The Journey Continues - Finding Lost Civilizations, Part 2.

On the way home I drove to Donicia’s house
and saw several people sitting in the backyard.
Two other men arrived later and I introduced
myself. After explaining my interest in the
archeology of the area, Donicia and his friend
Manuel agreed to show me some ancient sites
the following day. They also volunteered to
take me directly to a site a short distance away.
I agreed and we drove to Manuel’s home, a
small adobe and brick house behind the town
cemetery.
From there we followed an old path up a hill. I
saw a large excavation to the left and learned
that this was a very old mine the Spaniards had
excavated hundreds of years before. The
tunnels, I was told, stretched for several
kilometers and once yielded silver. We
continued along the trail, traveling to the
backside of the hill and then to an elevated
pasture atop another hill. There I immediately
noticed a large boulder several hundred feet
ahead that had some sort of petroglyph art.
Walking toward the boulder, I came upon a
tomb excavation and observed tomb markers
strewn on the ground alongside a depression in
the earth. Manuel told me someone had
excavated the tomb to a depth of about one foot
and then stopped. He pointed to another hill
where he said many tomb markers were still
standing vertically over ancient graves. This
was exciting; I had seen many such tomb
markers but most were lying on the ground,
having been either knocked down or moved
from their original location.
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