Continuing this series of world traveler, researcher and adventurer, Don Monroe, I'd like to explore the case of the cave bones.
"I have 13,000-year-old bones."
I chuckled. "You're not THAT old, Pirate Man."
Don had gotten used to me referring to him as Adventure Man and Pirate Man, as his world traveling, voracious appetite for book learning, and real-world survival skills made him the epitome of a renaissance man. For such an entity, one must have a "handle," like "Indiana Jones."
"Ha! No, carbon dated. I found them in a cave. Let me tell you about this one. Are you seated? This is gonna take a while." He asserted.
And so Don's experiences unfolded in the most riveting and unexplained story....
He had found a cave that was interesting and inside it had a pool of blue ice about a foot deep next to a huge stone slab. Inside the ice, there were lots of bones, just tons of them, as if trapped there when the cave was underwater, or perhaps even the ice age. It was a most unusual and tempting find.
He and some others with him tried break the ice and get to the bones, but no matter what they used, it was so hard, it could not be dented.
They examined the cave to find no source of drips or water. The ice was very very old, very hard, and impenetrable.
They sat down to cast a handprint from someone who had knelt down near the ice. It was something very human. Something very big and human. It took a full 45 minutes to dry in the cold cave.
They came back a few days later with more tools, hoping to breach the ice and gather up the hundreds of bones trapped inside.
What they found baffled them beyond belief. The ice was gone. Not even a trace of moisture from where it had been pooled. And all the bones were gone!
This did not make any sense to the group went over the cave again and again, trying to find an explanation for how it was possible to take away ice that was so hard without leaving traces of someone coming in and melting it.
They continued to study the cave over time. There was a climb-up ledge with an interesting bowl-shaped area, almost saucer-like. They would climb up there and see traces that something had been up there.
At times, they felt something from up there watching them. One time, Don felt it so strongly, he pulled out his gun and set it down to show that he was not holding it and proceeded with what he was doing to show good faith.
Upon occasion they found odd things. One time, a bundle of grass tied up like a Native People might have done long ago and set outside the cave. Don got the impression that the cave was somehow ceremonial or a thing of reverence and offering.
One time, they were amazed to find flowers laid out where the ice once had been. They came back two weeks later and the flowers were still there and as fresh as the day they found them.
And, one time on the 4-5 inch thick huge stone slab where the ice was, some bones were laid out. They took photos and studied them and decided to have them examined. But, in the back of Don's mind he was thinking of shamanistic arrangements. He half wondered if it was wise to tamper with it, but they had missed out on all the bones in the ice, so he took them to get studied.
It was a museum curator at a university in Idaho who was quite amazed and baffled by the bones. Two round ones appeared to be kneecaps. He had them carbon dated and found them to be 13,000 years old.
Human patella (kneecap)
*NOTE: The oldest human bones found in the Americas were from underwater in Mexico and found to be 11,000 to 14,000 years old. The Spirit Cave mummy found in Nevada was dated at about 9400 years ago.*
On a further trek to the cave, they found the stone slab gone. It was no longer there. And there were no signs of how it was carried out, as huge and awkward as it was, 4-5 inches thick and shaped sort of like the state of Montana.
If these happenings in the cave weren't weird enough, they came back yet another time to find that the upper saucer-like compartment had caved in on the area below, forever hiding anything that could be found within.
One thing Don did find about that cave is that a footprint he had seen in that cave, a unique one, was found also in a cave he studied 25 miles away. This shows a range of circuit for this being.
So far as the unexplained missing ice and slab and whoever was leaving bundles of grass, flowers and bones, the mystery remains open. He continues to study the caves and others in his circuit as he has done for dozens of years.
More on Don Monroe Case Files coming -
