Just What Is on Top of Those Tall Buttes?

25 vertical feet. One member was forced to drop out because of a bloody scalp wound caused by falling rock. But Anthony and the others persevered. On the night of September 16, they built a large bonfire on the summit to inform a waiting world that the “first” humans finally had reached the top of Shiva.

According to Anthony's official report, there was no evidence of primordial creatures on the mesa, but the scientists did not seriously expect any. He recorded finding recently cast-off deer antlers and coyote tracks, and theorized that the agile desert creatures ascended the south face of Shiva where footing, treacherous to man, could have provided a possible avenue for wildlife. For further scientific study, the party trapped a large number of wood rats, mice and chipmunks, but nothing indicated evolutionary changes in these small mammals that had, presumably, been isolated at the top of Shiva Temple.

Anthony's report did not mention the Kodak film boxes left there by Grand Canyon photographer Emery Kolb only weeks earlier or the flag made from a burlap bag attached to an agave stalk planted firmly in the ground by his fellow climbers. When Anthony rejected Kolb's offer to guide the expedition, Kolb had planned his own trip, pre-empting Anthony. Because Kolb's party did not have the support of the park service, the accomplishment wasn't made public for a decade, but, apparently, they were all quite satisfied with their secret. After returning from his Grand Canyon adventure, Anthony was widely interviewed and a lengthy account of his adventure was published in the American Museum's Natural History magazine.

Strangely, Anthony's most intriguing find on Shiva received only brief mention in his report. Perhaps this was because Anthony, human as we all are, was not overjoyed to inform the world that other humans had preceded him, and even Kolb, to Shiva's summit. For, you see, Anthony and his team found ample evidence that Indians, perhaps a thousand years before, had not only climbed Shiva and explored it, but also had lived on it as well.

Small stone rooms, cooking pits, spear-points and shards of flint were discovered by the Anthony group.

Sometime after the Anthony expedition finished its work on Shiva, its professional climbers, led by George B. Andrews, made a successful ascent of Wotans Throne, which lies off the North Rim of the Canyon near Cape Royal. Andrews later reported that while he and his companions had climbed extensively in the Swiss Alps and the Himalayas, they considered Wotans Throne their most dangerous challenge.

About their final approach, Andrews wrote: “Slowly we crawled like giant spiders along the base. We peered up at the broken crags and boulders above, picking the route, trying to visualize every hand and foot hold.” After reaching the summit, Andrews paused to catch his breath and take a drink of water. As he lowered the canteen, he noticed-only a few feet from the riman ancient stone oven.

In recent decades, experienced climbers have scaled most of the canyon's 147 buttes, often finding evidence of ascents by early man. And that, of course, raises another ponderable question: Why did the ancients climb the buttes?

Many would guess that prehistoric man was seeking protection from warlike neighbors. Perhaps. But I have a theory of my own. I have a feeling that ancient people had as much innate curiosity and as much love of adventure as modern man. Unfettered by time clocks and airplane schedules, they were free to pursue whatever interested them. The buttes called, and they climbed them-for the same reason Hillary climbed Everestbecause they were there. Al

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text by Janet Webb Farnsworth photographs by Bernadette Heath