Miami Intrigued by Prehistoric Mystery Site

Psychics, chanting Buddhist monks, mystics with divining rods, tourists from nearby hotels and scores of curious locals have shown up, intrigued by a prehistoric mystery. Also drawn to the vacant lot at the mouth of the Miami River were members of a UFO cult, who suggested that the symmetrical holes in the rock could match up with the landing gear on a flying saucer.

Eventually, the archeologists had to put up a fence and hire security guards to keep people out.

“This is something for everybody,” said Robert S. Carr, who is overseeing the careful but urgent excavation of the downtown dig site, which is destined to be destroyed by a condominium project in as little as two weeks.

“We are conditioned to newness and development. So when we see something connected to our past, it creates a hubbub, a shock,” said Carr, an archeologist and director of historic preservation for Miami-Dade County. “People are mesmerized and attracted to this.”

Indeed, the discovery of what could be a sacred ceremonial ground of the long-gone Tequesta Indians on two acres in the heart of the city’s financial district has sparked the collective imagination.

“I feel connected to this place,” said volunteer excavator Warren Zeiller, 69, retired Miami Seaquarium director. “I was married in the Presbyterian church a block away, and we had our wedding party in the Dupont Plaza Hotel across the river.”

After a 50-year-old apartment building was knocked down last summer, an archeologist hired by the developer discovered in the limestone bedrock more than 200 holes that formed a perfect circle with a diameter of 38 feet. Within other depressions inside the circle, diggers found two ax heads made of basalt--not native to this area--along with many pottery shards and the skeleton of a five-foot shark.

Equally fascinating is the discovery of holes outside the circle delineating an east-west axis that corresponds to the seasonal movements of the sun, suggesting to Carr and others that the site could have served as an astronomical observatory.

At least a few observers have theorized that the dig has uncovered the first evidence that the Maya people from Central America may have been in Florida more than 2,000 years ago. Carr doubts that, believing instead that the future home of Brickell Pointe was, 500 to 800 years ago, the location of a Tequesta temple.

“It’s too early to say exactly what this was, but it is clear that it is a very important site,” said William C. Sturtevant, curator of North American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, who stopped by to have a look last week. “Almost nothing is known about the prehistoric Indians of this region, so this can only help.”

Carr said the developer has offered to sell the lot--for $26.5 million.

Although local and state government officials have taken note of the historical significance of the site, Carr said, “In a city like Miami, I think that economic interests will prevail.”

So with bulldozers in the wings, Carr, field director John Ricisak and his crew of a dozen volunteers are brushing, sifting and documenting with deliberate haste, working down through four feet of black dirt on a point of land where the river meets Biscayne Bay.

Schemes to cut out a layer of the rock, called oolite, and preserve it elsewhere, or to make a latex mold of the formation, are also being discussed, Carr said.

Whatever the outcome, Carr feels gratified that the find has generated in Miamians a sense of the past. “Miami has a face, but this is giving it a soul, and people need that,” the 51-year-old archeologist said.

“They’re all from Havana or Boston or somewhere else, and often don’t know that Miami actually has a history. Discoveries such as this make us realize we have a responsibility to the past, and create a sense of place and continuity.

“Who built this? When was it done, and how did they cut through rock with shell tools, bone and sharpened sticks? People are mesmerized and attracted to mysteries like this. It connects them to something greater than themselves.”