America's Forgotten Prehistoric Wonders

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]I am delighted to be here with Professor Bradley Leper from the Ohio History Connection.

[00:00:06]Bradley, you are, as far as I can tell, one of the leading experts in the world on the Hopewell culture of the United States.

[00:00:15]>> I'm Yeah, I suppose I'm one of the people working on this these problems quite a lot and for much of my career.

[00:00:23]>> Yeah. Um, well, you're the leading expert that I could find to talk about these things. The hope culture is one of these archaeological phenomena that I think a lot of people haven't heard of, but as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the most interesting in the entire world. When I first read about it, it blew my mind the scale of some of these archaeological sites built with very primitive to our minds tools. So like bone tools and things like this and they're building these massive massive sites. I mean, maybe you could just introduce some of, you know, the main Hopewell sites for us.

[00:01:00]>> Sure. And and just to speak to your your your sense of of amazement about this, it it's absolutely true that these magnificent giant earthworks were created with simple technology, but you know, the the reason that these sites are now world heritage sites, the outstanding universal value that allowed them to be recognized on as a UNESCO World Heritage site, relate to the fact that this monumental architecture was created by indigenous people that didn't live in cities that didn't have corn that didn't have hierarchical society with a king at the top. So, it was a bunch of small independent communities working together uh voluntarily to create this monumental architecture. So, it's it's like what we when I teach at the university and I talk about civilizations, we have these like seven or eight different criteria and and Hopewell has only one of them. It has the monumental architecture, but none of the other things that supposedly were required for societies to build great architecture and to have, you know, the to feed the numbers of people that would be coming to these places. So, it really is a a kind of a mystery how these people were able to do what they did from a purely sort of egalitarian cooperative society with no kings, with no authoritarian leaders. And they not only did it in one place, they did it all over southern Ohio. And in fact, the extent of popo culture goes across much of North America. There are similar kinds of things being built in in in Missouri and in Florida, you know, as far east maybe as New York. Um, so this the southern Ohio is definitely the core, but sort of reverberations and influence extended much much greater.

[00:02:53]The earthworks I know best are two of the earthworks that are part of the Hopewell ceremonial earthworks UNESCO World Heritage site. The octagon earthworks and the great circle.

[00:03:04]These are monumental earthworks. The circle, the great circle is 1,200 ft across. Um that's four American football fields. You could stretch inside that.

[00:03:16]the circle and the octagon that are connected. The octagon earth works, that's a circle that's has a slightly smaller diameter of 154 feet. And the octagon encloses 50 acres, which means you could put four Roman coliseums inside just the octagon. Um, that's some of the scale here.

[00:03:36]>> Yeah. You say the slightly smaller one.

[00:03:38]It's still massive, isn't it?

[00:03:40]>> Absolutely.

[00:03:41]>> Still absolutely massive.

[00:03:43]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the these these are incredibly huge earthworks. And an architectural historian that worked with us on the nomination, John Hancock, uh now retired from the University of Cincinnati, talks about it as being architecture of a kind that he never learned about in architectural school.

[00:03:59]And he refers to it as uncanny in terms of its scale and simultaneously its precision. So this 1,54t diameter circle, the observatory circle connected to the octagon is about as perfect a circle as we could build today. So and and it wouldn't have to be that precise. 2,000 years ago, if you're building a circle on that scale, nobody's going to notice if it's off a little bit, you know, but maybe because of its lunar alignments, it's lying to the moon. So maybe they're trying to get the attention of the spiritual being that is the moon and and convince them that they've got it right in some way.

[00:04:39]>> So yeah, they did they did have to get it right really in many ways. I was reading that you think that the uh the newer earthworks are actually aligned to the the celestial bodies and they are sort of early forms of astronomy.

[00:04:53]>> Yes. And it's not just me that thinks that. I think that because of the work of a physicist and astronomer Ray Hiveley and a philosopher Robert Horn at Erland College that early on back in the 80s um and and it it's worth a little bit of a digression to talk about this because they weren't out to prove anything. Um, they were doing their work at about the time that Gerald Hawkins had come out with his book about Stonehenge, Stonehenge decoded, which was arguing that Stonehenge was this elaborate astronomical computer.

[00:05:26]And Rey and Bob didn't believe it. They said, "No, no, it's just that Stonehenge is a complicated monument, and you can draw so many lines through it that just by happen stance, some of them will inevitably point to a solstice or an equinox alignment or even both." So, the idea was that if you put Stonehenge on a roulette wheel and spun it a thousand times, 997 times out of a thousand, it would come out with these alignments.

[00:05:54]So, it's just happen stance because it's complicated. you can draw so many lines.

[00:05:59]He said these ancient people weren't that smart. They weren't paying attention to what was going on in the sky. It's just happen stance. And they were teen teaching a course on the history of cosmology at Roland College and wanted to include this as a sort of critical thinking exercise and they couldn't take their students to Stonehenge. But Bob Horn had been to Newark and he said Newark's octagon is a complicated environment or a complicated monument. It's got these eight sides with the walls pointing in two different directions. It's got all these gateways and you could draw different lines between the gateways and just by chance there will be a solstice or equinox alignment there. And so they brought their students there to do this exercise. And they they assumed, oh look, there's a solstice alignment here.

[00:06:44]But it's not real. It's not intentional.

[00:06:46]it just happens to be here because if you put the octagon on a roulette wheel and spin it a thousand times, those alignments would show up in a very high frequency. So, they go there, they do all this mapping, draw every line they could, and can't find a single uh solstice or equinox alignment. And they were scratching their heads because like that that's a that's statistically significant.

[00:07:09]So, it then occurred to them that, well, maybe it's not lined up to the sun because it's lined up to something else.

[00:07:16]And that's when they found that the main axis of the site points to the northernmost rise of the moon. One of the walls points to the southernmost rise of the moon. Other lines you draw through it point to actually all eight of the moon rises. The four moon rises on the eastern horizon and the four moon sets on the western horizon that define the northernmost rise and the southernmost rise and the northern minimum and the southern minimum. So it it's it's hard to imagine that that's that's a coincidence. And they actually then went on to look at the other circle in Octagon in Chilikothy, the high bank works. It's oriented at 90 degrees to Newark's octagon and is about 60 miles away. It also has all of those alignments incorporated into its architecture.

[00:08:00]It's wild. So the main Opel earthworks, the ones that were made UNESCO World Heritage sites, um there's like five or six, right? Do you want to just speak of them? And then there's also is it hundreds of other sites as well? Smaller sites that have smaller earthworks.

[00:08:17]>> I suppose I mean we have had over I think Ohio had some 10,000 mounds found in the state. There's there's only a couple thousands that are documented. Um but some of these are >> 10,000.

[00:08:30]>> Yeah. 8 to 10,000 something like that.

[00:08:33]Um >> just in the just in Ohio.

[00:08:35]>> Yeah. Just in Ohio. Some of them are simply small conicical mounds that are burial mounds built by uh the Adena culture which preceded the Hopewell culture. Um some of them are small circles maybe 200 feet in diameter um that were probably like the uh the churches the the look community churches of of these some of these cultures because that's about the size of what a community church would have been like for these communities. But then you have these really large enclosures and there's probably 20 to 30 40 of those. So it's not in the thousands of these giant enclosures.

[00:09:09]Those places were special and we have eight of them that make up the hope ceremonial earthworks. It includes Newark's great circle and octagon. It includes the Fort ancient earthworks which are a giant hilltop enclosure. I mean it's called Fort Ancient because the early Europeans thought it was reminiscent of an Iron Age hill fort.

[00:09:30]it. It's got three and a half miles of walls that surround these hilltops and an interior ditch that held water.

[00:09:37]So, we can talk more about that later if you like, but it shows they're not just geometric earthworks, they're also sort of topographically defined earthworks.

[00:09:46]And then, so those three sites are owned and operated by the Ohio History Connection. But then there's five sites that make up Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. And that includes the Hopewell mound group, the largest of the Hopewell enclosures and and the one of the ones that was first studied and has produced probably some of the most iconic Hopewell artifacts that have helped define the culture. There's the site mound and earthworks. There's Mound City and right across the river there's the Hopton earthworks and then there's the High Bank earthworks which is the other circle and octagon. And these are certainly the best preserved and among the most iconic, but there are many others that would have qualified if they had survived, if they hadn't been destroyed by farming or development. So there there are many others that could have been named. But then one of the limitations is that in the United States to become a UNESCO World Heritage site, that's uh there's an office in the Department of the Interior that governs that. And before they even consider you for World Heritage Inscription, you have to either be a National Park Service site or a national historic landmark, which is like the highest designation the United States government gives to heritage sites. So, you've already got to meet sort of the highest standard in the United States to even be considered to go on to that next step. and and many sites like we have Fort Hill which is an Ohio history connection site that's a hope site that's probably better preserved than even the Fort ancient earthworks but it's a bit smaller but it's only on the national register it's not a national landmark someday if that becomes a national historic landmark maybe we can get that added to this set of earthworks so we've got sort of many many many many churches and then we have a few cathedrals just to put it into our sort of western way of thinking.

[00:11:41]>> Yeah.

[00:11:41]>> Um >> it's it's so interesting. It's a lot of effort to make these things. What do you think they were for? I mean, normal person goes to one of these things. What are they what are they doing there?

[00:11:54]>> I think and this is an argument I've particularly made for Newark that I think these places are are religious. I mean, that's the the whole nomination for UNESCO is the Hopewell ceremonial earthworks. They're places where I think pilgrims were coming from literally the ends of their world. And I can say that because of the kinds of regalia that have been found in these mountains.

[00:12:19]Ohio, of course, is sort of in the Midwest, sort of up towards the northeastern section, and it's, you know, got the Great Lakes above it and the Ohio River below it. But artifacts found in Hope Mountains in Ohio include Kshells from the Gulf of Mexico. It includes fossil shark teeth from the the Atlantic coast, micica from the Carolas down on the southern Appalachian Mountains, and even obsidian, a volcanic glass that we know because of its chemical fingerprint. Most of it came from Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone Park about 2,000 miles away uh in the Rocky Mountains. So artifacts crafted from all all these materials have been found in Hopewell Mountains. And I think the best explanation for that is that pilgrims are coming from great distances bringing offerings of cool stuff from where they live to present at the sites. There they were crafted into ceremonial regalia.

[00:13:21]like some of that obsidian was turned into things that look like spear points, but they're about a foot long or more.

[00:13:27]Um, so they're symbolic spear points and then those in turn were broken up into pieces and burned on altars as offerings, but then then that's why the >> So, so they're longer spear points than they would be normally.

[00:13:41]>> Yeah. I mean, it's like it's the spear point is like this big and it's made out of glass. So, you're not really going to use that as a carving knife or a spear.

[00:13:50]>> And in fact, Just a few years ago, the Senica Nation funded a project for looking at usewear on that obsidian.

[00:13:57]Obsidian is the edges are so fine that you can get traces of usewear if you, you know, cut butter with it practically.

[00:14:04]>> Yeah.

[00:14:04]>> And Yeah. And an archaeologist from Canada and Ohio headed that study and they found no traces of usewear. They found evidence at the bottom that they'd been hafted probably onto poles and maybe carried around in ceremonies, but they were never used for anything except symbolism.

[00:14:23]Wow. Okay. It's such a massive map really at the time, isn't it? I mean, do we think that are people traveling from one side of the world to the other at that point that of this Hopewell world?

[00:14:36]Would would there be a trade mission from say, you know, northern Florida all the way up to uh I don't know, Michigan?

[00:14:45]>> Well, trade is certainly part of it because we see that happening in in the earlier cultures and you do get copper from the Great Lakes showing up further south. So, trade is part of it. But I think in the case of the hope, it doesn't make sense as simply trade because then then why do you need these gigantic enclosures? Those aren't community churches serving a local congregation. Those are giant cathedrals as you say, where thousands of people bringing offerings from widespread places, you know, are bringing these offerings. And when I was an undergraduate, it was talked about the Hopewell Pray Network. But if you look at obsidian in particular, which is in the Rocky Mountains, there's for trade, there's this drop off curve. So the people that live in Yellowstone have all the obsidian they want and they can trade large quantities of it to people living nearby. Then those people have a lot of obsidian. They can trade a big chunk of theirs to the next village. But as you keep going east, the piles that are being traded get smaller and smaller and smaller until they vanish. So before you get to the Mississippi River, there's no more obsidian.

[00:15:59]But if you continue sort of going east, suddenly there's a big spike of obsidian in southern Ohio.

[00:16:05]So it's not trade from village to village. It's somebody has brought gobs of obsidian big enough to be able to make giant spear points out of them from Yellowstone and then presented it at these ceremonial places.

[00:16:21]>> So interesting. So, it's all coming to southern Ohio and it's all ending up there.

[00:16:27]Why? Why there? Why? Why the uh Chilikothy Valley? What is it about the place?

[00:16:32]>> I mean, there are there there's geography that makes sense. That's a part of a big river system. I mean, you can canoe from Yellowstone Park to Mound City just following rivers without ever having to ford anything.

[00:16:45]>> Wow. you go down the Yellowstone to the Missouri and the Missouri to the Mississippi and the Mississippi to the Ohio and the Ohio to the Sciota and you know get off at Mound City. Um so that's one thing but but for me I mean that the the heart of the question why Newark?

[00:17:02]Why Chilikathy? For me, it's like asking why Jerusalem, why Mecca, but you don't have a Quran or a Bible to tell it to you because as far as we know, we don't have any evidence of a recorded uh uh writing for the Hopewell. They may have recorded stuff on birch bark scrolls like the Ojiway. Maybe they made knotted cords like the Incaipu, but none of that has been preserved in the acidic soils in Ohio. So we have no evidence of recording information like that except for the fact that they, you know, had made lunar observations for probably a century to figure out the lunar cycle. So some of that seems like it should be written down unless it could be incorporated in songs or prayers that the oral traditions would preserve. Um, so yeah, without that recorded knowledge, I don't know what we do. We don't we can't answer the question of why Newark, why Chilikati.

[00:18:06]>> Yeah, it h if only some sort of historical record had survived. But it's it's it makes it more of an enigmatic culture, doesn't it? Because we only have archaeology to tell the story. But it also makes it a little bit tragic because in the wake of not having that history when Europeans arrived, we made up a load of history for the place, didn't we? Um, I suppose we could talk about that a little bit because sort of when the European settlers crossed over the Appalachians, they entered this, you know, beautiful landscape and they found these giant earthwork constructions and they had to explain it somehow. I guess maybe you could let us know what what the early ideas were. Well, they refused to even consider or at least many of them refused to even consider the idea that the indigenous American Indians built them because they considered those people to be savages. And these were obviously the works of a great civilization and and because of the sophistication of the architecture and the geometry, they assumed it must have been a white people civilization because only white people are smart enough. So they invent this hypothetical culture that they called the mound builders which were the builders of the mounds.

[00:19:21]And they were here first and created this grand civilization. And then the indigenous American Indians were late comers who come you know from Asia sweeping into America like barbarian hordes and exterminate these these civilizations leaving only the mounds behind.

[00:19:39]And I mean I mean part of that is just pure racism. Part of it is many of the indigenous people living in North America at the time that Europeans arrived didn't have or wouldn't report to Europeans traditions about those mounds. They had been covered with forests. So it appeared that they have had been disused for for centuries. So a and but what the Europeans didn't understand was that I mean cultures change over time. So those earthworks may well have not been used very much over many centuries. But when Europeans first arrived, they brought with them diseases uh which swept through America ahead of the Europeans themselves. Maybe 90% of indigenous people in America died from those diseases. many of them before they ever even saw European. Then Europeans came in and and using warfare disrupted all the tribes, moved tribes around, made some exterminated some tribes. So when they finally get to Ohio, can it be a shock that many of these people like the Delaware, they're they were in New Jersey. They get pushed west and west further west and they end up in Ohio. Of course, now because of the Indian Removal Act, all of them were removed to uh aotments or reservations in Oklahoma or originally Kansas. So for generations, they've they've been separated from the land. Um they've been forced their kids have been forced to go to Indian schools and sort of re-educated so that those oral traditions often are not part of their upbringing. Um, so h how can we be surprised that these indigenous people now don't necessarily have traditions that they can point to to to explain that it was their ancestors, but but we've we have them we have indigenous people now coming back to these sites as part of the world heritage effort. We we brought them back. uh Chief Glenna Wallace with the Eastern Shauny was was one of the ones that instituted this because she came back herself with some of that some tribal members got really excited about it and became a very big supporter of World Heritage.

[00:21:53]And with World Heritage, she has often said in in public speaking uh programs that all of her life she only ever heard her ancestors referred to as savages, but because of World Heritage, she now hears her ancestors being referred to as geniuses.

[00:22:08]>> Brilliant. I'm interested in how long it took for the the sites to to get the designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I mean, was that in the works for a long time?

[00:22:19]Yeah, I think the first time I mean some of us were dreaming about it and thinking that they deserved it for years >> like in I think it was 2003 that we did a a a site management plan for the Newark Earthworks >> and that's the first time it's getting written down. One of the goals is get the Newark Earthworks nominated for UNESCO World Heritage site but then nothing really happened for another I don't know decade or so. And then the uh Department of the Interior sort of opened up its tentative list for new nominations. The tentative list, you you're probably familiar with that designation. It's sort of like a short list of sites from which the governments will pick to nominate. And so that opened up and then we did sort of a preliminary UNESCO nomination to try to get on the tenative list. And that nomination was successful. So we get on the tenative list and then we start doing the research. We start doing the work. And it was 20 years I think of of research of consulting with indigenous tribes before we finally get the nod and and get the nomination. Um and it was a it was a chore but boy it was a labor of love.

[00:23:36]>> Yeah. Well great work. Great work. Have you seen an increase in visitors since the uh designation?

[00:23:42]>> Yes. both the Ohio History Connection sites and the uh Hope Culture National Historical Park sites have. We started seeing it even when we got on the the tentative list because we it was starting to build the energy and we were we were writing columns and papers and trying to get support local support from communities for this world heritage initiative. It was going to be a big thing for those communities. some of them are rural and to have lots of visitors from foreign countries coming in might be a kind of a culture shock for some of them. Um so we wanted that we wanted to be prepared. Uh you know maybe they're they're they could be developing their infrastructure having more hotels, better roads, better restaurants. Um and and some of the communities have pic taken up that challenge because we found that uh communities that invest more do get more return. People that go to the world heritage sites say, "Yeah, this was a great place to visit. There were these great hotels and these great restaurants in addition to the wonderful earthworks." And so it's an economic boost for the not only just the three counties where these sites are located, but also places like Columbus and Cincinnati and Cleveland where there are airports with people coming in.

[00:24:53]One of those people was me last year and I had a a fantastic time and I I've been telling everybody about it ever since because uh they're just I mean there's just many many things that are really interesting about those places. I another another question I wanted to ask you about is the diet of these people because you mentioned briefly this is before corn.

[00:25:12]>> So there's no kind of you know massive fields of corn like the Mississippian cultures would have later. This is um it's partly hunter gatherer, right?

[00:25:21]>> Yeah. They're hunters, fishers, gatherers, but they also have gardens, sometimes probably pretty big gardens of what's called the eastern agricultural complex. Not corn, but they have things like sunflowers, squash, goosefoot, little barley, uh plants that are indigenous, and they actually domesticated them. Um and in some places like at Fort Ancient where uh scientist Kendra Mccclaclin has done soil cores in the ditches at Fort Ancient that still have water in them and has found that when the Hopewell were there there was massive deforestation to clear the land I suppose but also not not only to clear the land for earthworks but to clear the land for large gardens of the eastern agricultural complex that probably were part of the feasting that would be taking place at these ceremonial centers on particular occasions.

[00:26:15]>> So, we're talking within the walls of Fort Ancient. They were doing uh horiculture.

[00:26:22]>> Probably not because the insides of these enclosure >> probably not within the walls.

[00:26:26]>> Yeah. But the the Fort ancient earthworks include like these three separate components. The south fort, the middle fort, and the north fort. And radiocarbon dating suggests that the south fort was built first. So it may be that where the north fort would subsequently be built were used as fields for the ceremonies that were taking place in the south fort. But as it expanded and became ceremonial space, those gardens would have been moved to different adjacent areas. Interesting.

[00:26:55]Very interesting. I don't I don't think we've even spoken about dates yet. I mean we are talking this is 2,000 years ago.

[00:27:03]>> Yeah. The dates we've >> What the exact dates? The exact dates that we're using for the nomination that we used for the nomination were 1 to 400 CE. And it doesn't mean that there weren't wasn't hope going on earlier or maybe even later, but that seems to be the the the tightest range. And in fact, some of us like me think that that range will even contract further because how on earth people could sustain this kind of construction, you know, with the societies that they had, it's remarkable that it was sustained for those 300 years.

[00:27:43]But to have it even even 100 years seems like an amazing achievement.

[00:27:47]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. This is generation after generation after generation. Do you have any sort of uh hypothesis on when people were coming to these places? I read these are quite dispersed people throughout the landscape and they would possibly come maybe once a year, maybe twice a year.

[00:28:02]What any thoughts on that?

[00:28:04]>> Maybe even once every 18.6 years to Newark when that's when the northernmost rise of the moon would align to the the axis.

[00:28:13]And the thing about that is >> it's very precise. It's very precise.

[00:28:16]>> It's hugely precise. But people even like in Yellowstone Park in Wyoming 2,000 years ago, if they followed the moon, they would know when the northernmost rise was going to be and could say, "Okay, it's going to be in a couple months. It's time to load up the canoes and get started journeying to Newark for that big pilgrimage." But I don't think the the astronomical alignments of the earthworks were just intended to be a giant calendar. I think that aligning those astronomical alignments with the architecture was a way I mean I've referred to Newark as a ceremonial machine. So I think it was like these gears that would align with the gears of heaven and by by sort of aligning the the earthworks with the rhythms of the cosmos you were making what happened in those earthworks more sacred and and sort of windows the the highway to heaven would open up on that northernmost rise of the moon. you know, with those first beams of moon moonlight shedding along the axis of Newark and and the other sites in Chilikothy that also had those alignments.

[00:29:22]>> So, it's a it's a connection to the divine. It's uh Oh, it's Oh, it's very interesting. I mean, what do we think?

[00:29:29]Is this a priesthood?

[00:29:33]that that it's an interesting question because it does seem like they've gone beyond the the sort of shamanistic religions where there are healers and things like that. These do seem to be people. I mean, like the the geometry that's incorporated into these earthworks, which is is and the astronomy, but like at Newark, you got the circle and the octagon and you've got the great circle and you've got a square and then you've got an oval where the burial mounds were. And the great circle, I can't remember the circumference. The diameter is 1,200 ft, but it's connected to a square. The circumference of the great circle is equal to the perimeter of the square that it's attached to.

[00:30:14]The area of that square is equal to the diameter of the observatory circle that's attached to the octagon.

[00:30:21]And then the octagon, if you draw a square inside it from opposite corners or alternate alternative corners of the octagon, the sides of that square are equal to the diameter of the circle that it's attached to that, 154 ft. And the area of that square with 154 feet on a side is equal to the area of the great circle.

[00:30:43]So you've got more or less and deeper hidden geometrical connections between all these enclosures that are being built there. And that's not accidental, but it's not something that every pilgrim that comes to that site would know. So I think there is a kind of a priesthood that that is, you know, using geometry, using astronomy, and maybe there are different levels of initiation into that priesthood. And so you've got people that that that are high priests that are the ones that know it all and know exactly when the northernmost rise of the moon is. But what's fascinating is those people seem to have very high status within the precincts of the ceremonial centers, but when they go home, they're living in the same kinds of houses that everybody else lives.

[00:31:33]They're doing the same work. They're hunting, fishing, and gathering, hoing their gardens. Um, but they're buried in the mountains with all this regalia that makes them look like kings, but they're not kings. They're they're priests with huge spiritual influence, but they're not they don't have this authoritarian ability that order people around.

[00:31:55]>> How interesting. How interesting. It's such a well, it seems like a different society than uh Cahokia and the Mississippians who came after.

[00:32:04]>> It's enormously different. I mean, Cahokia is a city. It's 20,000 people and it's got this pyramid with a king living at the top >> that like >> Yeah.

[00:32:13]>> when they study his his bones, he never worked a day in his life and he had more access to meat than everybody else.

[00:32:19]>> And all the other people that he literally looks down on are just eating corn and having their teeth rot out.

[00:32:24]>> Yeah. And he's doing that all year round. He's not going back to a village with everybody else.

[00:32:31]>> Exactly.

[00:32:31]>> Um >> really interesting. I mean, yeah, the Cahokia almost seems sort of the Mesoamerican sort of model, whereas to me, Hopewell, it's almost a bit Neolithic. I mean, what do you think of that? Because it's sort of I think we've we've spoken about that. We I mentioned this before that um the Newark earthwork is very similar in size to a brief stone circle in the UK.

[00:32:53]>> During the development of our world heritage nomination, we've had conversations and had visits from Tim Darville and and Lionel Sims and Yeah.

[00:33:02]And we sort of all see that like okay this is kind of the same thing. It's different manifestations of the same kind of thing. People sort of on the on the cusp of agriculture are you know seeing these connections and making ceremonial places that are you know defined by cosmic rhythms and and they're going in different directions but they're kind of parallel in many ways.

[00:33:26]>> Yeah. And even within the Americas as well. I recently saw the uh there's a Brazilian state called Acre and within there's a bunch of earthworks that have been discovered there by uh farmers. Um I think deforestation unfortunately is what led to that discovery partly and they've liar been done on them. Have you seen about this?

[00:33:45]>> My yes, those are crazy. I mean, if you plucked one of those and put it in Ohio, everybody would say it was Hopewell, but it does seem to be I mean, the different they don't have anything quite as big as the Hopewell Earthworks, but it seems like they are really going in a parallel direction with what was going on in Hope. And I think we're all all of us are just anxious to learn more about what people were doing there. So, more excavations, not just related to the the the earthworks, but what are the people doing there? What are their villages like? What are their communities like?

[00:34:18]>> Yeah, the Amazon are very interesting.

[00:34:21]There's a lot going on there, isn't there? Lots going on in the Amazon.

[00:34:24]>> Um because again, they are sort of they're gardeners, aren't they? They're sort of they're doing horiculture and it's not quite full-on agriculture yet, but it's going towards that kind of thing.

[00:34:33]>> Yeah, that's my impression. That's certainly the case with the Hopwell, but that's that's my impression for the the South American groups as well, but I know so so much less about that.

[00:34:41]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another thing I was going to ask you about as well is another thing that you find sort of all over the Americas, as far as I'm aware, is is uh these sort of like ceremonial walkways and roadways. Um, and there's the Hopewell Great Road. I don't know if you can talk about that a little bit.

[00:34:59]>> Sure. The the Great Hopewell Road is a set of parallel walls that comes off one of the southern gateways of the octagon and assumes a perfectly straight line that I think goes 60 miles and connects the earthworks at Newark with those in Chilikothy. Um it has a sort of a checkered history because the earliest map uh is Caleb Atwater's 1820 map and he suggests just on the basis of talking to people who say, "Oh yeah, I saw these walls through the forest, you know, 12 miles south." He thinks they went 30 miles and connected with a river down there. And he's not traced it. He's just going on the basis of evidence. That's 1820.

[00:35:46]Efim Squire and Edwin Davis do their ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley which is actually the first publication of the Smithsonian Institution.

[00:35:55]They they recognize they acknowledge Atwater as a pioneer in this work. Um but they never refer to his claim that the walls might go 15 20 miles south.

[00:36:07]They just have the the m the walls going squiggly due south. And the only reference is on the map it says parallels two and a half miles long. So if you follow those walls for two and a half miles you come to Ramp Creek. So they just assumed that's where it ended.

[00:36:23]And most of us figured that Caleb at water was kind of crazy. And that his idea that that went farther was was nuts because Squire and Davis these Smithsonian scientists said it stopped at the at the river and many of the parallel walls that come out of hope stop at river. So, you know, sure that's those that the idea that that went further further was crazy.

[00:36:46]But then I found an unpublished manuscript in the archives of the American Antiquarian Society done by two brothers, James Salisbury and uh Charles Salisbury and they were residents of Newark. James was a doctor that he goes on to invent Salisbury steak by the way.

[00:37:03]Um they they followed those wool to Ramp Creek, crossed Ramp Creek, found that they continued in their paper they say they followed them for six miles through tangled swamps and over hills still keeping their undeviating course and they said they were still going. So like why don't they keep following them? Um it's crazy. And when I read that >> so they so they gave up. They didn't keep following them, >> right? They just said we're tired. It's time for lunch. if we're going to go back.

[00:37:34]But in fact, research in America didn't really become a thing until quite a bit later. So, it's kind of remarkable that they invested so much. Even like the roads, the ancestral PBLO and roads in Choco Canyon, they were noted by people early on like the Salisberries, but mostly people were focused on PBlo Bonito and and the the big monuments at the center. They didn't care so much about the roads. That becomes important later. And so the Great Hopewell Road, I mean, has most of it been lost now, unfortunately, in development?

[00:38:06]>> Yes, but some of it's being recovered now with with liar. We There's a guy named Jamie Davis with the High Department of Transportation that's used LiDAR and has found traces of it as much as eight miles south of the octagon. Um, but it's on a perfectly straight line that's pointing to the center of Chilikathy.

[00:38:26]And that line happens to be at right angles to the sunset on the summer solstice. The alignment of that.

[00:38:34]>> Wow. Just just another just another thing to blow your mind.

[00:38:38]Absolutely amazing.

[00:38:39]>> There's so many layers. Yeah.

[00:38:42]>> Yeah. There there really are. So just to get the geography right. So we have basically this sort of cluster of Hopewell sites in the Chilikothy Valley.

[00:38:51]>> Yeah.

[00:38:52]>> And then Newark Earthworks is 60 miles north.

[00:38:55]>> Yeah. sort of to the northnortheast.

[00:38:57]>> Yeah.

[00:38:58]>> And there's all there's like >> And do we know anything about I mean is that where people were living in the in between >> possibly. I mean because these people are scattered off in these little communities. The one of the things about Newark to get this geography because all the hope ceremonial earthworks and UNESCO nomination they're either clustered in Chilikathy further to the west is is is uh the Fort Ancient and then way to the north is the Newark earthworks. And the Newark earthworks are the northernmost of any of the big Hopewell earthworks. So it's really weird. It's really, you know, this is like the Hopewell core and then there's this other thing >> that I think is like the grand synthesis of Hopewell astronomy and geometry and archaeology all created into one composition sort of up there by itself.

[00:39:46]It's not exactly by itself though because it's only 9 miles away from the Flint Ridge Flint quaries. Flint Ridge Flint is this beautiful multicolored flint that becomes the signature flint really of the Hopewell culture. It's the their favorite flint more than any others. And so that's kind of a a connection that that maybe the Newark earthworks were projected there to be get more access to that flint. I'm not I don't know about that, but it's no coincidence that those are close together.

[00:40:19]>> Interesting. Interesting. And the Newark earthworks, they are later than the than the uh Chilikothy earthworks, >> I think. So, but many of the Chilik Chilikothy earthworks and like the Ford earthworks have lots of radiocarbon dates. We've only got a tiny handful, three or four or five radiocarbon dates for Newark.

[00:40:39]>> They tend to focus more on like AD 300.

[00:40:43]>> So, yes, I think Newark is later. I think all this geometry and astronomy is developed in Chilikathy and some Michelangelo or Im Hoteep takes all that knowledge goes up to Newark and puts it all together in this singular composition. So we've got the circle and square that's kind of like Hopton which was a circle and a square. We've got the circle and octagon at Newark which is like High Bank Works, a circle and octagon. We've got a big oval that's filled with burial mounds, which is similar to Mound City, which was a square with rounded corners filled with burial mounds. So, it's as if somebody said, "We'll take these components, which are like the main components, and we'll go up and make one complete composition."

[00:41:31]And it's a it's it's some people have said it looks like a drawing you'd make on a napkin, but it but it's really not because like the distance from the center of the circle that's connected to the octagon to the center of the great circle is exactly six diameters of the observatory circle.

[00:41:49]And the distance from the center of the octagon to the center of the square is also exactly six diameters of the observatory circle.

[00:41:58]So it's it's somebody conceived of it as a design and and laid it out on the landscape in that way incorporating all these different components all of which comes from the knowledge that was put together in the Chilikathy region.

[00:42:16]>> So it's this culmination of everything that's been going on for a few hundred years and it comes together at Newark.

[00:42:23]Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting and I think it's kind of like a monumental the equivalent of the aron large hadron collider or something where cosmic forces are all being marshaled there for to do good things.

[00:42:35]>> Yeah, the climate was quite good. I think in that time it was a little bit warmer than it is today. Is that right?

[00:42:41]Do we do we know this?

[00:42:43]>> Um I I I think that's right. It was it was a pretty stable climate. it was uh there's no evidence that climate change in terms of droughts and things had any impact on them. It doesn't that's not what seemed doesn't seem to be what ended the civilization either. It all it was a it's a pretty nice period for the for the whole time and and it copel rises and falls all in that space of time without any particular there's no environmental driver no environmental crisis at the end.

[00:43:14]So yeah, thing things are good. Things are good for the these people it seems.

[00:43:18]Do I mean what are the main kind of differences between the Hopewell and the Adena who came before? Is there a connection between the two? Do we think that the Hopewell took over the Adena or are they the same people? Is there a way of knowing?

[00:43:31]>> I absolutely think they're the same people. I mean some of the differences are I mean they live in the same kinds of communities. They they all have circular earthworks that are their their churches. uh the Adena continues something that starts even in the archaic period of acquiring copper from the Great Lakes and shells from the Gulf of Mexico. Their interaction sphere isn't as huge as the Hopewell becomes, but it's the beginnings of it. Um the for a long time the Aden were thought to be a different people because their head shape was different, but we know now it was because of cranial deformation. And it wasn't sort of intentional cranial modification or or different biologies.

[00:44:13]It was just their babies were being strapped to cradle boards which kind of made this this artificial deformation of the skull. The hope don't exhibit so much of that. But early archaeologists said, "Oh, look, they're different head shapes, so they must be different people." They're not different people.

[00:44:27]They just have their practices change a little bit. And then with with Hopewell, they just explode. And and the Dena doesn't stop. It continues in some places in Ohio and Kentucky right alongside Hopewell for at least a long time. Um sort of like uh uh in Ohio we have Amish people that that farmed in like an 18th century 19th century fashion with wagons and things. That's the same sort of thing. These conservative Adena people in in like southeastern Ohio continued to live their way of life parallel to what their cousins were doing in the Sciota Valley.

[00:45:05]And they carried on with the cranial um modification as well.

[00:45:09]>> Yeah, I suppose. I I've never researched the the Adena to that extent, but yeah, I would assume that most of their cultural practices stayed the same.

[00:45:17]>> Really interesting. Okay. So, we have the the Adena begin roughly when >> like about 800 BC or 800 >> 800 BC. Yeah. And then they they flow into the Hope. Well, soon we'll talk about the end, but I've got a couple of questions just before the uh the decline of the Hopewell. Yeah. Okay. So, I was going to ask some questions about Hopewell art as well. So, essentially, we have these burial mounds. I read that there was one that was just essentially full of these uh effigy pipes. Some of them are in the British Museum today, so I've seen them and they're really interesting, I guess. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about um what would be found in the in the Hopewell mounds?

[00:45:59]Yeah, >> I suppose. Are these just elite items or are they for everybody?

[00:46:05]>> It depends on the objects, I think, because I think all these objects have their own history. And the pipes you mentioned are a really interesting example >> because there are actually two sites where a large deposit of of dozens and dozens of these animal effage pipes were found broken and buried in a mound. So, the ones in the British Museum were from Mound City. Um the Tramper Mound down in southeastern southwestern Ohio um had us they built at about the same time had a similar cache of artifacts and there's a art historian Johanna Minich examined both of those collections in detail and what's fascinating she thinks she's identified sort of master craftsman or crafts women we don't know the gender um that whose art is represented in both of the deposits. So, indigenous people throughout there were like relying on some of the same artists to create these pipes that were then deposited separately. And I think she's got like four different masters identified. And the work of all four is present in those two disperate caches.

[00:47:16]And those seem they're very small pipes with very small holes. Only a small amount of this tobacco would have been in them. Um some of the pipes are kind of idiosyncratic. There's there represents like all the animals practically in in the environment and I don't know if those were the particular spirit animals for a shaman or something like a shaman and they were invoking that they're as they're going into the trance they're staring into the eyes of their spirit animal. That's certainly the impression you get from looking at these pipes. But >> this is tobacco that's in the pipes.

[00:47:49]>> Yeah. It's it's raw native tobacco which is uh capable of inducing transances. I mean, it's it's very potent. And so, it looks like in these early hope sites, you have these shamans going into transances and doing things. But at Mound City and at Temper, at some point, all of these people get together, turn their pipes in, they're smashed and broken and burned and buried in a mound.

[00:48:16]And then it seems like you get what we've referred to perhaps wrongly but as a priesthood that develops that seems to take precedence over those more shamanistic seeming practices and then those people are wearing regalia like copper cutouts and micica cutouts of claws and hands and things like that.

[00:48:36]Um, so it seems like there is a kind of a cultural shift from maybe more shamanic religious practices that might be characteristic of Adena and early Hopewell to something very different that that that we see. And there we have that regalia that I talked about earlier that includes the obsidian from the Rocky Mountains and shells from the Gulf of Mexico and copper from southern Canada in really large quantities and they get buried often with people aserary objects. But often you just get a big massive deposits of ceremonial regalia buried burned and buried by itself as if they conducted some huge ritual and then all of the regalia that was used in that ritual was all decommissioned and offered up to the gods, the spirits, whatever and buried in a mound.

[00:49:26]>> How interesting. Do we have any uh radiocarbon dates for the deposition of the effigy pipes at Mound City?

[00:49:33]>> Yes. Um, Mound City and Ter are among the earliest of the Hopewell sites, as well as Hopton, which is right across the river from Mound City. So, those are really right at the beginning. Um, Newark, as I mentioned, is is sort of in the middle with those like AD 300 or so dates. Um, we do have dates for lots of the sites and we do get a sense of that.

[00:49:55]But we obviously for Newark especially, we need much more radiocarbon dating to get a real good understanding about the chronology how these things were when they were built and if they were built all at once or built over a interlude.

[00:50:09]>> Yeah, that deposition of all of those items. That's interesting. That's a that's an event there. Something has something big has happened. A big shift, a big cultural shift. I mean, another question that I had was how did they organize their societies? I mean, how much do we know about we we're not talking about kings, we're talking about potentially priests, but maybe not. But generally, these are small bands. Do we know what size the bands would be?

[00:50:35]Um the the the communities that we found are more like homesteads. A couple of families living together, you know, in a couple of houses with a garden, you know, and then if if the soils become depleted, they just pick up sticks and move to a different place, maybe not so far away. Um but then there's obviously social connections between a lot of communities and they'll get together for >> sort of the small religious services of of these groups. But then they have an even bigger group that which is whatever they conceived of as Hopewell. That's obviously a European imposed name. But something very much like that sort of defines this continent spanning almost continent spanning culture um with all the the trapping the ritual trappings that go along with it. Um and those people come together to make even this this huger community, a kind of a giant religious community that might be analogous to Catholicism or something because that's a religion that's show has different manifestations all over the place. You know, a Catholic church in Guatemala is different from a cath catholic church in in Italy. Um but they all have some commonalities and I think that's what we're seeing with when we look at in Missouri and Hope in Florida um and things like that. There's it's it's the core some of the same iconography, some of the same symbolism, same core beliefs, but things get done differently a little bit in some different places.

[00:52:04]>> Interesting. Yeah, because another thing that I've looked at is you we've got the Ohio Hopewell. That's mostly what we're talking about today. But there are also there's this whole, you know, almost taking up it's the the entire sort of um east of the United States and there's all these different subcultures of archaeological uh groups and they're all sort of Hopewellian.

[00:52:24]>> Yeah. I mean there's there's Kansas City, Missouri Hopewell, there's Florida Hopewell. the the Fort Center site in Florida. It's it's a circular ditch, not an earthwork, but that ditch is 1,200 ft in diameter, which is the same as Newark's great circle. So, some of the geometry is there. Probably some of the astronomy is there, but it's it's not built as an earthwork. It's built as a big circular ditch. So, they're doing some things differently, but they're incorporating the important elements that that are important to that community. M it's like somebody's visited uh the Chilikopy Valley and seen the things there, maybe taken part and then took it back home.

[00:53:02]>> Yeah. And then they sort of built it on their own cultural foundation. So it goes off in a little bit different direction, but it has some of the same commonalities.

[00:53:10]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting. The more I learn about history and archaeology, the more I realize that religion is such a prime mover of people. It's it's all over the world. Religion is uh how things get going often. this sort of communal coming together of people with this with like a shared idea of the world.

[00:53:29]>> Yeah. So I suppose we're we're coming to the end of the hope well now unfortunately what happens what happens at the end >> nobody really knows and I don't think any you know 10 archaeologists agree but if you look at the way Hopewell lived and then jump to the next period which is the late woodland period and then that's followed by the late pre-cont if you look at what's going on in those two different cultures um my idea I mean, hop these scattered communities, they're all cooperating. There is no evidence, zero evidence for warfare. No burials we've ever identified in Hopewell society have bashed in skulls or spear points stuck in them or broken armbbones from a perry fracture or anything like that. None. There's no evidence. There's evidence for it before Hopewell and there's more abundant evidence for it after. So hopeull peaceful society, egalitarian society, everybody's working together for a common purpose, living in scattered communities, growing crops, hunting, fishing, and gathering, but periodically all coming together for this these communal events.

[00:54:44]After Hopewell, people are living in larger villages with walls around them. People buried in the cemeteries sometimes often have parraractures, spears or arrowheads in this case stuck in their ribs, bashed in heads. So one of the things that seems to me a plausible inference from those facts is that hope was very successful for this time period, but perhaps they were victims of their own success.

[00:55:12]population grew and and these little tiny communities that were sort of living in cooperation, suddenly there's more of them and and if a hunting gathering way of life, for example, depends upon having vast amounts of land. you know, your village, you know, you're hunting out all the deer, your soils are becoming depleted, you move to the next valley and maybe you have a 50, 100 year cycle of of movements as you move your community from one place to another to take advantage of, you know, the replenished game in areas. Well, what happens if somebody builds another village in the valley that you were planning to go to next? So, it's like, oh, suddenly I can't sort of go there. I have to deal with this uh depleted deer and I so maybe I can't get the deer I want so I have to eat something else and that sort of that sort of leads to competition and and sort of you get too many people living in a smaller area I think that would inevitably lead to conflict and everything the hope well did was based on cooperation.

[00:56:16]So once you push over that first domino of conflict, then people like have to combine their communities for defense.

[00:56:23]If somebody's being obstreporous and sort of trying to take other land, then those communities get larger and larger and they build walls around them and there's evidence of of fighting. So that's kind of one scenario that I've offered for for why hopeall collapses.

[00:56:43]And and just as with dominoes, you know, once you push that one the domino, there's like a chain reaction and and it happens really fast. Um it also just may be that that hope couldn't sustain all that earthwork building and people get fed up and saying, >> I'm tired of, you know, spending all my summers building earthworks and and I got other things to be doing. And so maybe there was just a general being fed up with, you know, sort of like with the Apollo program, Ray Hively, the the astronomer part of that >> and he talks about that as being something like the Hopewell Achievement with all these people working together for this amazing thing. But once it happens, once you get the moon landing, suddenly the public's not interested anymore.

[00:57:27]>> It happened, you know, and those there were those other landings that followed.

[00:57:31]>> Yeah.

[00:57:32]>> And so maybe the hope well had that kind of thing. It's like, well, we did that, you know, we had the big world renewal ceremony, you know, and why do we have to build more earthworks?

[00:57:42]>> So, so that may be partly involved, too.

[00:57:44]>> Just to briefly go back to the earthworks.

[00:57:46]>> Yeah.

[00:57:46]>> In terms of how long it took to make these things, are they singular events or are they taking place over many years?

[00:57:53]>> It depends on the site, um, Ford Ancient took hundreds of years. They built one part, then built another part, and then built another part. And we've got lots of radiocarbon dates to demonstrate that. I've argued that the Newark Earthworks was built all at once, like within 10 years, because of its coherent design, and because with the kinds of societies that were involved, it had to be sort of like the designer with his or her influence and management to ensure that it was completed according to his design or her design.

[00:58:26]>> Um, so but I don't have the radiocarbon dates to support that. uh we have almost no radiocarbonates because so much of the site is gone. But I've inferred that from all the intricacy of the design and how it's like a singular design that was maintained over the course of it. So it's possible it took longer. We just don't know. But it's probably different for different sites, but uh I know the National Park Service, they think like the Hopton earthworks. Um there's evidence that the Hopton Circle was built in two episodes, so maybe in two seasons. So the great circle probably also could have been built in something like that span of time. And in terms of being like two layers, there's probably evidence for that there too. So just the great circle, two seasons, maybe two or three seasons for the circle and octagon, another season maybe for the square and maybe a couple more seasons for the circle and octagon. So again, you could you could do it. They could have done it in a relatively short period of time, >> but because of the lack of study, it's we don't know how long it took. Go ahead.

[00:59:32]>> Just particularly if you're not all fighting each other, you could you can achieve a lot.

[00:59:37]>> Exactly.

[00:59:38]>> And then when they're not building these things anymore, the communal sort of community coming together to achieve a greater good has gone away. So it's Yeah. It's kind of a sad end in a way.

[00:59:48]Um and then we have the is it the late woodland culture that comes after?

[00:59:51]>> Yeah. That they're living in larger communities. They start growing corn.

[00:59:56]Corn comes in about 900 CE.

[00:59:59]>> And >> interesting. So the comm the communities actually grow then when they're not at these religious sites.

[01:00:05]>> Well, yeah, probably. But but the thing about corn, once you get that, >> the only advantage of corn, >> it's not it's not less nutritious than a lot of these other foods are getting, but you can feed more people per acre with corn than with any of the other crops.

[01:00:21]>> Yeah. So corn comes in, warfare comes back, and then eventually the fort ancient culture comes in. Right. That's at Fort Ancient.

[01:00:30]>> Yeah.

[01:00:31]>> And then there's a bit more movement of uh indigenous peoples, and then the Europeans arrive.

[01:00:35]>> Yeah. and and they ruin everything.

[01:00:39]>> I suppose just to finish our our conversation, we could talk Yeah. a little bit on that um on the sheer destruction that has been wrought in the last 200 years, but I mean only in the last sort of 50 years, I think a lot of destruction has happened. Yeah. Let's let's talk about that a little bit.

[01:00:56]>> Yeah. And and I I'm just going on what I've read and and what has been shared with me by indigenous peoples, but but like in late fort ancient culture villages, you start getting European trade beads showing up. It doesn't mean Europeans are there. It means tribes, intermediate tribes that got European trade goods are trading them on. So, but already with that material culture is coming the infectious diseases introduced by Europeans. So it's likely that many of these fort ancient villages were decimated or more than decimated by European diseases because they interacted with other indigenous people who brought the diseases all unknowingly with them with the trade goods. I mean, and we know this this happens like in in in Florida with Dodto comes through and then the next people that go through find abandoned villages and dead people and it's it's just a devastated landscape because everybody's dying from diseases that they brought. But the the Europeans then really don't really know what's going on. So diseases sweep through, then Europeans come through like locusts, pushing people out of their territories, fighting them, killing them if they have to, or just displacing them. Um, and then they make treaties, you know, but treaties at at gunpoint. Seed this land and we'll give you wonderful land out in Oklahoma or Kansas. And then they end up in a smaller plot of land than they were promised. And there's these all these different tribes have the the Trails of Tears stories where they start with 600 people and end up with 50 people that survive the trip because they're not given food. They're not given wagons and horses. They're just forced to walk.

[01:02:37]sometimes in the winter. And then you've get the the the schools that are established to try to make the Indians into civilized people and, you know, systematically destroy their their culture. Um, but so many of the tribes had such resilience that they found ways to subvert that and maintain some of their culture. Other tribes lost a lot.

[01:03:00]So yeah, our our sort of beneficent efforts to to civilize the American Indians were just tragic and and and horrible things to do to these indigenous cultures and and have resulted in I think a lot of ways that make it impossible to make some of these connections that we'd like to make sort of and well and one of the extraordinary things about this is uh even though these indigenous cultures have endured so much. Um, a a colleague of mine, actually my boss, Jen Alman, because of some work I did with uh, Chief Ben Barnes, chief of the Shaun-e tribe.

[01:03:39]There are three different Shaun-e tribes, and Chief Glenna Wallace is chief of the Eastern Shaune. Ben is is chief of the Shaun-e tribe. Um, she says these people often don't know what they know because we did we've gone out to Oklahoma many times on consultation trips and at first uh Chief Barnes says he didn't like me very much because I'm sort of this arrogant archaeologist and and >> but there was a a moment it was it was a a consultation we were doing at the Eastern Shy Cultural Center and we're in the museum. This is a lunch break and and the the woman that was like in charge of the exhibit was showing me the exhibit and we're at the case uh of of showing the Shauny drum and it's a water drum and it's that how it's oh it's all attached by these other things that I'll talk about in a second. We're there talking. Chief Barnes walks by and he starts joining in the conversation and he starts telling me how in his own ceremonial practices he has a water drum that's based on sort of like a metal kettle and they stretch this leather hide on it and he said we attach the hide to the water drum by first we go to this very special place and get these perfectly round black pebbles and then we use those to wrap around the edges and tie them off and then we tie them all together and that's how it keeps the the drum head on the drum and I'm looking at him like perfectly round black stones. I said when the cyp earthworks hope earthworks were excavated they found five perfectly round black stones that had engravings on them. And I said do you have do you ever engrave these stones? and he said no. But it became a conversation that over a couple of years we ended up turning into an academic paper because the archaeologist in the 1930s that excavated those black stones, he said, "Oh, those are marbles." You know, where kids were playing marbles back then, even though there was no evidence of that game before Europeans got here. But so Chief Barnes and I wrote this paper saying they're not marvels. They're drumst. They're probably all that's left of the oldest drum we know of in in Eastern North America if we're right.

[01:05:49]And it's it was it's such an amazing honor to be co-authoring a scientific paper with a Shauny chief where he gets to say amazing, >> you know, and it couldn't have happened.

[01:06:00]It it was like serendipity. I mean, I couldn't have gone to him and said, "Say here's some things. What do you think about these the these hopeal artifacts?

[01:06:07]It just happened to be this confluence where we're there talking about something and things just came together.

[01:06:15]And I think that's what Jen met people that they don't know what they know, but in the right context it can come together. I'm sorry I interrupted you.

[01:06:23]>> No, no, I was just going to say because I mean he's he's discovering at the same time as you're discovering, I suppose.

[01:06:28]He's uh he's finding out, you know, about his own his own people, his own ancestors, which is brilliant.

[01:06:33]>> Yeah. Yeah. And he he said that's what really most impressed him most was that the I mean the ceremonial practices that he was doing that like he doesn't know their hope well ceremonial practices are even older. He just knows it's what like his grandfather taught him or something you know.

[01:06:48]>> Yeah. But absolutely >> it you can trace it back though.

[01:06:52]>> Super interesting. I mean, I was going to sort of talk about DNA, but it's the it's um it's this subject where it's in the West, we're all desperate to look at the DNA of our ancestors, but it's we live in a different cultural framework from the uh indigenous people, and looking at the DNA is is not really a thing that's done, right?

[01:07:12]>> Well, it is. Chief Wallace talked about um when the tribes are involved in research. For example, there was controversy over uh Blue Jacket, a historic Shaunie Chief who Sim said that, "Oh, he was so smart, he must have been half white or he must maybe he was white." And there are direct ancestors of Blue Jacket. And in an attempt to sort of quash that sort of racist trope, the ancestors agreed to have their DNA tested. And there were descendants of the von swear engines or something who were supposed to be the ancestor of blue jacket and they tested them and there was no connection. So they're able to sort of debunk that myth with DNA. But that was a case that benefits the tribe.

[01:07:57]They're sort of eliminating the stupid racist trope of their leader. He was only their leader because he was half white, which is why he was so smart.

[01:08:06]>> It's Yeah, it's wild, isn't it? It's the same thing all over the world. I mean, people used to try and say that the uh the pharaohs were were white, you know, in the 1800s and early 1900s.

[01:08:15]>> Brown people can't be smart.

[01:08:17]>> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, do we know who is descended from the Hope?

[01:08:22]Well, I mean, is that Can we ever find that out?

[01:08:26]>> Well, I think it's pretty simple. I mean, I think it's like all the tribes in the Eastern Woodland, you know, all the people in that interaction sphere came together. I mean among the things that they probably did there in addition to worshiping were since they lived in these small scattered communities they were finding marriage partners you know for their kids or something >> and so I think you know all those DNAs would be interwoven and and even if and I suspect there were >> maybe the descendants of a few core tribes you know in Ohio like like maybe and I'm just I'm not guessing but but informed speculation the Shaune the Miami the and that maybe they're all here or their ancestors are all here, but all these other tribes are coming in too and they need their help to build the earthworks and to perform the ceremonies and many of them go home, but many of them will stay and marry somebody in the community. So, no single tribe could have done what the Hopewell did. So, we're never going to be able to say the Shaunie built them or the Miami built them. It's all of them.

[01:09:35]>> It's everybody.

[01:09:36]>> Yeah.

[01:09:36]>> Yeah.

[01:09:37]>> Amazing. Well, it's great to know that.

[01:09:39]I mean, the Hope Well, they're still going really. I mean, they're still they're still among us against all the odds. Well, I suppose on that note, unless you have anything else you want to add, I think we can we can probably end it there. Thanks for talking to me.

[01:09:50]That was an absolutely incredible conversation. Uh, I've I've learned a lot.

[01:09:55]>> Well, it's it's been a pleasure. really really great talking dear.