Treasure Hunting: The Moving Earth
November 13th 2006 17:05
One of the biggest problems that many metal detectorists experience has to do with ignorance. I guess that goes for most problems, and the solution to all that takes awhile; it takes reading and doing, so if you are reading this, then you are halfway to overcoming one problem already. Marvelous.
There is a marked misperception by the majority of people concerning the way the earths surface...moves...over decades and centuries. To things like us with a century or less of life each time, reality appears either static or catastrophic, in varying degrees. We will veer away from the catastrophic, and not think about how perturbed the moons orbit is, or how it is largely hollow and stands a chance of breaking in pieces soon because of dim-witted and monkey-like scalar experimentation in the last 7 years. No, we will not go there today.
Instead we will begin discussing things like surface flow here on earth, across decades, or a century or two at most, which may appear static, but are really anything but. Wind, rain, gravity, dogs digging, gophers burrowing, even fire hydrants breaking (and much much more!) -- all contribute to a surface flow that is not just measurable and observable, but quite interesting too. Most people are not only ignorant of all this. They remain ignorant for all their lives! So we have this going for us at least, and thats a nice thing.
Metal detectorists are uniquely in tune (iluvpuns) to the phenomena of outer crust flow, because they get to observe it a lot, and by observing it, can begin to know it exists, and question it. Also, study of the outer surface movement on this planet, and the understanding thereof, can help the metal detectorist find more coins and rings and other things of value, casually hoarded through loss, which is to say, deposited, against the day they may be withdrawn.
Because of metal detecting, many old currencys have come alive, and not only live, but grow, and teach. It is galling to be slapped in the face with your past absurditys, no doubt, but better that than what has always happened so far. Numismatics encompasses not just coinage, but is the true exhibit of certain primal forces alive across the multiverse, of which people are a part. Imagine all the suns, golden coins, red coins, blue, and more. The moon a coin, every planet. These even look like coins sometimes. Depends on which way you are looking at them. What angle hast thous perception??
At many metal detecting sites, the earths movement is not only observable but actually incredible. I once detected a place in Clearwater Florida, did not find much, its where a house was removed, near the hospital, and the lot had been scraped but there was not too much to be had. Or so I thought.
I brought a buddy there one day when nothing else was up, and his detector was quite a lot more advanced than mine was, and he got an extra inch or two in depth with the thing. He found several nice earlier Mercury dimes out front, between the curb and the sidewalk, and a late Indian Head cent.
Later I remembered how the sand of the front yard had begun to creep slowly downhill, and over the curb, to eventually be washed downhill further in the street, but not before causing like a 6" lip of material (Sand) to accumulate at the first edge of the curb, and thereby deepening the entire front part of the lot by quite a few inches, and maybe a foot or more! This in less than a century, as I now know graphically, having once again revisited the site one night, alone.
Prior to new construction the area including the sidewalk and out to the curb was scraped of 8-10" of sand, the very same sand that flowed from uphill on this very slight grade, a grade easily mistaken for flat.
This scraping prior to new construction exposed a level from the early days of the hospital where a wooden sidewalk had traversed the path before. Wooden sidewalk sites are just about the best places I know of to coin shoot, because of all the traffic, and the number of coins dropped between the cracks.
And because they are usually old.
This sidewalk ran from the hospital to a well known restaurant-bar still operating today. I just got a small piece of this circumstance, but what I got was somewhat a bonanza for me that night, with over 30 coins in less than 2 hours, and all before 1920.
None of these coins were detectable though, until almost a foot of material had been scraped from the site of the wooden sidewalk. They were still 6-10" deep when I detected them!
Always assume there are levels at any site your detector is not reaching. If you are wrong, oh well, but usually you are not wrong to assume that. No by a long shot.
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