Better ways to investigate the so-called root cellars around the country including the many sites in the North-East.

Submitted to:  Red Blanket Peck
                        Santa Fe College
By: W. S. (Stumpy) Crocker
 

ROOT CELLARS

We don’t know why or by whom or even clearly when these structures were built.  To not allow some speculation as to some appropriate answers to these mysteries is a mindless requiem of the intellect. Such a position is often dictated by Harvard professors well juiced in tenure. Thank God I graduated from Yale. Here are some questions and maybe some guy from East Podunk U. has the brains and the fortitude to begin to answer them. Harvard has had 5000 years to do something; and, so far, nothing much has emoted from Cambridge.

A.]  A single root cellar is labor intensive to dig and erect. Quarrying the granite would require vigorous labor. The stones weighed 5 to 8 tons just for the lintels. For transportation and cutting how was this done - in any reasonable time? Mystery Hill, Salem; NH has some stone wedges and strikers found as a group of tools.    Knowledge of where the stone was quarried or split would be worthwhile. From a tracing of the transportation route artifacts could be unearthed. A map of the cellar sites and joining quarries could provide clues as to the number of people working on these projects.

B.] The next cellar down our road in VT has an aquifer under and aligned to the East entrance. How did these people know the technology which modern man doesn’t understand even as yet? The water channel is shaped like a “Y” and one branch has an artesian well (drilled 15 years ago)  which can’t be pumped dry even by large industrial pumps.

C.] Just as the articles say there are many, many stones with inscriptions in various early languages. Why are these not clearly photographed and stored in a computer memory?  Then the areas from whence the travelers emigrated might be better assayed by comparing the glyphs side-by-side.

D.]  The position of the sites should be mapped as groups and then overlayed on geodesic sheets. It is implausible to think that there were no communications between the dwellers.  or owners. The distance is so short that a man in a few days could travel between them. Our preColumbian woodland indians could travel great distances by canoe. A birch bark canoe can be built in a day. At the time of settling the North East the colonists recorded trips of the locals from Maine to Florida - in no time at all.

 Why, then, wouldn’t the Oghamites - Iberianites - or Phoenicianites or whatever have contact with their outposts?  To send more than one vessel between continents at the same time is not sensible. To have them converge on 50 local sites is surprising. To spend myriad viewing nights examining the heavens and laying out range stones is a clue to the length of time the Wanders remained at the same habitation.   What did the travelers do that required exact knowledge of the calendar, and the necessity for multiple outposts?  What did they trade?
 
American  Indians never laid out their portages a foot higher or a foot longer than necessary. This was one reason the clay pot (900 years old) was found in Lake Champlain. It was right on the well trodden path. In Martha’s Vineyard, MA the paths are 1 foot deep.  A supposition that ground penetrating radar could be found useful is intriguing. nb. Our Woodland Indians never drew maps. Even children knew the exact location and destination of their trails.

E. ]  A plot as described in Item D. may show a position array that has some meaning that would be a clue on the cellar location plan. Example: along a line of longitude.

F.]  People that can lay out a circle of celestial markers would, I think, understand latitude. And the time of year when favorable winds blew must have been understood as well. Shows a local history of weather patterns.

G.]  It would seem beneficial if the cellars could be located on their own map or by a series of markers pointing a direction from where to leave the coastline to reachinland by river. Example: Westminster, VT at 1000 ft altitude.

DETECTION

GROUND PENETRATING RADAR  This device came about from aircraft usage. It can (under ideal conditions) locate buried objects. At 100 feet depth it did locate a human skeleton - conditions were ideal. Ideal conditions are where the soil is homogenous. But, At depths of 6” the readings would have some reliability.
For example, along a portage path one might expect to pick up metal shapes such as copper, silver, and tin as well as pottery or shards. So long as the search objects had a different dielectric than the soil, a reading would occur. Knowing a pathway location through a swamp would be an ideal method of search. Compacted soil would also show up. A portage across a sand bank would show up.

 When I was a kid, “points” could be picked up from the sand banks in Concord MA. They were plentiful.   Thus, knowing the most direct route from cellar A to cellar B at the least  elevation would provide a first clew. Searching at loamy locations and swamps and sand hills would provide homogeneous soil locations for search;  the bottom  of a slow flowing brook provides another location.  Points were found are they all of the same material and the same shape?

Ground detection radar is not cheap. However, the power and target area of this particular electronic design would not be hard to build.
 

LANGUAGE

Glyphs
 
Software programs can, within a tolerance range, match glyphs and provide subfiles of alphabetical symbols. Matching glyph forms with cellar locations would be helpful. Where might each group of engravers hail from? Was there a local Commonality. Do these patterns match stuff from the European sites? How much? When?

Later Markings
 
To the writer the markings on cliff faces were thought or pre learned to be the work of the Wooodland Indians. For instance, there are some glyphs on a wall at Bellows Falls, VT. The falls used to be a summer encampment for indian tribes and the fish including salmon were thick. Therefore, lots of Mohawks and Abenakis etc.
 I am sure there are recent records of studies made by scholars. As at other sites were these  inscriptions actually runes or even ogham? It would be interesting to make a broad computer record according to language, location, age if possible and the like. Is there a commonality as common and seemingly linked as the “root cellars” In no way now do I think the Vikings spent a Sunday afternoon making runes at Bellows Falls.
.
Tools
 
Are there more groups of quarrying tools. Are they dated. What is the range of dates? Are there any other locatable tools. If one type is found, put more endeavor in locating others in typical circumstances - like in many of the quarries.

Metal Detectors
 
Metal detectors can find bronze and other metals even at disturbed sites. Iron wouldn’t be apt to last 9000 years (?)
 
CARBON DATING (or any other)

Having read a little about this I wonder how it can be applied. For example,
One would need permission to look at all 50 or so sites. It would have to be explained to get around the limitations imposed by the owner. The cellar closest to us would not be hard to thoroughly examine for carbon presence. It has not been “cleaned” by the locals and Harvard Square is more than a day’s drive. We believe it will take the intervention of  a well known collaborator to get sympathy from many land owners. This is time consuming but not out of the question in most cases.

Large Scale Groups of cellars

Somewhere around the arc of Mass. Bay there must be some clues as to how early visitors across the Atlantic arrived and where they passed into Western New England. Certainly cellars in the VT hills don’t represent a place with access from the ocean. Why so much energy building cellars? Why so much in the hills at considerable altitude when 8 ton stones are considered? Is there any route or road artery that lead to group cellars? Where are the quarries? [ We haven’t looked around here.] We have fence stone quarries on our land - but obviously for fence posts and some posts are still standing on property lines!
Time for travel is of similar value to any human being because of biological requirements to eat and rest.  Without some obvious reason it’s hard to envision such huge values of work ( Could slavery be an answer on such a scale of ergs?)  One has to think of effort in the same ratio as the Egyptions built their tombs. But, these don’t appear to be tombs. Would all the skeletons (unpreserved ) have decomposed? The Egyptions would have had a source of slaves about the same ratio of size as a the wanderers…. One wanderer to ten gooks (?).
Lifting a Viking ship over the lower CT Falls sounds thoroughly daunting….let alone the little niagra at Turner Falls, MA. Did the Wanderers build some log rolls to pass up the CT River?

SHIPS
Maybe there’s a ship sunk in a swamp location - perhaps a Viking ship or a Phoenician ship. This could be dated. Ground penetrating radar would pick up a ship -Like a row of Burma Shave signs.
 
 
 
6.  GENERAL FRUSTRATION

  Obviously the guys didn’t swim over here. The number of cellars with large stone and the numerous glyphs are enough evidence to assume that these ruins are not a Friday afternoon picnic. Who would spend so much time (at least a year) and so much horse power to build cellars all over New England? Why are the written (chiseled) records so meager?
These people didn’t live alone in nearby cellars just so they could remain obscure. There must have been some form of communication between cellar communities, i.e., outposts.
If you can come up with some answers, I know I would be more than willing to suffer through the next session of your course. I didn’t get any answers the last time. However, some of the demos were great. For instance, the lecture about the pile of detritus in a living pueblo court which was ascribed to be mythical…that was mind boggling.
 

More [#2] on ROOT CELLARS

OK. So how far can an amateur go back in a time line that would fit a group of people coming across the Atlantic and building 100 or so cellars in an area that is  spread out through the Atlantic states? Whatever this writer puts down, the time line must be way back of that because his data is mostly taken from what is readily available. Let’s gather some easy to obtain dates. That’s a beginning.

1. Rand McNally 1956 Atlas.  Dates of explorations;  600 BC Phoenician sailors; Heroditus says they sailed out  around Africa in 3 years. (whatever
did they do with all their  time? )

2. 450-500BC Himilco went to Western Europe.

3. National Geographic: shows colony, Tartesius, shown in Spain at Gibralter. Says it was for trading. With whom?

4. N. G. Vol 197 No. 2;  says colonization ranged from 8th down through the 6th BC.

5. N. G.; Island of Euboea; end of Mycenaean bronze age about 1100 BC until classical age,  north of Athens.

What about sailing to South America and thence up the coast to New England?  The route might be from Africa to the Azores and thence due West in the North Equitorial Current.  The distance from the Azores or Cape Verde to the Windward Islands is 2300 miles. The current averages about 0.75 miles per hour. If one had no physical sails, 25 gallons of water for each passenger  would see them through.
The sail up the Atlantic Coast would be in the Gulf Stream.
The writer was looking at a Greek Trireme. They had small sails and were fast. To be able to sail at an average speed of 3 miles per hour (minimum) would be a reasonable assumption. The hull speed of a fifty foot boat is considerably more than 3 knots. Thus, the sailing time across the Atlantic would be less than a month. i.e. 2322 miles divided by 3.75 mph = 619 hours. This divided by 24 hours per day = 26 days. The presumption herein is good weather and unfailing current in the trades. These are matters in which a written language wouldn’t help a whole lot. Ogham on a stick would refresh memories as to voyage times and provide memory enough to duplicate voyages.
The art of boat building was well known before 1000 BC. Viking ships, Arab dhows, triremes all have basic hull lines that ease the ship through the water. Likewise sails and their rigging have a similarity.

Then, it seems to the writer that language was the bottom line in determining anything about root cellars.
One of the methods for making similarity studies would be carbon dating. The other is to trace a language or languages on the stones of the root cellars. This can be done locally (with permission of land owners).
If very early travelers went to the Americas, there would be no means of recording the trips via language. On-the-other-hand, burial mounds and graves would leave some traces as to when the lintel stones were erected.