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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| The US' 2,000-year-old mystery mounds | |
| 2022-12-06 | |
Autumn leaves crackled under our shoes as dozens of eager tourists and I followed a guide along a grassy mound. We stopped when we reached the opening of a turf-topped circle, which was formed by another wall of mounded earth. We were at The Octagon, part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, a large network of hand-constructed hills spread throughout central and southern Ohio that were built as many as 2,000 years ago. Indigenous people would come to The Octagon from hundreds of miles away, gathering regularly for shared rituals and worship. All of these all these prehistoric ceremonial earthworks in Ohio were created by what is now called the Hopewell Culture, a network of Native American societies that gathered from as far away as Montana and the Gulf of Mexico between roughly 100 BCE and 500 CE and were connected by a series of trade routes. Their earthworks in Ohio consist of shapes – like circles, squares and octagons – that were often connected to each other. Archaeologists are only now beginning to understand the sophistication of these engineering marvels. Built with astonishing mathematical precision, as well as a complex astronomical alignment, these are the largest geometrical earthworks in the world that were not built as fortifications or defensive structures. And while most people have never heard about the sites or its builders, that may be about to change. The US Department of the Interior has nominated eight of Hopewell's earthworks for consideration in 2023 as a Unesco World Heritage site. These include The Great Circle and The Octagon in Newark, Ohio, as well Ohio's first state park, Fort Ancient (not an actual fort). The other five are part of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park: Mound City, Hopeton Earthworks, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound Group and Seip Earthworks. | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #8 White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest’s Mysterious Mound Cities |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2022-12-06 21:24 |
| #7 Ancient astronaut theorists say yes. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2022-12-06 13:33 |
| #6 Interesting place One of the Early Editions of Smithsonian Mag, first decade it was published, had an article on Hopewell and the interestingly large skeletons that were found there buried under one of the geometrical mounds. IIRC 7-8 ft skeleton(s) were uncovered as reported by the Smithsonian. Another interesting factoid: Huge amounts of copper artifacts have been found here. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley has four very interesting entries for being Ohio: 1.) Toucans statues 2.) Parrot/parquet statues 3.) Manatee statues 4.) Mastodon pipes |
| Posted by: mossomo 2022-12-06 13:06 |
| #5 The 2,865th Holiest Place in Islamâ„¢ |
| Posted by: Frank G 2022-12-06 11:40 |
| #4 Been there on a high school trip decades ago. Pretty cool place but didn't run into Georgio or see any UFOs |
| Posted by: Warthog 2022-12-06 09:45 |
| #3 Considering that any given monument will eventually be found to be "offensive" to someone who arrives later, (and consequently need to be destroyed) they are a waste of time and effort to create in the first place. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-12-06 09:39 |
| #2 Left no written records. Early Democrats ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-12-06 09:33 |
| #1 Kinda looks like runways and an air terminal. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2022-12-06 09:28 |