800 Years of Torchlit Journeys Into Mammoth Cave

Known Between about 1000 and 200 BC, people walked deep into the Mammoth Cave system: in places five miles from daylight, with artifacts as far as twelve miles in. They lit the way with bundles of river cane that burned for about 45 minutes each, and stockpiled fresh bundles along the route. They scraped gypsum, mirabilite and epsomite from the walls, some of it genuine medicine. They went twice a year, late spring and late autumn, for eight centuries. Unknown Why they went so far past the easy deposits near the entrances, and why, around 200 BC, they stopped for good. 0:00 The Man Under the Rock 7:58 Two Thousand Years of Descent 15:56 The Light Problem 23:45 What They Were Taking 31:30 The Passages 39:04 The Ones Who Stayed 46:49 Theory One — The Medicine 54:25 Theory Two — The Emergence 1:02:13 Theory Three — The Hidden People 1:09:48 When the Belief Came Back Up 1:17:33 The Womb, Not the Bunker 1:25:04 Why They Stopped Human remains from these caves are no longer displayed, and the traditions of descendant nations are described only as those nations have made them public. #MammothCave #Kentucky