The specific ecological knowledge of a particular landscape takes generations to build and can be lost in a single generation if the transmission is broken.

The communities of the early Holocene Edwards Plateau were maintaining and transmitting this knowledge continuously, building on the observations of their ancestors, adding their own discoveries, passing it forward to their descendants.

The sinkholes where they buried their dead were part of this knowledge system — places known and named and understood as sacred, marked in the mental geography of the plateau as significant locations that required ritual attention.

Knowing where the sinkholes were, knowing what they meant, knowing how to use them correctly — this was part of the cultural knowledge of the plateau communities, as surely as knowing where the deer ran or where the springs emerged.