Великан, который пробыл у Смитсоновского института всего 60 секунд

Of all the skeletons the Smithsonian's mound survey lifted out of American ground, their own report names the largest. It came out of a mound seventy feet across on the bluffs above the Mississippi at Dunleith, Illinois, encased in earth so hard it held every bone in place. The agents measured it where it lay. The report gives the result as proved by actual measurement. Between seven and eight feet. Then they lifted it out of the ground, and inside of a minute there was nothing left to measure. It crumbled to pieces in their hands. This episode reads the Dunleith file in full, including the government survey table with a giant printed in the notes column, the copper and bear teeth he was buried with, and the burial in the next mound over that the Bureau reconstructed step by step: a man protected under leaning stones from the waist down, and burned to cinder from the waist up. Then two more files from the same report this channel has never opened. A West Virginia mound built almost entirely of ashes, its very large skeleton carried off by parties unnamed before the survey arrived. And a large man seated at the bottom of a Wisconsin mound, holding a clay vessel between his hands and his knees. Every quote is the Smithsonian's own, from one report, printed in 1894, free to download. CHAPTERS 0:00 The bluffs at Dunleith 1:58 The 1857 dig 2:29 The table 3:51 Mound Five 4:23 From the infant to the adult 5:05 The find 5:16 Proved by actual measurement 6:53 It crumbled 7:23 No address 8:18 The copper 8:47 Bear teeth 9:51 Mound Four 10:54 The upper half 12:04 Printed twice 12:40 The lone mound. Page 437. 14:07 A mound made of ashes 14:39 Sheboygan 15:24 The tally SOURCES Cyrus Thomas, Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published 1894. All page images shown are from this report The Dunleith group, Jo Daviess County, Illinois, overlooking East Dubuque. Surveyed and drawn as Figure 54. The group's survey table, page 113, row for Mound 5: "70 | 12 | Large skeleton, copper ornaments, etc." Mound 5, page 113. "was one of the largest skeletons discovered by the Bureau agents, the length as proved by actual measurement being between 7 and 8 feet. It was all clearly traceable, but crumbled to pieces immediately after removal from the hard earth in which it was encased" Buried with it: three crescent shaped pieces of hammered native copper, 6, 8 and 10 inches long; elongate copper beads; a chert lance head over 11 inches long; a necklace of bear teeth with more at the wrists; and dozens of small rolled copper beads across the thighs, which the report suggests once adorned the fringe of a hunting shirt In the same mound, near the original surface: "the much decayed skeletons of some 6 or 8 persons, of every size, from the infant to the adult" Mound 4, pages 114 to 115, with the Bureau's engraving of the vault as Figure 55. A stone passage of leaning slabs meeting in a roof shaped arch. A grave dug before the mound was raised. The lower half of the skeleton covered by flat stones leaned to support each other, the right arm dislocated and placed beside it. The upper half, "although extended in a natural position, they were but charred remains, scarcely traceable amid the charcoal and ashes of a fire that had nearly consumed them" The find printed twice: the same skeleton appears in the Bureau's companion volume Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States as "an unusually large skeleton, the length being something over 7 feet" West Virginia, page 437. An isolated Kanawha valley mound 20 feet high, its rock heap "disturbed by parties who found a very large skeleton with some stone weapons", a square vault about 12 feet on a side placed diagonally to the cardinal points, and the body of the mound composed of ashes, mostly pure Wisconsin, the Sheboygan marshes. "a large human skeleton in a sitting posture was discovered, apparently holding between its hands and knees a large clay vessel" Scenes labeled RECONSTRUCTION are visual reconstructions. Everything quoted is the record. Read the file. Draw your own conclusions.