Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A is for Ancient, Artifacts, Archaeology.


 Day 1 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is A
A is for Ancient, Artifacts. Archeology

“The oldest known set of footprints… are 117,000 years old and thought to be those of a woman and possibly a child…” (New Scientist magazine, 31 January 1998)

I had and still have a fascination with ancient things, lives lived, and languages spoken. Knowing that things pass out of knowledge and leave only traces for us to piece together if we care haunted me as a child. 

As a child I imagined myself to be an archaeologist.  And although I was never encouraged in this dream for an adventurist future, I climbed all over the Sandia Mountains with my friends searching for artifacts.  I collected odd rocks with markings I imagined to be etched by some ancient woman late at night in her cave.  In my mind there was always the woman in the starring role – my dream, my way.


Reading that story in New Scientist Magazine in 1998, awakened that dreaming, storytelling child and I wrote a small story called, Ancient Footsteps which found its way into an anthology.



3 comments:

Cathy said...

I've had an interest in reading about ancient cultures, but have not, as yet, traveled outside the U.S. I retired a year ago, so that might begin to change ... Just need to start planning. Right now, I am enjoying staying at home too much to want to travel far, or to be away for long.

Stopping by from the A-Z and happy to meet you. I'm a new follower. Visit me at wordsworldandwings.blogspot.com

Matt Conlon said...

Hey, thanks for swinging by! My cousin is an archaeologist actually. Unfortunately, he's been out of work for a long time, but occasionally, the city of Boston will put out a call for freelance archaeologists, because they need to do some construction, but because this area is so OLD they need to have the sites cleared by archs first, to make sure they don't destroy anything that would be considered historical.

Shail Raghuvanshi said...

Hi Perle. Remembering childhood whims and fancies are truly beautiful. A nice post. And yes, thank you.