By Stonewall-Jackson Collins
Someplace between the rocket ghosts of Cape Canaveral and the drowsy waves lapping at Indian River Lagoon, there made use of to be people. Actual people. Not the airbrushed Floridians with flip-flops and flags, but sinewed, shell-cut, salt-rubbed people– the Ais. They’re gone now. Not simply dead. Gone– like a language nobody jotted down. Like smoke swallowed by the mangroves.
The Spanish recognized the Ais. Called them a “country,” begrudgingly, because those naked seaside people had the gall to not bow, not construct, not damage. They fished. They scavenged. They tattooed their faces and looked down vanquishers like they were gators made from gold. By all accounts, the Ais really did not need people due to the fact that they were already component of the one Nature made prior to we wrecked it.
And after that there’s Windover.
In 1982, a backhoe bit right into a retired life fish pond near Titusville, Florida, and as opposed to hitting limestone, it struck time itself. Windover Bog coughed up 168 tombs– laid to rest some 7, 000– 8, 000 years ago, pre-farming, pre-pyramids, pre-just-about-everything. These were the Windover individuals, and they were as real as the pains in your bones when you really feel something old seeing you from the cypress knees.
Minds protected in …