If you surf the internet intelligently, one of the things you discover is that there is a vast amount of useful knowledge out there about all manner of things that even a well-educated person wouldn’t necessarily know. Recently I came across an article in the BBC travel section about the incredible mound structures in Ohio built by the Hopewell Culture of indigenous Americans dating back 2000 years. These structures are vast, built with extreme measurement precision, and like Stonehenge in England were built, archeologists speculate, for ritual, astronomical, and community gathering purposes. According to the article, “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.” Apparently long before Europeans arrived, there was a complex confederation of Native peoples, connected by waterways, that spanned the entire country. It wasn’t just isolated tribes here and there, it was a full-fledged nation.
Lew, I think they are much older than 2,000. They are part of a global creation of Megaliths dating back over 9500 years to the end of the Younger Dryas, a cataclysmic upheaval due to an explosion or collision with a meteor that left a ring of ash around the planet. Shortly after that period these megaliths aligned with Sirius, the Pleiades, and other stars appeared, and a controversial (but I believe quite sane and sound) investigative journalist named. Graham Hancock has an 8 part tv series called Ancient Apocalypse and an interesting book: Magicians of the Gods about all of them. He’s controversial because his thesis that the world went from hunter-gatherers to builders of pyramids and megaliths with no intervening or practice steps doesn’t make sense. He has compiled a great deal of evidence pointing to ancient civilizations that existed at the same time as hunter-gathers (as we coexist with pygmies and Kung Bushmen today). After the Younger Dryas it appears in legend and myth in many cultures that strangers “giants” (which could mean intellectual giants) appeared and taught them astronomy, math, etc. And, since disaster had come from the skies, it seems self-evident that they might have paid such attention to the sky. It’s a deep and interesting subject.
have you read INDIGENOUS CONTINENT or THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING? both offer interesting examinations of the Hopewell and Mississippi cultures and their links with Central American communities via trade and technology exchanges. fascinating backstory to pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere…