- MIAMI (Reuters) -- In the shadows of this modern city's gleaming towers,
under the remains of a blighted apartment block, archeologists digging
through the rubble of centuries have uncovered a mysterious circle in stone.
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- The circle, formed of dozens of holes
bored into the limestone bedrock with rudimentary tools and located just
a few steps from the mouth of the Miami River, is a startling window into
Florida's pre-Columbian history in the heart of a bustling metropolis,
archeologists say.
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- A cache of artifacts including shells,
beads and pottery shards has persuaded some experts that the circle is
likely the foundation of a Tequesta Indian building at the site of one
of Miami's first trading posts founded by northern settlers.
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- But another, more intriguing theory has
been advanced: that the circle is a celestial calendar, perhaps made by
a breakaway band of Mayas, the sophisticated Central American Indians who
lived in the Yucatan, Belize and northern Guatemala.
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- "It looks like Stonehenge in negative.
Instead of stones, holes," T.L. Riggs, a surveyor who has studied
Mayan culture, said.
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- A vision of Florida past
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- Whatever the relic turns out to be --
the site was uncovered in August and researchers are in the initial stages
of identifying and dating the artifacts -- it is a vision of Florida past
in the bedrock of a city built on glitter.
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- "It has generated more questions
than answers," said Bob Carr, an archeologist and director of Miami-Dade
County's Historic Preservation Division, which is heading the archeological
dig at the site.
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- Historians expected to find Indian artifacts
when bulldozers moved in to demolish the old Brickell Apartments and prepare
the site for a new luxury tower. The patch of land at the mouth of the
Miami River was widely known to have been a homestead and trading post
for the Brickell family, early Miami settlers, in the 1870s.
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- The site lies in the shadow of a Sheraton
Hotel and is a stone's throw across the narrow river from a Hyatt Hotel
erected on the site of a Tequesta village. The native Indians inhabited
the region when Ponce de Leon, the Spanish explorer, landed in Florida
in 1513 seeking the Fountain of Youth.
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- The Tequesta all but vanished due to
war and disease following the arrival of the Europeans.
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- This summer, when the diggers scraped
bedrock through a thick layer of landfill and midden -- the black earth
formed from the refuse of previous occupants -- they uncovered a series
of man-made holes in the form of an arc.
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- Riggs, the surveyor, extrapolated the
arc, etching a circle on the ground where he expected the rest of it might
lie under the dirt. A backhoe dug along the outline, and more holes emerged
in the form of a perfect circle 38 feet in diameter.
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- Circle unmarred by construction work
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- The mysterious circle, amazingly, survived
the construction of the Brickell Apartments unmarred. Work crews buried
a septic tank in the middle of the circle without touching the holes. A
sewer pipe sits beside the southern point.
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- "Nothing like this has ever been
found in South Florida," said John Ricisak, a Miami-Dade historic
preservation specialist who has worked at the site for months. "To
my knowledge, if it is the foundation of a Tequesta structure of some sort,
it would be the first hard evidence of one that's ever been documented
archeologically."
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- Although both Ricisak and Carr believe
the site is likely Tequesta, Ricisak said the celestial calendar theory
would not be "as far out as it might seem."
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- "It would not be unprecedented,"
he said. "In the Old World, for example, there was Stonehenge."
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- Riggs, who spent years living in Central
America and studying the Maya, theorizes that a group of Maya may have
made their way to the U.S. mainland through the Florida Keys hundreds of
years ago. Some of the holes in the circle were meticulously cut in the
shapes of marine creatures like the manatee, turtle and dolphin, he said.
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- "This is unique in the world. I
don't think anyone has ever discovered where glyphs have been carved into
the ground," he said. "There will be a lot of doubters. This
would be the first evidence of the Maya in Florida."
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- But Michael Coe, professor emeritus at
Yale University and a leading expert on Mayan culture, downplayed the likelihood
that the circle is Mayan.
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- "I think the chances against it
are tremendous. There has never been any Mayan artifact found in Florida,"
Coe said. "The Maya really stayed put. They never got up into the
United States. There is no hard evidence that they went to the (Caribbean)
islands."
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- A number of puzzles
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- Researchers have a number of puzzles
to solve, Ricisak said. Stones appear to have been carefully placed in
the holes at the eastern, western and southern points of the circle.
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- Large quantities of flint and two ax
heads fashioned from basalt were found at the site. Neither occurs naturally
in South Florida and the two closest sources of basalt, a volcanic rock,
are the Appalachian mountains of eastern North America or the highlands
of Guatemala, site of Maya settlements.
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- But Coe said the Maya did not use basalt:"They
had much better stuff than that."
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- Carr, the county archeologist, suspects
that the circle may have been the foundation for posts that formed the
structure of an "upper level, elitist type (Tequesta) house, a chief
perhaps. We know that they could create structures," he said. "I
find it difficult to believe that it's actually a calendar. But I don't
have a hard time believing some knowledge of astronomy figured into the
construction."
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- Carr points to the backbone of a shark
perfectly preserved within the circle. "The shark has its head to
the west and tail to the east, very much the way the Indians would put
a human in the ground."
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