Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758 - subfossil hominid (male) from the Holocene of Kentucky, USA. (from an old postcard)

Western Kentucky's Mammoth Cave is the longest cave on Earth, with 412 mapped miles as of fall 2017. Human bodies are occasionally found. This one consists of a skeleton and desiccated soft parts. A shell necklace was also found. At far right in the picture is a cluster of cane reeds, which were used as torches, for illumination.

This specimen was discovered in the 1930s by cave guides - the body had been crushed under a limestone block. This was in the southeastern stretches of Main Cave, the principal trunk passage in the Mammoth Cave Ridge part of the system. It had been known that prehistoric Indians entered & used Mammoth Cave - the oldest known evidence dates to about 2170 B.C. Indian artifacts have been found as far as 12 miles in. Their known activities included the collection of gypsum crystals from the walls of the historic section of Mamoth Cave.

In the case of this Indian mummy, nicknamed “Lost John”, he had been digging for gypsum under a moderately heavy piece of limestone breakdown. The block of rock shifted and trapped him. Examination of the corpse while under the rock revealed that he had time to get his head and arm out from under the rock, but not the rest of him. Autopsy of the corpse provided some diet information - hickory nuts and sunflower seeds were in his stomach. Intestinal tissue from this mummy has been isotopically dated to about 15 B.C. Cloth associated with the body has been dated to about 445 B.C.

The original limestone block can be viewed on the “Violet City Tour”. It's along the eastern side of the Main Cave, on a slab-covered ledge. It has some metal straps wrapped around it, which were used in lifting the rock during recovery of the mummy. “Lost John” was on long-term public display at the discovery site & then at Giant's Coffin. A couple other mummies found much nearer to the mouth of the cave were discovered in the 1800s and reburied somewhere in Houchins Narrows. Indian mummies from other Kentucky caves were sometimes put on display at Mammoth Cave, including near the entrance to Gothic Avenue. Stories about these mummies usually gave the incorrect impression that they, too, were found in Mammoth Cave. Most of them were not found here.

Sadly, this interesting part of Mammoth Cave history is now inaccessible. I saw this mummy when I was a child, but it was reburied in the 1970s near the discovery site. The exact site is known only to the Mammoth Cave superintendent (& a few other people). I detest censorship of visual information (& the bigotry and ignorance and anti-academia fervor that led to the reburial of this specimen). So, I present the old postcard photo shown above so that everyone can better appreciate a small, but fascinating, part of American history.

By the way, Italians don't have a problem with having archaeologically-significant human remains available for public viewing. The ancient Roman town of Pompeii was destroyed and buried by ash and pumice during the 24-25 August 79 A.D. eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius (Naples area, Italy). Remains of ~2000 year old Romans caught in the eruption can be seen by tourists.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae