in a pre-ceramic strata. {Ceramic technology in this Aztlan area was prior to in other areas, and should not be regarded in the same archaeologic period per my research.} Trim bits and nuggets eroding from adjacent shoreline indicated copper manufacture on the site. (See Rapp 1984 regarding raw material source of the copper here.) Steinbring 1975 is cross-listed under Section I with notes on other contents. 1971 Test excavation at the Fish Lake Dam Site, Minnesota. `The Minnesota Archaeologist` 31 (1):3-40.

This site, located 20 miles northwest of Duluth, Minnesota, was investigated by the University of Winnipeg in 1969. {Duluth is the key area of the iron ore range of today (Mesabi) and would have been a port for the Aztlan culture when the Old Copper Civilization was mining Isle Royale.} Copper artifacts were first discovered here by a collector in association with `Late Paleo/Boreal Archaic` lithic artifacts. A few copper artifacts were discovered in 1969, also with typologically Plano materials. The stratigraphy was essentially destroyed, but because there were no ceramics present all the pre-historic material was treated as a single Archaic component. Many copper artifacts were reportedly removed from the vicinity in the early 1900s, from sites which are believed to now be under water.`(4)

SUMMARY AND THE X FACTOR:

We must make some guesses that are totally speculative to try to tie some of this information into a common sense perspective. The geologic record which we dealt with in earlier chapters assures us that the Hudson/Lake Champlain or Richelieu Valley was a prime conduit for the water from the Great Lakes at some point. It may have occurred at different points as the native Indians speak of the river that flows both ways. The rise of land after the glacial retreat contributes to the landforms that stand in the way of access for Lake Memphremagog or Lake Champlain to the waters of the St. Lawrence. There would have been a time before the horses of America were extinct (not the anomalous one noted, but back to 8,350 BC and before) when the glaciers still locked the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Memphremagog was probably not the mouth of any great water system at this time but pre-glacial lakes in front of the retreating glaciers would have been there at some point.

It is probably just a stretch of my fertile imagination to suggest that there were knowledgeable people who had harvested copper from the surface of the Lake Superior region before the glaciers advanced. If this `float ore` left from earlier glacial effects had been found when the National Geographic and others acknowledge Europeans and earlier Asians arrived in the Americas would they have found them useful and returned to Europe with the information, or with other intent (Including War) to show those who threw them out of their homeland? If that occurred and they kept the verbal tradition alive through all the last stage of glacial advances that covered the Great Lakes they might also have found a time when the Connecticut River appealed to them and they began mining around 10,500 years ago or before when the lower Great Lakes were uncovered. The marble and quartz of the region around the Laurentian Shield of southern Ontario and Quebec might have been enough to interest them while waiting to get at the copper.

If this scenario has any credence it seems likely that the Chinese or Asian/Mu people were involved in Aztlan at this time and before as well. I can find no specific evidence of when the Mu people fought the remnants of the mythical Atlantis except a record on the frieze at Chichen Itza which could relate to any time period or peoples. There are lots of legends to suggest they were in contact and we know for sure they were living together in the Tarim Basin near Ürümchi; or even earlier when the Great Lop-Nor was a real Mediterranean Sea between two huge mountain ranges. Lao Tzu went there at the end of his life to see the ‘Ancient Masters’.

We know the Uighurs fought major battles around 17,000 years ago as the glaciers retreated in Asia. They might also have fought in America at this time. The racial make-up of the Uighurs is uncertain and may include a mixture of red-heads with Chinese as we saw in the Altaic region and Ürümchi. The Solutrean culture of Europe had a technology that would fit with the Clovis culture that spread across America at this time. `The Solutrean culture of western Europe, dating between 24,000 and 16,500 years ago, shows a similar lithic technology to that used to produce Clovis tools. The two cultures also share bone-shaping techniques, pebble-decorating artistry, the unusual tradition of burying stone tools in caches filled with red ocher, and other traits.` This is also taken from Encyclopedia Smithsonian. (5)

So the people of America may be those who retreated before the Uighurs or they may be the Uighurs after they were thrown back or they may be totally unconnected. Nonetheless this is a period when we can fit the Aztlan culture into place near the receding glaciers of Lake Superior and Minnesota`s 10,000 lakes of today. But it is even more likely that there was a great influx of people from Central Asia into North America long before these dates. AND THEY ARE NOT ASIAN! This Haplogroup X genetic marker proof is so aligned with our theory regarding certain Indian tribes as to be scary; therefore I do not want to focus on it too much. There are debunkers who say it may not be so correct and it is too early to tell. But the more recent ‘Y’ Chromosome research of Professor Jones confirms and extends the ‘X’ research. The Sioux are known to have moved from the mound builder site and we have commented on the Ojibwa of Manitoulin and their copper. The Northwest roots of the Navajo ties in with the linguistic similarity between Basque, SE Asia and Mayan through the Denhe of the Northwest as we covered before. It might be a stretch to say our trepanning connection to the Yakima in the Pacific Northwest exists but I know you will have to admit my guesswork has found great support through genetics. I also have Walter Kenyon providing something he did not fully understand in esoteric rituals having to do with trepanning; far away from the Yakima and on the eastern Copper Route to Europe and the Mediterranean.

References:

1) http://www.tc.umn.edu/ op cit., pg. 1 of 6.
2) IBID., pg. 3 of 6.
3) IBID., pg. 4 of 6.
4) IBID., pg.5 of 6.
5) http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmhl/origin.htm. pg. 1 of 6 - Encyclopedia Smithsonian.