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A group of giant mounds built by Native Americans thousands of years ago just became the US' newest [View all]
A group of giant mounds built by Native Americans thousands of years ago just became the US' newest World Heritage Site — take a closer lookGabbi Shaw Sep 27, 2023, 4:10 PM CDT
The Seip Earthworks. Mary Salen/Getty Images
. . .
This month, UNESCO announced the newest additions to its list of World Heritage Sites. The only addition in the US was the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio.
Mound City. Mary Salen/Getty Images
Source: UNESCO
UNESCO called the earthworks "eight monumental earthen enclosure complexes built between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago along the central tributaries of the Ohio River."
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. zrfphoto/Getty Images
Source: UNESCO
The earthworks, which historians describe as "part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory," are spread across the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, as well as nearby Newark and Oregonia.
More:
https://www.insider.com/unesco-world-heritage-site-hopewell-ceremonial-earthworks-photos-history-2023-9
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Rediscovering America
The US' 2,000-year-old mystery mounds
By Brandon Withrow
5th December 2022
Constructed by a mysterious civilisation that left no written records, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks are a testament to indigenous sophistication.
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.
"There was a sweat lodge or some kind of purification place there," said our guide Brad Lepper, the senior archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection's World Heritage Program (OHC), as he pointed to the circle. I looked inside to see a perfectly manicured lawn – a putting green. A tall flag marked a hole at its centre.
The Octagon is currently being used as a golf course.
. . .
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.
You could put four Roman Colosseums inside just The Octagon
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.
Lepper told me The Octagon and The Great Circle were once a larger, single Hopewell complex spanning 4.5 sq miles and connected by a series of roads lined by earthwork walls. Walking through both sites today, there is an immediate shock of scale. The Great Circle, where the museum for Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks is found, is 1,200ft in diameter. Its walls rise up to 14ft high and are outlined on the inside by a deep ditch. The Great Circle was once connected to a square and a burial ellipse, with only part of the square still visible today. The Octagon sprawls a massive 50 acres and is attached to the 20-acre Observatory Circle, a large earthwork circle for gathering and rituals connected to the observation of the night sky.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20221204-the-us-2000-year-old-mystery-mounds
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