MUNGO EATS Latin America

All today we were exploring the Petrified Forest National Park on on nice, obvious paths.  I guess that doesn’t count as exploring but I’ll call it what I want.  It was really easy to tell that the petrified wood had been real wood a long time ago.   

Petrified wood isn’t the only thing in the Park!  The Pueblo Natives made lots of petroglyphs.  There are also the ruins of their houses. 

Petroglyphs are made by chiseling off the top layer on the rock.  The layer is softer than the other layers and is made of hard sand.  The wind blows the sand against the rock and over time, the sand hardens.  I’d tell you what the layer is is called but I forget because I mailed the paper that tells me to my class at home.  The petroglyphs usually talk about hunting, animals, children, and their gods.  One of the most famous ones is the stork bringing a baby.     In this picture the stork is at the center right.  I’m not really sure what the other pictures mean. 

The ruins are made of stone bricks.  They were lived in twice, once from 1100-1200 and once in the 1500’s.  They are made to keep the strong southeastern wind outside.  The Natives lived in the middle of the desert because there was a river not very far off.  But they couldn’t live right next to the river because in the spring when it rained a lot the river got a lot higher.  We think that they got flooded out a few times before they decided to build new homes further up.  The houses weren’t made like Machu Pichu, which is built by balancing rocks the right way.  Cement-like mud holds the bricks together.  Sadly, time can kill even the strongest things.  Now the walls are about half the height of my knee.

And now, some words for the wood.  The trees were actually alive 225 million years ago, in the Triassic period.  These trees lived in the time of dinosaurs!  The trees fall down and over time are covered in mud, silt, and volcanic ash.  This really slows down their decomposition.  Then silica-rich water washes over the logs.  Slowly it begins to harden(kind of like a stalagmite) and replace the wood cells with silica.  After a long time, the silica turns to quartz and becomes very colorful.