The Ancient Native American Found 2.5 Miles Inside Mammoth Cave — And The Mystery Of Why His People Went So Deep Underground
The comparison that brings this into focus: at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, another major American cave system with considerable Indigenous association, archaeological evidence of prehistoric human presence appears only near the cave’s entrance.
People visited the entrance, perhaps sheltered there, perhaps used the cave mouth for specific purposes.
They did not go deep.
At Mammoth Cave, they went miles in.
This distinction is what makes Mammoth Cave’s prehistoric Indigenous archaeology exceptional — not simply that people were here, but that they chose to go so far in, and that they kept doing it across so many centuries.
The depth of their penetration into the cave is not matched anywhere else in the North American archaeological record.
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