Adding to the impression of this being a family home are the small corn cobs lying around, along with a grinding stone. Corn was one of the main staples for hundreds of years. But don’t think of something like modern corn on the cob. These were more like the finger-sized items you get in a can and put on a dish of hors d’oeuvres.
You can see how the family would have put each piece of corn in one of the indents and then ground it up with the grinding stone. It’s all sandstone, by the way, so along with the corn, people would have been chewing on grains of sand, which is why archeologists have noted that there were some serious dental problems for the folks here in canyon land.
I was greatly impressed, incidentally, by the fact that these little corn cobs are still lying there after so long and haven’t been pocketed by tourists. Maybe that’s because it’s way off the beaten track, and the only people who ever come here now are those who are willing to make the trek and presumably respect what they find. (It’s an eight-mile round trip hike from where I parked, but you can also get there on an ATV trail, although you have to negotiate some slightly hairy parts.)
On the back side of this grinding rock, by the way, there are some other kinds of markings, as though someone was counting off days of the week in the kitchen!
Since the ground is slowly being eroded away by the spring underneath, you couldn’t have many people living here today. I don’t know if it was already like this hundreds of years ago, but if so, anyone living here would have to have been careful not to fall down into the mud below.
But at least they’d have had a good water supply, which was always important in this part of the world.
On the way back out, you see how this small side canyon connects up with the bigger one . . .
. . . that then joins up, further down, with Kanab Canyon, which then leads into the Grand Canyon about 50 miles further on.
More Faces from the Past
By Michael Mountain,
Adding to the impression of this being a family home are the small corn cobs lying around, along with a grinding stone. Corn was one of the main staples for hundreds of years. But don’t think of something like modern corn on the cob. These were more like the finger-sized items you get in a can and put on a dish of hors d’oeuvres.
You can see how the family would have put each piece of corn in one of the indents and then ground it up with the grinding stone. It’s all sandstone, by the way, so along with the corn, people would have been chewing on grains of sand, which is why archeologists have noted that there were some serious dental problems for the folks here in canyon land.
I was greatly impressed, incidentally, by the fact that these little corn cobs are still lying there after so long and haven’t been pocketed by tourists. Maybe that’s because it’s way off the beaten track, and the only people who ever come here now are those who are willing to make the trek and presumably respect what they find. (It’s an eight-mile round trip hike from where I parked, but you can also get there on an ATV trail, although you have to negotiate some slightly hairy parts.)
On the back side of this grinding rock, by the way, there are some other kinds of markings, as though someone was counting off days of the week in the kitchen!
Since the ground is slowly being eroded away by the spring underneath, you couldn’t have many people living here today. I don’t know if it was already like this hundreds of years ago, but if so, anyone living here would have to have been careful not to fall down into the mud below.
But at least they’d have had a good water supply, which was always important in this part of the world.
On the way back out, you see how this small side canyon connects up with the bigger one . . .
. . . that then joins up, further down, with Kanab Canyon, which then leads into the Grand Canyon about 50 miles further on.
I guess everything is connected!
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