Love in the Bones – The Story of the Windover People

Old bones can teach us a lot, but they have their limits. You can’t look at someone’s bones and deduce that he had a laugh like a sock going through a vacuum hose, for instance. Bones can only tell the cold facts of age, sex, and physical trauma; childbirth, arthritis, malnutrition and the like.

Or so I thought. I was wrong. 

Once upon a time (1982, if you’re going to be picky) a man named Steve was hired to drain a Florida muck pond, and as he worked his way through the inky-black soil with his backhoe, a pale rock the size of a cantaloupe rolled from his bucket. Curious, Steve climbed down from his machine and went for a closer look. He picked it up, turned it over, and two black eye sockets peered back at him.

It was a human skull. 

Steve indulged in a little mild language, scrambled onto his backhoe, and made another pass. As the muck tumbled out of his bucket, so did another skull and a jumble of long bones. 

He carried the bones to the local highway patrol station, where troopers took one look and declared the bones not the result of a car wreck. And, therefore, not in their jurisdiction, thankyouverymuch.

No doubt Steve was delighted to hear that. I’m sure he’d been concerned that the owners of the bones might need a tow or a phone call with an insurance agent. However, he was still left with a pile of old bones. 

He hauled the bones to the restaurant across the street, where they met with an enthusiastic welcome. Patrons gathered around to gawk and speculate between bites of dinner. Outside the snug little building, the wind kicked up, flaying the palm trees, and lightning split the sky. One local, Lester by name, spooked by the unhealthy combination of skulls, storm and approaching nightfall, arrived at an unorthodox conclusion: “They’s haints in these woods,” he stammered. “Indians!

Young Lester was right. Not about the ‘haints’ (although proof of the negative kind is hard to come by,) but the ‘Indians.’

The bones Steve dug up proved to be from a burial site thought to predate the pyramids; a collection of over 160 bodies preserved for thousands of years by the anaerobic conditions of the Florida pond. As with all ancient people, they don’t behave quite like they’re supposed to. For instance: well before the invention of weaving, these folks (who were, of course, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers—no other occupations being available for people of their time,) wove cloth on large looms, producing sheets of cloth large enough to wrap an adult in. They used drinking gourds, set bones with remarkable skill, believed in the health benefits of elderberry, and lived as long as 70 years. Genetic analysis tells us they were more closely related to Asian groups than modern native Americans.

But that’s not what I found so special about these burials. 

When we talk about love amid the skeletons, we (I say ‘we,’ because you contemplate love amid the skeletons too, right?) usually think of this pair:

Awww. Lookit that. An embrace that lasted through the centuries! What could demonstrate love more beautifully than that?

I’m glad you asked.

One member of the tribe buried at Windover was born with spinal bifida. He was likely paralyzed from the waist down, and, as his condition restricted blood flow to his lower extremities, was probably prone to frequent infections. He was a “useless” member of a group that faced malnutrition and, at times, starvation, and yet he lived to his upper teens before dying from his condition. That’s remarkable. Before 1960, only 10-12% of children born with this condition survived for more than a year or two.

As one writer put it: “In a more savage, less developed society, those members of the clan and others such as the elders, the very ill, or deformed children might have been deserted or even killed.”

When we talk about caring for the handicapped in modern times, it’s relatively easy. We have wheelchairs and antibiotics and plenty of food. Our love doesn’t cost us as much as it cost them. The young man we dug up in Windover would have had to be carried from place to place, watched over through long sticky Florida days, the bandages on his legs changed, his body washed and tended. Was he a fretful, self-centered invalid, or a cheerful presence despite his chronic pain? We don’t know. But he was loved. Not with the sparkling flame of a Romeo and Juliet passion like the hugging skeletons suggest, but a love that cared for him through years of incontinence.

The Windover boy’s life was treated as a valuable not because of what he could contribute—in periods of famine, every bite he took was one less for the more “productive” members of his tribe—but because of who he was. 

Now we all know the standard by which every ancient civilization is judged: we compare them to the most clever, highly developed and accomplished culture we know—us. And we avoid caring for people with spinal bifida by killing an average of 63% of them before they’re born.

Maybe having indoor plumbing and understanding germ theory aren’t the only hallmarks of an advanced culture. 

My hat is off to the Windover people, whose bones tell a story of true love we can learn from thousands of years later. 

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