An Immortal Horse

Egyptian scholars know there is little other thanare contained in beach deposits, with earlier
fiction that can be written about the civilizationmaterials farther back from the present shore. A
that lived on the banks of the Nile in far moreconical copper point was recovered from the
recent times than the beginning of the 'Oldlimited testing of the extensive Archaic
Copper Culture'. All these things are related andcomponent. Kenyon compares it to those found
the old fictions are replaceable with the story of aat Farquhar Lake (Popham & Emerson 1954:18).
worldwide culture with trading posts in each andHe also describes a stone adze with an unusual
every part of the world. Is there any remnant ofform which he feels may have been derived
cultural pride in Iran that treats the ancientfrom Old Copper celts."(2)The next brief report
metallurgists of their region with a different kindraises the issue of the horse that was once
of respect than our history attributes to them?native to North America. It disappeared around
Does anyone think these nationalistic ideologues8,000 B.C after the Carolina Bays Meteors that
and pedagogues of today are real and honestare responsible for many of the instrumentation
presenters of fact? The whole concept ofeffects in the lower to middle Bermuda Triangle
nationalism and most other 'isms' (exceptregion. The horse may thus have actually been
ecumenicism) need close scrutiny. The area of theused in native copper mining of America. But we
Snake River in east central Minnesota may haveare convinced the issue of who the natives are
been the site of copper mining when the glaciersthat did this mining, is significantly up in the air or
covered the Great Lakes. Would it be possible foran outright cover-up (If you are inclined to
people 20,000 years ago to have been miningconspiracies other than 'LOVE' as Father Pierre de
these sites and lost their access due to theChardin who worked on Piltdown and with Black in
glaciers? We humbly suggest this is the case andChina, asked us to begin.)."1954 The Old Copper
that they then returned as the glaciers melted.Assemblage and Extinct Animals. 'American
Petaga Point and work by Peter Bleed in 1969Antiquity' 20:169-170.Quimby analyses an
may offer a starting point for that kind ofoccurrence of deeply buried copper artifacts and
thinking. He wrote The Archaeology of Petagaassociated animal bones near Fort Williams in
Point: The Preceramic Component by thesouthwest Ontario. The discovery, made in 1913
Minnesota Historical Society."Petaga Point is aand 1916, was recorded in a geological report.
multicomponent site in central Minnesota near MilleQuimby reasons that the site may date to the
Lacs Lake. The earliest levels appear to have OldAltithermal, approximately 3500-2000 B.C., and
Copper affiliations. The stratigraphy of the sitethat the bones are those of the bison and the
was badly disturbed by forest clearing andextinct native horse." (3)This extinct native horse
modern habitation, and the presented stratigraphyis around later than other data unequivocally
is basically a statistical reconstruction. In this book,states the horse was extinct in North America. It
Bleed is the first to suggest a possible nativeis almost too hard to believe there would be no
copper source in the area of the Snake river inother horse remains over a period of even a
east central Minnesota."(1)This area is included inthousand years unless they were all completely
the culture we call Aztlan and involves Wisconsindomesticated and the bones didn't exist because
sites such as Reigh, Osceola and Riverside. Thesetheir owners cremated them in reverence. That is
sites may explain why there are no burials on Isleindeed a possibility when one considers the
Royale or the Superior copper mining sites to therelationship various Keltic peoples had for the
north. In the case of Riverside it is much laterhorse (but highly unlikely due to the way horses
according to the archaeologic data and 1045 B.C.thrive in the wild.). Might we suggest another
would have been a period of the Dark Agesalternative? The horses found here had been
when much worldwide technology was lost afterbrought to America to work milling machines on
the Trojan War. Walter Kenyon wrote about athe route to the Trent or other Ontario river
site on the shores of the present day Lake Huronsystem routes that were used once the Ottawa
which was further inland and relates to a timeRiver was no longer the conduit for Great Lakes
when the Great Lakes were far differentlywater? This is at the end of the Old Copper
configured."The Inverhuron site, located on theculture and the location the horse was found is in
east shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, wasclose proximity to Isle Royale.
excavated in 1956. The archaeological materials