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Holy Spelunder! a REALLY OLD house!!
It's OLDER than a log cabin. Older than a teepee, older even than the Great Pyramids. It's acave. People have been living in caves for thousands of years. Right here in Utah, even. And you know what? A cave works pretty well as a house--even though you might have to share it with bats.
Think about what your house does.
Can a cave do the same things?
How would life in a cave be the same as in in your house?
How would it be different?
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YOUR HOUSE |
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protects the people inside from: |
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A CAVE HOUSE |
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Animals
Bugs
Little brothers
Rain, snow, and wind
Heat
Is a place where you can:
Sleep
Eat
Watch TV
Do Chores
Stop for awhile before moving on to hunt somewhere else
Play
Learn
Hang out with family and friends
Hide food and tools so you can come back later to get them. |
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| DANGER CAVE |
Danger Cave is a big open cave near Wendover, Utah. People started staying in there at least 11,000 years ago (right after the Ice Age ended!) They left stuff scattered on the cave floor. Over hundreds of years, many people used the cave, leaving their stuff on top of the old stuff. When archaeologists excavated the cave, they found many layers of artifacts* and dirt--as deep as 12 feet down! |
*ARTIFACT: Any object made or used by humans. Stone tools, bones, plant pollen, basketry, and ceramics (pots) are all artifacts.
ARCHAEOLOGY--Can you dig it?
Think like an archaeologist. See what you can infer from the evidence in the cave's layers.
- Which is older, the stuff in the top layer or the stuff on the bottom?
- How long ago did someone first build a fire in the cave?
- Why are the layers thicker at the mouth of the cave?
- Why is there no pottery in the lower layers?
- Why do the sizes of the arrow and spear points change over time?
- How could there be beach gravels here, so far from the ocean?
- Coprolites are very old pieces of human poop. What could archaeologist learn from studying coprolites?
- Why are there pickleweed and Indian rice grass seeds in the cave?
- What kinds of things did people eat 9,500 years ago?
- What would people use cordage (ropes) for?
- What artifacts come from the last 20 years? What will people learn by studying them someday?
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HOW DID YOU DO? Check it out. |
0 right answers: You might not want to be an archaeologist when you grow up. But there are other great jobs out there...so they say.
1-3 right: Not bad! Next time, look a little closer and take a littl more time to think.
4-6 right: Cool. You are on your way to becoming a regular archaeological sleuth.
7-9 right: Way to go! You're hot, hot, hot!
10-11 right: Move over, Indiana Jones. (Actually, you want to know the truth? Indiana Jones is NOT a good archaeologist. A true archaeologist loves finding stuff like rabbit bones and pickleweed seeds so she can learn more about how people lived. But Indiana Jones is more like a treasure-hunter looking for valuable stuff just so his museum can have better stuff than the other museums. So now you know the TRUTH about Indiana Jones.) |
ANSWERS
1. Okay, this was a giveaway question. The bottom stuff, of course!
2. 11,000 years ago. That's a LOT older even than Great-Grandma Mabel!
3. People liked sitting close to the outside instead of way back in the cave where it is dark and stuffy. And that's where they left their trash.
4. People didn't figure out how to make
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pottery until about 2,000 years ago.
Just like they didn't start making aluminum cans before 40 or 50 years ago.
5. Early on, people used spears. After 2,000 years ago, people used bows and arrows. So the kinds of points they made changed.
6. Thousands of years ago, a huge lake--Lake Bonneville--had its shoreline at the level of the cave.
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7. They can learn more about what people ate.
8. They were food!
9. Besides seeds, they ate different kinds of animals.
10. Rbbit snares, nets, clohtes, rope, and things like that.
11. Anything we leave behind could be an artifact someday. (Note: This is no excuse for littering!) |
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