Stand on the Brickell Bridge for a few moments and look to the east, where the Miami River meets Biscayne Bay. Then turn west, just past the Hyatt Regency and Knight Center complex.
Erase from your mind everything but the slowly flowing water — the towers, the cars, the construction cranes, the bridge itself — and imagine this instead: on both river banks, rows of round huts, imposing ceremonial structures, burial mounds, dugout canoes in the river, and a few thousand people going about their lives.
Some 2,000 years ago, just as Christianity was first emerging halfway around the world, this spot was the thriving hub for the indigenous Tequesta people, whose reach extended from what is today Palm Beach County south to the top of the Florida Keys and deep into the Everglades.
The evidence of the more than 5,000-year habitation by the Tequesta and their enigmatic Archaic predecessors is everywhere around you, but it’s mostly invisible.
In downtown Miami, the contours of a prehistoric Tequesta village and burial site lie entombed under a Whole Foods and a Joe & the Juice…