They were fully capable of the same range of human thought and feeling as any people alive today.

The distance in time is real, but it should not be taken to imply a distance in humanity.

They placed their dead in a pond.

The conditions of that pond happened to preserve traces of their lives.

And the excavation of those traces has provided a window into Early Archaic Florida that would otherwise be entirely invisible.

What Peat Does, And Why This Pond Was Different

The key to understanding Windover is understanding why this particular pond preserved organic material when virtually nothing else in Florida’s archaeological record does.