'Ice Age Time Capsule' Unearthed In America (Missouri)

IOL ^ | 9-22-2003

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Spelunker--

a spelunker, technically, is a person who goes in caves. Originally derived from the Latin spelunca, (and the related Greek speleios), it comes from the Middle English word, spelunk, meaning cave or grotto. The word, spelunk, apparently went out of common use about 1600, though the adjective, speluncar (pertaining to caves) continued into the mid-19th Century. The name of the French bulletin of Le Societe de Speleologie*--founded by Edouard-Alfred Martel in 1895--was Spelunca. The first modern usage of spelunker in America was probably that reported by Clay Perry in Underground New England in 1939, describing a group of men and boys engaged in "a more or less systematic study of the caves and old mines of the area" who called themselves Spelunkers. Life magazine in the early 1940's may have been the first widespread use of the term in print in an article named, "Life Goes Spelunking." Through the 1950's, spelunker was apparently used as the generic term--with no good or bad connotations. A movie shown at the 1955 NSS Convention by William Hulstrunk, was entitled, "The Spelunkers." The MSM (Missouri School of Mines) Spelunker's Club was founded during this era, and the name continues to be used by that MSS grotto. Other popular publications of the '50s refer to spelunkers and spelunking without the slightest blush.

Sometime in the 1960s (according to Joe Walsh, and probably during an earlier upsurge of interest in venturing underground), spelunker began to take on the connotation of rank amateur, while those "in the know" but not degreed scientists began to refer to themselves as cavers.

You must be one of those elitist "cavers.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Joe Walsh played in a cave ?

[Khepera]

You got that right!

If you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground you better stay out of holes in the ground.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

No desire.

Enjoy your holes.

[scouse]

Equally puzzling were the peccary tracks and turtle shells deep inside the cave.

These can only come from the Peccary Footed Turtle or conversly; the Turtled Backed Peccary. Now if only we could dicover what kind of meat is in McDonald's Chicken Nuggets.

[Kenny Bunk]

I am truly glad that the LR went to Heaven before he found out what that treacherous Native American was really calling him. Hi Ho Silver!

[cruiserman]

I presume Zambia uses the metric system ;).

[Khepera]

Me either. I gave it up 17 years ago.

[ForGod'sSake]

I presume Zambia uses the metric system ;)

No doubt. Lemme see now, I can count on one hand, er, one finger the number of countries that DON'T use the metric system. Did I miss anyone? ;^)

FGS

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))

[SevenDaysInMay]

bump

[blam]

"Joe Walsh played in a cave ?"

Yup. He played with the James Gang too.

[null and void]

Were there ever cave-dwelling humans in the New World?

We call them democrats...

[e_engineer]

Or 16.38 times faster since it's really cubic inches.

[blam]

Potholers Uncover 35,000-Year-Old Human Jawbone

Okay, so...what's a potholer?

[EggsAckley]

Maybe potholers are people who fill potholes....?

[Kenny Bunk]

I have forwarded your interesting question to Cliff, the postman on "Cheers."

I think a pothole is a geological formation which has eroded into a round hole in like the earth over the eons, into which unwitting early Amerasians may have stumbled after ingesting fermented berries. We don't have sinkholes in Maine, unless they can be licensed by the state Alcohol Control Board.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Yup.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Thanks for the ping, Saber.

[js1138]