Saved From Certain Destruction

Whenever I'm in the Crystal River area of Florida I like to visit the Crystal River Archeological Site. It's composed of a set of various mounds that are pre-Columbian. These are some of the oldest known mounds in North America.

Recently much has been made of the destruction of an ancient temple mound in Belize. When a construction company destroyed a huge artifact of the pre-Columbian civilization for the building stone that was held within it. But this is nothing new. The history of the Americas is packed with such stories, and you don't have to range far to find them.

The main temple mound at the Crystal River site was almost destroyed by a real estate

developer for the very same reason the one in Belize was destroyed. The capitalist asswipe wanted the material of which the temple was constructed to use in building nearby roads and houses. To this cause a bulldozer was used to begin dismantling the huge mound, and only last-minute intervention prevented him from going through with it.

As it was, even though most of the main mound was saved, the enormous ramp that led to the summit of the temple mound was all but wiped out, the oyster shell material of which it was made carted away to serve as foundations for roads and concrete.

Carole ascending the main temple mound.

Because this rapacious money-grubbing bastard was halted in his destructive drive, we have the mound system today in a fairly intact plot. One can see the two major temple mounds, the big burial mound, and several other mound systems within the small park. And looking at these, one can get a general idea of what the place may have looked like when it was a major local village in the days long before Europeans arrived to lay ruin to it all.
 

The side of the mound. You can see where the ramp used to be but was removed by bulldozers and dump trucks.

 I have a lot of affection for this park. I first visited it when I was a young child with my father. It hasn't changed much since those days, decades gone. And I'm glad that it has been effectively protected for all to see and enjoy.

The back of the mound closest to the water where most of the damage was done. This entire side of the huge temple mound was utterly destroyed, along with the material that made up the vast ramp that led down to the plaza area of the complex.

This was part of a series of stones that were apparently used in worship services. You can still make out part of a human figure carved into this side of the stone. (In the center, toward the top, you can make out two eyes and an open mouth. Not unlike the face in Edvard Munch's THE SCREAM.)

Carole enjoying the view from the top of the main temple mound.

 Mayan Temple Destroyed.


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Return!

We're home from vacation. Now we begin to plan our next trip. Until then, we'll savor the things we saw and experienced these past couple of weeks.

One of the places I wanted to see while I was in that part of Florida was to revisit a spot I'd once seen in the company of my dad. My father was much interested in the cultures and lives of the many aboriginal nations who existed on this continent before the arrival of the Europeans. To this end, one of our many journeys in my native South was to the Crystal River State Archeological Park where modern people can see the remains of a village that is ancient, indeed. Many thousands of years old, it was built by pre-Columbian folk who may have had their own connections to various old cultures of Central America. They were long gone, even before the arrival of the first Spaniards to these shores, so we can only speculate from the shattered bits they left behind in this shadow-village.

Me and Carole on the staircase leading to the summit of the temple mound.

The most impressive part of the old place is a huge shell mound composed of the remains of uncounted meals--the broken bits of oyster shells that were piled higher and higher over the years until it formed a vast temple mound about thirty feet in height. When I saw this spot as a twelve-year-old, the mound was covered in trees. Today, the park service has cleared all of the trees on the slopes and left just a few old live oaks at the summit. Also, there is now a steep staircase leading to the top and a wooden viewing platform has been built there.

Unfortunately, in 1961, before the state of Florida could purchase the land, would-be developers used a bulldozer to level a vast ramp the natives had built that led to the top of the mound. This was classic pre-Columbian architecture. We have some photos of the mound before that section was destroyed to be used as fill, but it's gone forever due to the actions of greedy, short-sighted fucks. Today, the wooden staircase supplied by the park service gets you to the top, rather than the ramp the builders intended.

The marsh side of the temple mound as it appears now, after the 1961 insanity when bulldozers destroyed the temple ramp to use the material as land fill in the marsh.

One of the most interesting artifacts that remains on the grounds is the "Eye Stone". This is supposed by modern researchers to have been some kind of holy relic to the people who lived at this location. It may have been a kind of shrine or a place to go and pray or to give sacrifice. No one is sure, but this does seem plausible. It was amazing to stand before this stone and look at it, and to know that it was here, the center of some older religion and philosophy many thousands of years before the ones that hold power today.

The Eye Stone.

Eye Stone with outlines provided by me, since the details are not as clear in my photos as they are in person.