Digging Miami

Epilogue

Epilogue In modern life, the pace of change since the incorporation of the city of Miami has been staggering. The land and sea that had breathed easily from the light touch of several thousand Tequesta is now congested with roads and a million people. There is a constant buzz of human activity, and the sightings of panthers in Miami are now only a matter of historical record. Towering buildings bite into the sky and a million artificial lights dim the sea of stars that once hugged the earth’s horizon. The city is larger now, yet somehow smaller and less mystical. It is impossible to know what songs were heard millennia ago in a dark hole below the Cutler forest or the chants and prayers made inside the Miami Circle. Although we can piece together splintered bones and analyze artifacts to tell a story, the richness of the moment is gone. We are wiser because of this knowledge, these new connections made, and the sober realization that we are custodians of far more than what we bargained for by having to preserve and document a past that our direct ancestors did not create. Preserving the past is the small print of the implicit agreement that binds us to those who lived and died before us. We preserve our past because it defines us as a civilization and a community . We connect to our history because it reveals a deeper part of who we are and who we should not be. ...