Father Time- in the footsteps of the Paleo-Indians

If you are like me, you sometimes think about the distant past. For example, I occasionally wonder, what was the world like in prehistoric times? How did people live thousands of years ago? What kind of world did they inhabit?

Of course, those questions can never be fully answered. In our minds, the past will always remain elusive - a product not only of what we know, but what we cannot know, and which is properly considered the realm of conjecture rather than certainty. As a result, history is something of an unsolvable mystery, and Father Time will forever be a shadowy figure, here and then gone, always a step ahead of those who seek to solve his riddles.  

For me, the mystery of the past is deepened by familiarity; thus, I am usually more intrigued by things that happened in places I have been than I am by events that took place in a land I have never visited. Indeed, it seems as if being in a place breeds an even greater fascination with its past, or to state this more abstractly, there is something about being in a space that serves to deepen the mysteries of time.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the Paleo-Indians who inhabited Chester County. I have always been interested in what they were like, and what this region was like when they inhabited it. To this end, I have been trying to locate some of the places they frequented in the area. According to the book West Chester to 1865: That Elegant and Notorious Place, the Paleo-Indians used to mine a couple of locations in Chester and Delaware counties for materials to build stone tools. For example, they may have made spearpoints out of a quartz outcrop located northeast of where West Chester Pike intersects Delchester Road, and they seem to have mined a soapstone quarry located in Embreeville Center for the purpose of creating bowls.

I am going to try and visit these locations this week and report back on what I find. Hopefully, I can get some pictures of the stone formations and post them for you to see.