Lovelock Cave: Dung, Decoys and GIANTS?

 

 

If you ever flipped though a book on the history of hunting decoys, it probably made at least a passing reference to Lovelock Cave. 

 

 More or less the same story is told in old decoy books or articles online:

   Back in the early 1900s, down in the South West workers clearing bat guano (which was to later be sold as fertilizer) from Lovelock stumbled on old Indian tule and bird feather decoys. Later carbon dating placed them thousands of years before European contact. 

I wanted to know more about the initial discovery and stumbled on the original paper describing just that. Oddly enough I found it on a website claiming that in the caves once where the homes of giants-  More on that idea later...

Way back in the Fall of 1911, while "...two hundred and fifty tons of bat guano" where being barreled out of the cave, workmen discovered many very well preserved ancient Native artifacts. 

 

Some went to the Nevada Historical Society, others where lost to time in private collections. Objects found include sandals, woven bags, spear throwers (adaladals) and thousands of fragments matting & baskets in total weighing 121 lbs. Within the cave, several graves where found to hold ancient human remains, both complete and partial. A hand full of mummys where also discovered, the best preserved being --I shit you not-- sold to a local Lodge, who "boiled" the mummy, apparently wanting it's skeleton for initiation purposes. Man, I've heard of Fraternities like  Skull & Bones plundering old Indian burial grounds for skulls. Hell I think .they may have even had Geronimo's skull at one point. It's weird to think of a bunch of dudes drinking in 1911,  cutting up a dried up corpse and throwing  the pieces into a large pots like lobsters. I wonder what they said to each other, imagine the fucked up jokes they cracked.

But I digress.

Much of what was found, yes including some mummies, where tossed into a pile near the mouth of the cave. Later looted by treasure hunters for choice relics, what was left was more or less destroyed through one means or another.

Later in 1912 a Mr. L. L. Loud was sent by the University of California to see what could be found and preserved. By himself, he would pull out over 10,0000 artifacts over 4 months. This mad man would return in 1924 with Mr. M. R. Harrington armed with shovel and pick axe. The two would split the cave into sections and began digging through what was left of the guano. While going through the layers of of ancient batshit, the two would find hidey holes, people's caches from before recorded history. In some they found, surprise-surprise, what seemed to be duck decoys.

 

 

 

   In his 1929 paper, Loud assumes these tule reed and feather decoys would float and be anchored by a stone. Though he didn't find any of these anchors, it seemed reasonable to assume this based on contemporary tribes making similar decoys. Others may have been used as 'stick-up' decoys, having skulls on sticks with nets draped over and feathers sewn onto the nets.

 

According to 'Travel Navada', these decoys are dated to be made around 400 B.C. and 100 A.D. So these birds sat within that cave for more or less 2000 years! Here's a good article on the decoys themselves.

 Who knows how long decoys of this verity where used for? I feel it reasonable to assume this style of stool could date back to the last Ice Age. Perhaps crude root-heads made of a single branch, not unlike some modern era Crane and heron decoys.

We'll never know how far decoy use in the Americas go back. Even if they made wooden decoys( very unlikely) surely what ever they where made from would have been destroyed by weather of the last few thousand years.

So what about the giants? 

What where they- the Nehpilem?, the Annunaki, the watchers? Those from heaven to earth came and found the daughters of man fair..---where they bigfoot?

Well put the boots on folks, the shits about to get deeper.

Skimming through a few blog posts and articles, it seems the local tribe (allegedly) have an oral history telling of a race of red haired giants or barbarians once called the cave home. They'd later be exterminated by the tribe's ancestors for being a nuisance, and eating people. Apparently it's referenced in Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (a book I have not read).  There's old news stories from the last century describing unusually large human bones being found out west. If I was a betting man, I'd say these articles don't hold water. The age of yellow journalism was running at full speed. Stories where written just to sell papers, bullshit and exaggerations ran rampant. Sounds a lot like today just digital.. People also assert that these bones are actively being hidden and destroyed by various museums. Hey I've heard crazier, that's one of the more..uh..tamer? fringe ideas floating out there. 

So where there Giants? Who the fuck knows. If you had a time machine and went back to when the Piutes allegedly fought those giants, I'd bet they stood about 6 foot 2. Chances are ancient people didn't have the level of nutrition we have today. People going through multiple famines in their lives where for sure not the tallest around. So let's say your average man back then stood around 5 foot 5. Anyone over 6 foot 2 would certainly be considered a giant of sorts. Just maybe not the kind David killed with a Wrist rocket. But hey- we live in a post-fact world. So believe what you want.