gcls_WFP_520

Perhaps one of the most interesting rocks we have is the one des-cribed below. The stone was secured and prepared at much expense and generously donated to camp by Mr. J. Ed. Hart, of Greenville.
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From Old Ruins at Aztec, (San Juan County), New Mexico
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"All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in her bosom."
The original site of this stone is unknown. We know only that in the dim, distant past, men of an ancient race, working under the soft and lustrous turquoise sky of North-central New Mex-ico, in the light, pure air of San Juan Basin, nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, built a communal dwelling of 700 rooms and used this very stone in its wall. It was taken from the ruins of that house, long since tumbled down in years of neglect and decay. (See picture.) More recently the ruins have been partially restored, and today are owned by the Government and known as "AZTEC RUINS NATIONAL MONUMENT."
The origin and fate of this vanished people is lost in obscurity. The age of the ruins, by whom built,
[image of ruins]
when and why they were desereted are matters of conjecture, with few substantial bases of hypothesis. They had long been desereted when Coronado marched up from the South in 1540. Through passing centuries, the massive walls and durable ceilings of rooms, together with exceptionally favorable climatic conditions have proved ideal for the preservation of specimens recovered by the mu-seum staff. There is evidence of two distinct pe-riods of occupation; first, by the builders, a race advanced only far enough to be classed as the Basket Makers; then, after a considerable period of complete abandonment, by the Pottery Makers who were similar to, if not closely related to, the Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellers. That this sedentary people were farmers is in-dicated by the fact that, by means of irrigation, they cultivated extensive fields for corn, beans, squash, cotton, and possibly other things. For water the inhabitants of these particular ruins tapped, about ten miles away, the never failing supply of the Animas River whose source was about 100 miles distant among the perpetual snows of the LaPlata Mountains. Their age old irrigation ditch is still traceable for some eight miles from the ruins, and its grade and location are virtually followed by a ditch in use today. They had nothing metallic, but made implements of stone and
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bone; wove from the Yucca plant a cloth not un-like our burlap and from cotton a coarse, closely woven water proof fabric; and made baskets and pottery. Of the "Black on White" subdivision of the Ceramic period, their pottery designs were almost exclusively geometric, though some realistic and some animal and bird effigies were made. Lo-vers of trinkets, they wore mosaic pendants and adorened themselves with necklaces, bracelets and anklets principally of beads and shells--the latter traded from great distanced. Strands of beads have been reocvered that measure from six to 57 feet in length and containing from 3,100 to 31,000 indi-vidual specimens which average 1/25 inch in diamete and 1/48 inch in thickness. Perhaps the greatest phase of the craftsmanship and skill of these people lay in the manufacture of these tiny beads. Shaping the minute disks was compara-tively simple; but no one knows just how the almost microscopic holes, 1/50 inch or less in diamete, were bored--probably a cactus thorn rotated in abrasive sand. Could this stone but speak, it might tell weird stories of tribal customs, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, love and devotion, discord and hate, conquests and victory, pomp and glory, peace and plenty, or harrowing tales of defeat and despair, muder and rapine, degradation and disgrace, pov-erty and want--the whole gamut of perplexities of life in that lost age. This stone might say that our primitive borther, that prehistoric man who placed it in the wall of the communal home of this clan, was a skilled artisan, a leader among men, an in-tellectual celebrity of his day. But it would also tell us of the abysmal difference between the men-tality of that man and the men of today. Ex-cept that each set the same stone in different walls there would possibly be nothing in common be-tween that aboriginal man and the modern one who imbedded the stone where you now see it; where, as a labor of love, it was placed by the deft hands of that champion of boy, John. M. Holmes.
J.E.H.
October 1929
677