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Episode #107 America's Earthworks: Common Measure - Uncommon Designs / The Lost Prehistoric Civilization

2024/3/9

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This is Cosmographia, the Randall Carlson podcast. And welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This is Cosmographia, the Randall Carlson podcast, episode 107. And we have been discussing the mound complexes in North America. And I think that's we're going to continue on that today. Right, Randall? Well, that sounds like a really good idea. That's the plan. I had this plan written out, planned out.

Planned out. You're going to follow the plan. Yep. Well, I'm glad somebody's handling that because I had no idea. No, I'm actually prepared to...

Pick up kind of where we left off. We were just getting into some interesting stuff when the clock ran out. So I thought we would continue along those lines. Yep. We had just a note in passing. Last week, we discussed some of the mounds and earthworks in Ohio. Yes. I saw a news story this past week. They've been those sites in Ohio have been placed on the World Heritage List. Uh-huh.

Overdue. And does that mean we will be denied access then from this point on to all of the... Big fences are going up. The big fences are going up. The gates are getting locked. Well, what does that actually mean? I think it gives them some degree of protection, but mostly it's just a designation to a lot of tourists. Well, yeah. It's probably a good thing. But yeah, I mean...

As you start getting into it and you begin to appreciate the scale of the phenomena, it's quite mind-boggling. And it really does, to me anyway, demand a rewrite of history in the Western Hemisphere for sure. And I mean, all the stuff that has been disclosed in South America,

In the rainforest, hiding under the rainforest, there's monumental earthworks that are very much like the ones we're looking at here. Yeah, those LIDAR discoveries are amazing, going down through the jungle canopy. They are. So, yeah, well, we were looking at the Attawa Mounds, I think, and then we started talking about Scioto, Diodo, Scioto.

Need to learn how to pronounce these words properly. I think we'll dive right into doing a screen share. Yeah, South Central Ohio. Mm-hmm. Looked at how some of them related to the margin of the ice sheet. Yep. Okay. We did that. And in this one, we were looking at, this is at the Etowah. You can see that right over here in the right is the Etowah River. It's a very beautiful and quite peaceful setting. Yeah.

Anyways, there's Bradley standing on the center of Mount C, looking to the west, and the hills, come on, you can't quite make it out here, but there's a little saddle right there in the skyline right behind Bradley. And that pretty much marks the winter solstice sunrise. Was that it? Yes, I believe that was it.

And so I'm standing on the center of Mound B, and over to our left is Mound A, and all of this out here was the plaza. And many of these mound complexes, that was one of the elements. Do you remember the elements we went through that are the compositional elements of the mound complexes? There were truncated pyramids, right? There were long barrows. What are long barrows?

Well, they're just elongated mounds, and they can be serpentine, but not necessarily. They can be perfectly straight. Then there you're looking down at Mound B with the Etowah River flowing peacefully there in the background. This is a very nice place in the spring and the fall. And we went back to here from this aerial view where you can see the remnant of the ancient canal that wrapped around.

And I still wonder what the function of the canal was. I speculated, and it's pretty well-reasoned speculation. I'm not the only one that speculated, of course, that the earth to create the mound structures themselves is what was excavated to create the moat. And so it looked like what they were doing was bringing water in from the river to fill the moat. And then we saw a picture, I believe, that was...

We already saw this, right? The passageway on a much grander scale. So this is giving you a sense of the scale of the Etowah Mound. This is the Grand Mound or the Great Mound. And it's a big pile of dirt. And I've seen the calculations on it. Let me see. Were we on a trip together when we went? No, we weren't. When we went on the tour of Poverty Point with... Do you remember his name, Brad? The ranger that took us out and we spent...

A couple hours out? No, I don't. Eric? No, I have his business card. Yeah, I was going to say Mark, so maybe there's a C in there or a K in there. An R and a K. Yeah, I think I might have a business card as well. We're going to cut up, we're going to get up, and we're going to be talking about that here before the evening's over. But so this is now the question, and you can actually kind of see here, notice this profile. You'll see this same profile when we come up to the slides of Cahokia.

You see where you have kind of a flat top, and then it kind of comes down to this terrace or this shelf. You could almost picture, if you put a head here, you'd almost have the profile of the Sphinx. Can you see that? Of course, the trees are gone now. They've cleared the trees because I would imagine when this mound was in use, there were no trees growing on it. And that's an aerial view.

And here you can see the remnant of the moat. Let's see, it would have been right over here coming around. And then I believe, if I just back up here, well, we saw all those. Oh, and then compared, you know, to Silbury Hill and the Great Miamisburg Mound, just to show the comparisons between, you know, England and North America. And interestingly, as we'll find out, the...

The mounds themselves were not just heaped piles of earth, heaped up. That's important to keep in mind. They were reveted. You know what that means? R-E-V-E-T-T-E-D, reveted. So there was layers of packed earth material that followed the contour of the hill. So it wasn't just a pile. It was very carefully placed layers, and the layers, as we'll see, were distinctively different materials.

And so they had the same process going on at Silbury Hill as in the North American earthworks. So not only were they, you know, having a similar morphology, if you will, their construction had parallels. So, you know, throughout this entire process of looking at these, to me, the question that's raised is, well, are we looking at something here that, you know,

you know, evolved independent? I mean, did the earthworks in England evolve and the motive for those and the reason for them and the incentive to do them and all of that evolve independently of North America? Well, if they did, to me, it seems rather coincidental, perhaps. If not, then what is the story? Now, one of the differences is that there could be up to 2,000 years separating

a lot of the earthworks in North America from the ancient earthworks in Britain and the British Isles and even in northwestern Europe. However, as we're going to see when we look at Poverty Point and some of the others, they can go back as old as Old Kingdom of Egypt when some of the earlier examples of monumental earthworks were being constructed in North America.

And what was the one that's the one they dug on the college campus? That was like LSU. LSU. Yeah. There was a thousand. Yeah. Something like that. It was old. Yes. Very old. In fact, predated anything else. I mean, which went back literally to younger dry us. Yeah.

Yeah, were you on that trip? We met him. We went in and had the tour. He took us into his office. No, I guess you guys weren't there. We weren't there for that one. No, that was when we were coming. It was the Rogan with George. Yeah, we were out there with George Howard and coming back. That's right. Okay, so what's up on the screen now is the... This is Okmulgee. And...

You can see so many of them, the larger ones will have these ramps coming up, which is a very typical feature that you see in Mayan architecture. They have the flat top, again, which is characteristic of Mayan architecture, truncated pyramids.

This is the passage grave right over here. And look at this. This was probably a similar thing. A type of a canal was probably filled with water. It's the scar that was left over from excavations. So, you know... I think we did look at this last episode. Yeah, we did. We talked about this, yeah. We talked about the river here and the proximity to the water. So...

Just picking up kind of where we left off. Now let's keep moving on because we have, we did see this. Okay. And then we got to Scioto and we looked at some interesting examples from Squire and Davis's work. And this is where, you know, you really begin to get the magnitude of this phenomenon. What you look at this up here, 18 acres. Now,

This is a virtually perfect geometric circle. And then you have this interesting, it's almost like a flattened octagon, right? And then you have these almost, what would you say, like barrows? You have, like this looks smaller, but this is 300 feet in diameter. So this is a football field that can fit in here. So the scale of these things back when they all were still existent is pretty mind-boggling.

And there you can see what's left. It's basically a shadow, almost like a ghost figure. That's what's there. This was probably taken, yeah, okay, 1938. So from the time that Squire Davis did their survey, which would have been 1846, it says up here, to this 1938, so less than 100 years, it's been pretty much erased.

So what were you going to comment, Russ? The tragedy. It is. In the drawing, there's a bunch of filled-in circles on the inside of the flattened octagon. Are those little mounds? Those are little. Yeah, those are mounds. And they're not that little either. Very strange. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And then you have the apertures. Now, are those apertures just randomly placed? Or is there some system to the placement of apertures? And the axis. So you have an axis here.

If you draw from, let's say, the top of this mound across this mound, then you go through this aperture here, and then it looks like you're going to go through pretty damn close to the center of this circle. Now, that circle is 20 acres. I could do a quick calculation here. 20 acres would be... There was no evidence that any of these had any structures inside them or anything like that? No.

Has that even been looked at? It's a farm field now, so I mean, has anyone ever excavated in there to find out if there was other foundations? Well, okay, so the question would be if there was a burial, would the burial have been within the pre-existing, below the pre-existing surface of the ground, or would it have been within the mound itself? If it was in the mound itself, whatever was there is gone.

The question is then you might be raising is could there have been something else that was buried beneath the mound? Or, I mean, were there actual structures, you know, like wooden buildings or something in there? I don't know. Well, we know there were on top. Yes, there were timber structures on top of the truncated pyramids. Yes. And in fact, I think they read at the the.

Moundville in Alabama, I believe, if I remember right, they reconstructed. They reconstructed some. Yeah, they reconstructed. What about like standing stones or posts in the ground like Stonehenge style? Because you have this big circle mound and it seems like, you know, I mean, it's a farm field now. Did they think maybe they were just...

Well, pulled out because they thought they were just old rotten stumps. I don't know. Maybe they were just little potholes in the ground. Well, that's the case at they're like at this at going back to Etowah.

at Mound C, the one that I showed the picture Brad was standing on. Yeah. He was standing right in the center, and there actually is a depression that's pretty much in the center of the surface of that mound, which suggests to me that it probably did once hold some kind of a sighting pole, a foresight that could be sighted against the— so you would have had the foresight, which was the pole,

Then you would have had the back sight, which was the notch in the horizon. And then you would have had the sun beyond that. So you can picture that in a way. You had the pole. And most likely, you know, at some point, maybe there was some epoch in there where the sun would be poised. If you had a pole, the sun would be poised right on top of the pole. Okay, so let's see. Pi r squared is area.

So if I take the square root of that and divide by pi, okay, so yeah, so 300 feet. I was going to calculate the area. I mean, I'd like to know the diameter of a circle that encloses 20 acres. So if this is 250 feet in diameter, which it says right there, 250 feet in diameter, so that itself is a pretty big, impressive circular mound.

So then what's the diameter of this one? It's got to be one, two. It's got to be four times this. It's got to be over 1,000 feet. In fact, I was just going to say, but Brad beat me to it. But yeah, 1,080. 1,080 feet. So if that is a specifically significant number that they were going for, then that implies they're using the foot. Well, yeah. Yeah.

You're right. Times pi. That's what it would seem like. Okay, now define 43,560. Yeah. Okay, so you guys remember now, this is a number you should remember, which you guys probably remember, 43,560 square feet and an acre, right? I always remember that it's close to 43,200, but I never can remember the exact number.

Well, it is close, but it's a little bit more. Okay, let's keep moving on here. That's all I'm saying. I've called that the sacred acre, but I don't know if anybody ever used that. Oh, the sacred acre is 43,000. Acre is within the word sacred. Mm-hmm. Ah, duly noted. That was a good one, Brad. Dang, Brad. So now let's look at this one that's by the Scioto River.

And we have a circle that's not a perfect circle. Maybe for whatever its purpose was, it didn't need to be. Notice there's a cluster of apertures, means of ingress and egress. And this one is 28 acres. So it's bigger than the previous one. And I would believe this is gone now. Mount City, Ohio. Kyle, if you're...

Sitting there, you might try looking up Mount City, Ohio and see if there's anything left of it. And then we have this rounded square of 13 acres over here. And there's a lot of little mounds inside of it, but they're not that little, right? That does look more like a, you know, like a monument yard or a graveyard or something. This one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you got an enclosure and then a bunch of small mounds sort of scattered in there. Mm-hmm. And then this circle up here is 250 feet in diameter. Mound City, Ohio. We did... Hope well. Did we talk about that, about how the openings are pointing in...

The openings of the sort of wonky circle down there are pointing in specific directions, like the solstices or the equinoxes. Yeah, we were talking about how it might be. It might be, yeah. It could be. I mean, okay, so winter solstice, you know, maybe perhaps the top of the mound, which looks like it's pretty much the center, more or less. And it could have been a viewing point out through the apertures. And so this is in the southwest, so...

I would guess this one right here would come fairly close to the winter solstice sunset from this latitude. But we could easily figure that out. All I need to know is the latitude, and I could drop it into my astronomy software. And if it is a burial mound, that little mound in the very middle with that huge ring around it,

Seems like whoever was buried in there would have been very important. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And the fact that there were burials. And then, of course, we've talked about this. We got you got to distinguish between original burials and intrusive burials. But there's no the fact that they had people buried in particular people of importance does not contradict the possibility that they had burials.

Other uses. Other uses and other functions. And I mean, you know, the ancestor veneration was a big part of a lot of these people's cultures. And so having their ancestors there at the center of a sacred site where they did astronomy makes total sense. Makes total sense. They're connected to the sky and to the... Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. So 500 feet to the inch. Is that what it is? 500 feet to the inch, yeah. 500 feet to the inch. Okay. Yeah.

Now, this is interesting. The Hope didn't work, Ross County, Ohio. Diameter of the circle, no, that we, oh, we did see this last week, and I was going to correct this, and I didn't. Diameter of the circle is 1,050 feet. But the square, notice the area here is 20 acres. The area here is 20 acres. And so when you go back to this one, 20 acres.

So here you have a circle 20 acres, and here you have a circle 20 acres. Now, obviously, they're working from the same set of schematics here, and I don't know the dating on these, but I like this causeway. So this causeway, we saw that, didn't we?

We did. Yeah. Some of these, you know, we were looking at some of this stuff. We're doing some episodes right now on our show about megalithic structures and mounds in UK. And what's the name of it? Is it a cursus? Cersus? These long, narrow, enclosed. Yeah. Cersus, I think. Yeah. Some of this was reminding me of that. He's editing the slide right now. He's editing it. Yes. Right. Behind the scenes, folks. You got it.

Side of the square. Okay, I'm going to have to refigure the side of the square, but I won't do that now. Diameter of circle. Now, here's my question. Is that diameter inside diameter or outside diameter? Or to the middle of the mound, something. Well, let's look here. I think, what is this showing? It looks to me like this is showing inside diameter of 1,050 feet.

So that could put the outside diameter, perhaps if the walls are 15 feet wide at the base, then that puts the outer diameter at 1,080 feet, if that's the case. And again, we have this implication that they may have been using the foot. Really strange. It is. If they were intending to hit that, you know, that specific number.

So 20 acres, so I'm going to try something really quick. So 20 acres times 43,560 means 871,200 square feet to an acre. So if I take the square root of that, okay, 933. So somewhere in some research I did on the Holton work,

The side of the square was, I think that was it. It was listed 960 feet across. Because you actually can look, right? You can see that the diameter of the circle is going to be somewhat larger. If you drew tangent lines parallel, touching the circle, you would see that the circle's diameter is greater than the length of the square side. Got that?

So that's, I think, where the 960. I was looking at other sources, found the 960 was the side of the square, the distance across the square. And then I did a typo and put it into the circle as well, because it says right here it's 1,050. Ancient work in Liberty Township. Now check this one out. Side of the square. There we go. 1,080 feet.

So 1,080 squared, um, defined by 43,560. Yep. That's it. 27, a square 27 acres is going to be right at 1,080 feet on a side, which then makes the perimeter of the square 44,320 feet diameter of the large circle, 1,700 feet. Now that's pretty big. Okay. So that's,

5,280 feet in a mile, divide that by 1,700, and it means that you've got, yeah, this is over a third of a mile. I wonder how much they were rounding numbers. These drawings look very precise, but... Well, it's hard to say. Yeah. What were the tolerances of the surveyors back in the 1840s and 50s?

Well, I'll just say this, that the diameter of a circle with an area of 871,200, which would be 20 acres, is 1,053 feet. 1,053.21. Okay, so rounding it down from three feet. Yeah, and that's if they got the actual area correct. Yeah, right. Because they would have had to, they probably got the area from a,

A measurement of the diameter or a measurement of the perimeter or something. I don't know how they did it. But that look at that circle there, that large one. It's 40 acres. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, it is beautiful. It is. Yeah. How do you draw a 40 acre circle on the ground? Well, that's really difficult. Yeah.

Yeah, and notice also here there was, what is this? It says the low bottoms here. So you have this gully that's coming right up here. So was the gully, I presume, was already there when they did this? I'm guessing. I would assume so. I'm just saying, just think about this process. You know, it's 40 acres across.

40 acres area. I'm sorry. Yeah. 40 acres in area. And you want to make a nice, perfect curved circle. How do you lay it out so that people can start putting the dirt for the mound in the right place and have this nice curve? Yeah. How do you, Randall, how do you do that? How do you do it? They weren't using a chain. Yeah. Were they, I would think you'd have to be using a chain or a rope.

You know, I mean, the standard explanation is that they were using knotted ropes. Ropes are stretchy, especially that length of a rope. Yeah, that's going to be a long rope. Sure is. I mean, when you look at this. Like, how do you sweep an arc with a rope that long?

without it catching in the dirt and plants and grass or whatever in your way as you're trying to move. You need to clear this arc across. Yeah. That thing is... You have to clear all the trees or whatever is in there. Yeah. Well, there's a whole lot of site preparation it has to go on. Yeah. Yeah.

And that was the diameter of this one. 1790, it says. I think it says 1790. So I need to do some more. Yeah. So you got an 895 foot long rope. It's like got to be. You're going to need a rope that long would weigh considerable. Yeah. Yeah. You better be hoping it doesn't rain while you're doing it. Yeah. I think you would need to. I don't know what like lash.

long poles wooden poles together and then have a whole bunch of people all along it and one guy in the middle for the pivot sort of walk yeah like a pivot sprinkler yes like a pivot sprinkler very slowly walk it around and everybody you can have a lot of people carrying it and a guy at the end is running along drawing a line at the end of the guy at the end is running yes yeah running sprinting well yeah

Yeah, it's just the effort to create the rope. Right. To do it. I mean, this is an enormous undertaking. Yeah. Just by this was the only one. It would be an enormous, impressive undertaking. But the fact that they put this square in this circle next to each other and sort of kind of.

impinging upon each other so many times in these earthworks. I don't know. There's something about that to me that just... Is there a possibility the square or rectangular feature would be like a settlement area and then the large circular feature would be a corral or grazing area? I suppose. Well, no, not really. Because they don't appear that there were... If you've got habitations and you're going to have

You're going to have hearths. You're going to have garbage pits. And all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And there probably are. But I wonder if the midden, if the middens would date back to the beginning of the mound or perhaps, I don't know. There's so many unanswered questions. Uh-huh. Well, let's push on.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Valley with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. I'm pretty sure this is the one place we went to when we were kids. Yeah, we've been here when we were very young. Well, yeah. It's really well maintained. It is.

Was it Black Warrior River? Yes. And I think this one is on the 30th parallel, right? That seems about right. Because I remember when I saw it, I was... 33 degrees. Yeah, I was following that parallel around the world, looking at sites that were on it. Really? Okay. And you found that it was on the 30th parallel? I think somewhere there, yeah. It was either 30 or 33. I think it was 30. Uh-huh. Okay. I think Atlanta...

Pretty close to 33, and it's south of there. Yep. So they had a lot of these flattened pyramids at Moundville. And the big one, you know, is pretty impressive, as we'll see. Now, that pond is this pond right here. So this picture was taken, if you imagine that I'm standing right here at the head of this arrow, looking out along the direction of the arrow across the pond. That's what we're doing right here.

So that's the view out. And of course, again, notice the flatness that the whole area that's undoubtedly been prepared and leveled. Yeah. Just once. I would like to try that mowing job. Yeah. But yeah, that is the day we were there over the weekend. Apparently some some punks came in there and were.

Ah, doing spinnies. Doing spinnies, wheelies, cookies, whatever you want to call them. Classic punk pastime. They really look like pedestals or foundational platforms for, you know, like you could put a structure on there. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that was the case. I love the way the shadows play on that. It's kind of like this face sort of sunk down in the ground. It does look like it. It's like a...

Hidden Easter Island head. Yeah. What are you guys looking at? The front side of that big mound.

Oh, right here. Yeah, I got it. I see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the bridge of the nose. He's just peeking up out of the grass. Uh-huh. Right. Kill Roy. Well, so what you're saying then is you're speculating that perhaps there's a whole big figure that's buried. Yes. There is a giant Easter Island head down there. Okay. All right. So that's the big mound. So that would be looking at the complex here.

Where is that pond? It's interesting, too, that that mound is like at an angle to all the other mounds. They all seem to be fairly. Yeah, they're square with each other. And then that one's just pointing this one. I wonder what that axis is like. It's got to be significant. Well, yeah, it's easy enough to find out. So that's this mound right here. Yeah, that one.

And, yeah, here's trudging up to the top of the big mound, and they have built a structure up on the top. Wow. This is an interesting thing found on Walnut Block. This was found at that site. So is this Spider Woman? It looks like a turtle. Well. Spider to me. It does. I see the spider, yeah. Yeah. But, and then would this be the head of the spider, and this would be the tail of the spider? Or is it an ant? Mm-hmm.

There's like, there could be three body sections in there. I don't know. It looks like it. One, two, three. Yeah. And that's the head of the insect down there. Uh-huh. Right. You gave it a smiley face. A smiley face. Yeah. I mean, if it's a hope, is it supposed to be a Hopi complex? I don't know. I mean. No, no, it's not. This is, uh, this is in Alabama. Oh, right. Right. To my knowledge, it wasn't the Hopi there at the Moundville, Alabama. Yeah.

I just started thinking. However, you know, again, this whole issue of the transcontinental trade that seemed to be going on during some of these eras. Yes. Wow. Look at that. Yeah. Now, this is an impressive piece of work here. So they built a giant platform and then built platforms on top. Contagonal platform. Yeah. Yes.

And, of course, they would have had to level the site. Yeah. Which they did. They had to create a huge leveled site. And so there's the thickness of the platform. Oh, my God. Look at compared to the vehicle there. Yeah. So that's, what, 20 feet high maybe? At least. Yeah. That's some serious dozer work. Yeah. But considering that they were doing it with wicker baskets and antler picks, I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, well, it's one thing to say, well, okay, this is an acceptable hypothesis, but it really raises questions that to me just don't seem to have any answers within the conventional framework of what was going on. Yeah. How many people do you need to do that kind of project in a reasonable amount of time? Or are they saying, well, it took them hundreds and hundreds of years?

Well, we'll actually raise that question when we get to Poverty Point. Okay. So this is, yeah, on top of it. And that guy looks familiar. I'm not sure who. That is just some local, I guess. But, yeah, so you go back to look at this. Emerald Mound. This was looking at... I can't remember. It should have a survey of this to get the cardinal directions. But this is looking...

I think this is looking west, if memory serves me right. And then this is looking from one end to the other. So yeah, okay, so this is looking at the mound from the top of this mound to the far end, which I believe is the eastern end, if I remember properly. You can see the remnant of what was a mound there.

If you look back here at this, at this, do you have a mountain? Are the low border mounds still visible or are they no longer? I think they're only visible as sort of shadows. You can see how big it is. I mean, now when I go to and we look down, you can see, I mean, you're standing on top of the thing looking down. I mean, you're up there. This is like a.

you know, a 30 or 40 feet. It's got to be 40 feet. At least you're at the tops of the trees, it looks like there. Yeah, yeah. It's a massive undertaking. Yeah, and certainly, like, if this was excavated in part, they didn't. I mean, there could be anything underneath that enormous platform. Well, yeah, there could be. If they did excavations, it would have been just trenches into certain parts, right? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Or maybe even just into the top mounds and not into the platform itself. Right, right.

And then, of course, there's cahokia. I'd love to see some drill core, like some carbon dating from drill cores or something. I think, isn't that how they found out how old the LSU mounds were? Yeah, I mean, I think he found radiocarbon datable material that they were able to find either within or below. Yeah, I think they did some coring. They found some organic material and were able to date it.

I have his papers. I don't remember exactly. Well, sorry to change the subject. But doesn't that suggest that the mound building started way before these cultures? Yeah. Many of them could be very, very old. And Brad, you and I have been to Cahokia. And how tall is the main mound at Cahokia? Well, it's 90 feet.

Yeah, it's around that. Okay, so this is an artist's rendering of Cahokia. So there was, yeah, so they had a palisade around the thing that sequestered the plaza area and this collection of mounds. And then they had this other assortment of mounds outside the palisades. And then notice again, you've got the connection here with the flowing water.

which seems to have been obviously something that was critically important in deciding where you're locating these mound complexes. Is that strictly for pragmatic use? You want to have flowing water for irrigation, for drinking, or was there also a possible other role for the flowing water and the proximity to flowing water? That's, to me, an interesting question. And I'm just showing this as sort of a comparison example.

To like the step pyramid at Teotihuacan. Now that's a place we need to go, guys. Oh, yeah. Yes. I mean, it's close to us. Yeah, actually. It is. So it's a quick airline flight. But notice the ramp like I was talking about. You see it on the earth mounds. Yes. Yep. Very similar aspect. You know, and they don't know who built that place. Mm hmm. Right.

It looks like, I mean, kind of looks like they might be based on this one that's torn up, that they may just be earthen mounds that sort of have been bricked on the outside. Yeah, they've been. Well, is it possible that they started with earth mounds and then they veneered the outside? That's what I mean. Yeah. Just put blocks, you know, masonry on the outside of an earthen mound. That's what it looks like. It's a question I don't know the answer to. Just look at the one that's torn up in the left corner there.

Right here? Yeah. Yes. Well, need to get there. Again, they updated and built on a prior construction. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Could be, or it's just, you know, as their culture became more massive and wealthier or whatever, they had more time. They added stone to their earthen mounds. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I believe this probably held a, a Noman pole, I'm guessing. And this would have been a Plaza area and then probably held a pole right here. And then that pole would have, you know, cast shadows and acted as a sundial. Wow. And at different times of the year would illuminate different structures around here in different times of day. Well, do you remember we've been to, uh, uh, what is, uh, point, um,

Not Grand Point. Crown Point. Of course, that's a modern design, but they built that as a sundial. We were there together, weren't we, on some of our Washington trips? Yeah, that's what I thought. Overlooking Grand Coulee Dam. That's an impressive area right there, isn't it? Just the whole viewpoint. And then when you're standing there and you think about

what created that landscape and the whole phenomena and how nature, through these tremendous hydraulic catastrophes, created a configuration that was ideal for the largest poured concrete dam in North America to be right at that point where the edge of the glacier was.

Pretty much right there where the glacier lobe came down, crossed where the river now, where the Grand Coulee Dam is built. That was pretty much it. That was pretty much the margin of the lobe right there. The lobe that would have caused the flow that created Grand Coulee itself. Anyways, not to get off on that, but there's the, you can see how big that mound is.

That's Monk's Mound, which if I go back here, the big one here is Monk's Mound. This one. There's a story of how it got the name Monk's Mound. It escapes me at the moment. But as we zoom back, you can see how massive. And again, it kind of almost has that, you know, it's got this truncated top and then it's got this lower terrace, which almost if you added a head right up here would almost give you that kind of sphinx profile.

Look at this. Now, again, that's a big pile of dirt there. And this is on top. Now, the first thing I noticed from up top is that what it does is by going up there, you get a flat 360-degree view of the entire horizon. So what an optimum viewing platform for horizon astronomy.

So they had to have been. Mississippi River floodplain out there, right? It's not too far. You can see the city of St. Louis there to the west. See the arch and Mississippi River going through there. Arch. St. Louis. Let's see. Is it right here? No, that's north. You'd have to look to the left. Oh, okay. It's not in the scene here. Correct. Yeah, okay. You had me confused. Yeah, no. I said Mississippi River floodplain.

Now, here's some interesting research somebody could do. And I've done some preliminary stuff. When I go to this next slide here, it kind of gives you the idea. So let's see. Here's some commentary on this. This is the reassessing the history. Oh, no, we're getting into poverty point. So let's hold off until I get there. So anyways, this was I was suggesting that this could have been and probably was used as a viewing platform.

Because, of course, for horizon astronomy, you want to have as much as possible a flat surface. So I'm also guessing that there's quite a bit of erosion that has taken place on this surface, and it is not nearly as flat as it would have been, you know, in the days when it was actually being used. Okay, so...

Poverty point. Well, should we take a quick break before we get to poverty point? Let's take a quick break before we get to poverty. I think that's a great idea. All right. You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

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Whatever your stage, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com slash listen. All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cosmographia episode 107. Almost to the sacred number. I got no purpose anymore. I don't get to say the episode number. How come you don't introduce each other? You took his job. Actually, I took it first.

108 coming up. 108 coming up. All right. Poverty Point. Poverty Point. I think we've been there, what, three times now? Tell us the pyramids. And our last one, we were with Mark Brink, the site manager. What's his official title again? I think it's park manager. Park manager. Yeah. So he took us on a world heritage site. Yeah. It's just been designated as a world heritage site.

So we were down there. Well, that would have been on our same trip, right? We went through there with George. That's right. George Howard and Malcolm. So we went through there and got the tour from Mark Brink, park manager. He took us out. We were pretty much it was an exclusive trip.

That was not even a year ago, man. Wasn't even a year ago. That's hard to believe. I know. But we've been there. That was our third time there. So some of the papers, there's some very interesting work. One of the more recent papers is called Reassessing the History of the Poverty Point Phenomenon, a Case Study from the Jake Town Site. Jake Town Site.

in Mississippi, not too far away, kind of to the northeast of Poverty Point. So this is what he says, reading this is 2022. This is from his dissertation, right? So it's, and it's called, I find that word reassessing to be very suggestive. Towards the end of the late archaic period, which was from 4,800 years ago to 3,000 years ago,

calendar years before present, right? 4,800 to 3,000. So we're looking at about 1,800-year period there. This is what's called the late archaic period. So somewhere between 3,600 and 3,300 years ago, Native Americans engineered a colossal earthwork complex that covers approximately 200 hectares.

200 hectares works out to be about 494.2 acres. So it's a pretty big complex. So it's in northeast Louisiana. Yes, today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Poverty Point. The Poverty Point was the name of a farm or was a little town or community that was there. It took its name.

from something that was pre-existing. It might have been a plantation. I think it was a plantation. I believe that's what it was. I think it was a plantation there in northwest Louisiana that was called Poverty Point. I don't know why it was called Poverty Point, the plantation, but the mound complex gets its name from the name of the plantation that was there when it was discovered.

Now, the plantation obviously is not as old as the mounds. So it is the namesake for a material culture pattern documented to varying degrees at sites throughout the lower Mississippi Valley.

However, the nature of interactions between these sites and the type site, which would be Poverty Point, is poorly understood. So, in other words, what they're getting at here is there's a bunch of these sites in western Mississippi, northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, that look like they were all pretty much built within the same period of a couple hundred years.

And they call it the Poverty Point Complex because it encompasses all of these other outlying sites as well. And from that assumption, the working assumption was that Poverty Point was the oldest of the sites and created the template or the prototypical pattern from which the rest of the sites more or less mimic. Okay, but now we get to the reassessment part of it here. Okay.

However, the nature of interactions between these sites and the type site, that is, Poverty Point, is poorly understood. The people who constructed the Poverty Point site lived on wild food resources.

They hunted, fished, and gathered food from the river bottoms and surrounding woodlands more than a thousand years before food production became widespread in the region. So let's picture we're looking at indigenous peoples, presumably, who made their living and existed by hunting, fishing, and gathering food.

Now, the assumption is that these people who ordinarily were hunting and fishing and gathering food were the ones who constructed Poverty Point, and presumably the outlying sites who based their pattern upon the template of Poverty Point. But then he goes on to say in this dissertation that the level of sociopolitical organization required to create such a place is

contradicts anthropological theories regarding the social structure of foraging societies. So what he's doing here is he's acknowledging, wait a second, what we know about foraging societies is it contradicts the level of sociopolitical organization that would have to exist in order to create a site of this magnitude. All right?

Consequently, the poverty point site is a globally relevant example of highly complex behavior by small-scale societies that lack obvious signs of social hierarchy. And again, because of the complex level of organization, the assumption would be that such an undertaking on this scale

would require some level of social hierarchy. You've got to have somebody conceiving of it. You've got to have labor. You have to have diversified labor. And as you're going to find out, there were large timber hinges at Poverty Point. You asked earlier about that. There were. I think there were actually, we'll get to that, I think there were 60 of them.

This site. Yeah. So here's, you know, in the non-emotive terms of academia, what he's saying is, wait a second here. When we actually start thinking about it, we seem to have a contradiction going on here. On the one hand, we're talking about foraging societies that live by hunting, fishing, and gathering.

And in that model, we don't have complex levels of social organization or hierarchies of social control or any of the thing that one would assume would be necessary, for example, to organize the enormous pool of labor to undertake such a project.

So this is interesting because this has kind of been something that academia has kind of avoided addressing this question. Wait a second, aren't there some inconsistencies here in our assumptions? The mounds at Poverty Point were among the first built in the eastern woodlands after a millennium-long hiatus.

And their enormous scale was unlike anything that came before and matched those of Mississippian chiefdoms two millennia later. And let's go to, let me pull this on over, and let's look at the ground plan here. I think the same question can be asked of what they've said about Gobekli Tepe, right? It's the same problem. Same problem. Yeah, like what we know of.

Basic foraging societies don't seem like they would build these kinds of structures. That's right. But that's the story they're going with. That's the story they're going with. Let me get to... Hunter Gatherers 2.0. Okay, so we're going to do another share screen. Okay, good. This is what we want to look at. So this is a digital model of the mound complex. Here's the large mound A.

And then you have the plaza, and you have this multi-ringed structure, which is interesting. And then there are passageways through the multi-ringed structure. Now, you have this bayou with this creek that comes by here, and it would look like, you know, the question then becomes, was this ever a completed structure? I think the opinion now is that it probably wasn't.

But I don't know if it's a settled matter. Because for one thing, if it was, then it means that this thing is really old. Is that sloped as an amphitheater or is it flat and just ridged? It's flat and ridged. Okay. Right?

And then there's scattered mounds around. And so what intrigued me when I was there was the temporal relation between the construction of the mounds and the erosion. You can see, like, obviously right up here, you see there's a gully that's been eroded across the ringed mounds. And so, obviously, then the mounds were already there if they, you know, unless they stopped at the gully.

And we weren't able to ascertain that when we were there. But it looks to me like the gully would have been after the mounds were built and would have breached the mounds. And then obvious. Yeah, no, go ahead, Kyle. Well, it also looks like the creek on the northern part actually is has moved into the mound structure a little bit. Yes. Because you can see tiny little pieces of mound like going right up to the bank. Mm hmm.

Yeah. On the very top of those rings. Right up in here? Yes. Yeah, and then look at this gully that looks like it's incised through the mounds. Yeah. So to better understand the events that led to the creation of the Poverty Point site and the historical processes that comprised the poorly understood Poverty Point phenomena, I conducted four research expeditions at the Jake Town site in west-central Mississippi.

J-Town site covering approximately 85 hectares is the largest poverty point affiliated site outside the type site. J-Town also has the most earthworks of any poverty point affiliated site other than the type site, which again is poverty point.

There have been 15 mounds documented at Jake Town, including at least three late archaic period constructions. Furthermore, the material assemblage documented at Jake Town shows a high degree of similarity with the type site. These factors combine to make Jake Town a critical site for understanding the historical processes that led to the creation of the Poverty Point site.

And then he goes on to say that our findings support an inversion of most extant models. Communities throughout the, this would be lower Mississippi Valley, the LMV, like the one at Jake Town, did not receive their cultural identity from the Poverty Point site. Rather, they had their own traditions, practices, and histories that converged on Poverty Point. So in other words...

You had this whole community of these things, and then apparently somehow that community was able to be organized on this gigantic scale in order to create Poverty Point. In this model, Poverty Point is not a source of outward diffusion, but an endpoint for multiple streams of Native American history. It was a cultural sink where disparate histories combined to form one of the most unique archaeological signatures in the world.

The need for an alternative framing is apparent after acknowledging the flaws of typological frameworks. I found that using Native American philosophies as theory is a useful approach. Relying on insights from American Indian scholars, the burst of mound building at Jake Town circa 3400

calibrated BP. You can look at CAL as being either calendar or calibrated, right? Because in order to fit it to the calendar, you have to calibrate, right? But think of this as 3,400 calendar years before present was a form of communal performance meant to restore balance to relations that were in flux manifested as environmental volatility, right?

which is well documented at Jake town and throughout the lower Mississippi Valley. That's really strange. I mean, is there any other, is there any precedent for that happening anywhere else? I mean, yeah, he's saying that they were having environmental problems. And so a bunch of different communities came together and said to fix this, we can all get in harmony with each other and build mound projects. I mean, yeah, that's what it sounds like. He's saying. Yeah. Yeah. At 1400 BC. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. But Jake town tends turned out to be 400 years older than poverty point. Oh, all right. So this is from the book I recommended last time, uh, hidden cities by Roger Kennedy.

When one comes on foot into the open space at Poverty Point, there is a powerful impulse to seek definition of its huge extent by finding the bounds set by the outer ring and to get some sense of scale from its hulking mound. But if one approaches Poverty Point from the air after surveying the archaeology of the Louisiana and Mississippi Delta land, it is the innermost ring which rivets attention.

It is 2,000 feet in diameter, appearing to be a half circle. This is almost exactly the configuration and the size which the aerial archaeologists can find in at least five other earthworks created in the Mississippi floodplain. Now, none of the things we've been looking at so far

have been in the Mississippi floodplain. They're in the Mississippi River Valley because the Ohio is tributary to the Mississippi, but they were all, well, not Cahokia. Cahokia was in the Mississippi Valley, but it was not in the floodplain.

All of which may have been built about the same time. In other words, not only were the Indians of 4,000 years ago sufficiently organized to build the huge, even, and geometric ring at Poverty Point, they were also capable of duplicating it across great distances. And then here's a diagrammatic representation of the complex. And you can see the causeways or the apertures in the rings

And there would have been one leading right up to the big mound. There was a plaza. It held a gnomon pole that would have been a sundial. Now, the question again is, was the embankment here and the bayou here, and they built up and stopped at the embankment? Or was there erosion here? Was it a complete ring? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. So here's an aerial photo.

You see, there was a bunch of other smaller mounds again here as well. In the diagram, it looked like there were huts or mounds on the ridges. Yeah, like a bunch of little mounds? Yes. I mean, they were very complicated structures. They're like hut roofs. This is a good question. It makes me think of a calendar with all those little mounds on top. Uh-huh.

Well, there's a lot of studies so far that I have not yet digested. It also looks like an amphitheater. Yes, it does look like an amphitheater. Tallest mound, more than 70 feet, 640 feet and wet. Look, ball court. There was a ball court mound. Sacrifice ball. All right. So it's a sports theater. That's what it is.

Yeah, but the mound is over here. I know. Well, okay, so we've got ball court mounds in the Yucatan, the Mayans. We have ball court mound at, oh, there, Brad, help me out. Wupatki. Wupatki. And now if we had a ball court mound here, what is this saying? Was this cultural continuity then? They're talking to each other, at least. Yeah.

I mean, would there be like the home team and then they would head out to Wapaki to battle them? And then they would, whoever won that would go down and play the Mayans. Play the Mayans. Yeah. I'm looking at a diagram that shows it may be natural, but like a mound on the other side of the river, almost directly across from the big mound.

I guess out there in the woods, in the trees, yeah. I'm looking at this diagram that I'm seeing here. But it's drawn in the same way that the natural rays, like the hills in the distance are drawn. Hey, now check this out. Okay, we've got 1950 feet going the distance across the plaza. But then, you know, and this has got to be an estimate here because look,

Because, again, because of the erosion and destruction that's taken place, is it possible to measure with precision what the original diameter would have been? But this is showing 3,950 feet. All you got to do is add 10 feet, and you've got 3,960 feet, right? Divide that by 100, and you've got 39.6 feet.

which is the radius of the blue stone circle at Stonehenge. And I don't know how much we've talked about evidence suggesting that they were using feet at Stonehenge, but that 3960, if you double it, you know, 3960 was also the width of St. Mary's Chapel at Glastonbury. Okay, so 39.6 feet and add 10 feet to this and you'd have 3,960 feet.

Change it to miles. And what? Change it to miles. Change it to miles. 3960. Divide by 5,280. Uh-huh. So it's just a kilometer is 3,280 feet and a mile is 5,280 feet. So it's 5,280 feet. If I divide that by 3960, say then, yeah, 1.33.

So, 3960 is the Earth's radius, so I was just completing that if you weren't hearing it. Oh, in miles. Yeah. Well, did you get that, Russ, what Brad said? In miles, the radius of the Earth is 3,960 feet. Except that the polar radius of the Earth is 7,900, which means, I mean, diameter is 7,900 feet.

Which means the radius, the polar radius is 3,950 miles. Right on it. Yeah. Right on it. So was there some kind of earth symbolism going on here? Yeah. Let's not go there. And again, they're using the feet and the mile and they've got the, and they've measured the earth or they have at least carried forward this knowledge from somebody else who did it a long time ago or something. That's what it seems like. Yeah. Um,

I mean, there's implication. So the idea that there's a connection here with the Maya, they did the same thing. They seem to have been the inheritors of very advanced astronomical and, you know, earth knowledge. And they did calculations in deep time, which is just, again, so the idea of these people being, what was the term the guy used? Foragers.

Mm-hmm.

Questions raised in some recent papers. Just this last month, in the journal Antiquity, there was an article about Poverty Point. This was published. Let's see my reference here. Convergence at Poverty Point, a revised chronology of the late archaic lower Mississippi Valley.

just published in December, you know, last month in Antiquity. So this is pretty much brand new research here. And so they say the Poverty Point site, located in the lower Mississippi Valley of the southeastern United States, is commonly considered a center of innovation that exported new material, culture, practices, and identity to presumably contemporaneous sites in the region.

Recent radiocarbon data, however, show that Jake Town, previously interpreted as a peripheral expression of poverty point culture, is earlier than the type site. Here, we present the late archaic poverty point culture of the lower Mississippi Valley as an example of how typological approaches to diffusion can obstruct archaeological research and obscure historical narrative.

We offer a revised accelerator mass spectrometry dated chronology of the Jake Town site, a late archaic earthwork complex in western central Mississippi. Though it has for a long time been central to archaeological theory, critical engagement with cultural diffusion models has receded in recent decades.

Following diffusionist models, Poverty Point, located in northeastern Louisiana, some 100 kilometers or 60 miles southwest of Jake Town, was usually interpreted as the type site of the Poverty Point culture and the source of a suite of cultural innovations observed at presumably contemporaneous sites in the region.

Chronostratigraphic data from Jake Town showed that the site's inhabitants were engaging in practices typically associated with the so-called Poverty Point culture by 3500 to 4000 years before present. These dates are conservatively 400 years earlier than the earliest, the oldest dates derived from the Poverty Point site.

Then describing the physical parameters of the site itself. Poverty Point is a sprawling complex of geometric earthworks covering approximately 200 hectares in northeastern Louisiana. Its builders moved an estimated 1 million cubic meters of earth to create the monumental landscape. That's a lot of dirt. Mound A...

is among the largest mounds in North America, comprising approximately 238,500 cubic meters of earth, and was built in no more than 90 days. Recent work demonstrates that at least one segment of the iconic concentric ridges that they've studied, West Ridge 3, was also built very rapidly.

Geophysical survey has identified, okay, 36 timber post circles up to 62 meters in diameter and 25 hectares area around the anthropogenic plaza, further demonstrating the site's complex construction history. So 62 times 3.28, that means you're looking at over 200 feet in diameter and there were 36 sites

of these timber hinges, timber hinges that were up to 200 feet in diameter, outlying around the central earthen complex. How much work would have been involved just in that? Okay, so forager groups modified the landscape at Poverty Point to fit their social and cultural needs, and while some scholars assumed that such coordination would be possible only under a centralized hierarchical political system,

There is no evidence of social hierarchy at Poverty Point. The scale of earth moving at Poverty Point, in addition to the metric tons of stone brought there from sources spanning half the North American continent, suggests forms of social organization and leadership that contradict traditional models of foraging groups. Well, you don't say.

So now I wrote this. Let's consider the implications of a 90-day. Now, how do they know 98? Well, because they've taken core samples. And they find, because again, the mound was done in layering. Now, if you do build a layer and you leave it for two weeks, you're going to have stuff growing on it, aren't you? And that stuff is going to, then you put another layer on, that's going to leave a detectable biological layer in those areas.

deposit in the layers of soil, right? There was no such thing found, okay, in any of it. They didn't find any evidence that there had been any hiatus between, there was no evidence, for example, of rainfall on any of the surfaces. So in other words, you do a layer and if the surface is exposed to the weather, you know, Mississippi Valley, lower Mississippi Valley is going to get at least a couple of good drenches each month

But none of the layers had any evidence of any rainfall falling on them, right? There was no spread in the radiocarbon dating of the organic material pulled out of here, right? So let's consider, though, the implications. And when we were there, Mark Brink told us that maybe even this was conservative. It might have been two months ago.

that it took 60 days, but we'll go with 90, okay? Let's consider the implications of a 90-day construction time for the earthworks at Poverty Point. Taking only Mound A, comprised of 238,500 cubic meters of earth, this is equivalent to about 8,586,000 cubic feet of earth.

Now, let's assume if you've got a cubic foot of earth that's moist, it can weigh upwards of 80, 90, even 100 pounds. You ever hoisted a 90-pound bag of concrete mix?

You know how heavy that is, right? Yeah, he went straight into job site language there. Yeah, there he went. I instantly... Yes. Sorry, guys. It's all right. Yes, they're heavy. They're heavy. Okay, so now if you're transporting manually...

You're probably not going to want to, you know, I mean, look, when you do maneuvers and you're carrying a 50-pound backpack, that's considered to be pretty heavy, right? So let's assume in most of the pictures you see of them, you know, actually engaged in the work of a construction, they're carrying baskets, wicker baskets, right? Now, let's be generous and say that they can have a wicker basket that has a half a cubic foot of earth in it, right?

Okay, so think about that. If you've got 8,586,000 cubic feet of earth, okay, let's see what that works out to. 8,586,000 cubic feet. So if you then divide that into actual loads, what's it, 586,000? It's like 17 million or something. Yeah, it's...

Times two, yeah. It's over 17 million loads of earth. Okay, so assuming... Yeah, so in 90 days. Okay, so a strong man, let's say a strong man could carry that kind of weight for some distance, but an average person would do well to carry, you know, even up to half a cubic foot. Okay, so assuming then that a container for manual soil transport

Contains about a half cubic foot, which could be somewhat comfortably carried by an average person over a modest distance. We're talking about more than 17 million trips from the source of the soil to the site of the large mound. Let's say there's 2,160 hours in three months, which is what it is. That works out to be nearly 8,000 trips per hour.

24 hours a day around the clock for three months or 133 trips per minute. It means every minute somebody's dumping a half a cubic foot of earth in order to build that mound of 8 million. I think we could assume that they were only working during the day, right? I mean, do you think they were doing this at night? I mean, 24 hours. Are we going to say 10 hours?

Well, yeah, I mean, so we could double this. We could double all these numbers. So you're talking about 266 trips per minute. Per minute. Every minute, 133 people had to empty their load of earth to the pyramid site, and that's 24 hours a day, round the clock, for three months. Now, how the hell? What are we talking about here?

Not buying it. Bigger baskets. And then we have to separately factor in the 761,500 cubic meters of soil for the multi-ringed part of the earthwork construction at Poverty Point. This is 27,414,000 cubic feet, or almost 55 million basketfuls of earth, again assuming a half cubic foot per basket.

And this does not include the many tons of stone brought from far-flung sources spanning half the North American continent. And then I ask the question, and all of this done by foragers? Here's my question, then. How the hell is such a thing even possible? Now, to me, we get into this, and this is confronting us with this pretty serious historical conundrum here. Who's feeding them? Yeah, who's feeding them? Yeah.

If you've got all of your foragers carrying dirt, who is foraging? Who's foraging? Yeah. Right. I mean, who's keeping up the shelter and providing the clothing? I mean, the questions that are raised. Yeah. Who's making the baskets? Right. Can a wicker basket carry 40 pounds of dirt? I don't know. Maybe they're strong.

Yeah, so it just boggles the mind, and it really, to me, raises questions that, to me, demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that mainstream archaeology is far, far from having all the answers. Absolutely. But they're still going to attack Graham Hancock as a pseudo-archaeologist because he dares to ask questions about the glaring contradictions in the conventional models. But we all know that if you do that,

You're obviously a racist and a white supremacist. So that's how we identify racists and white supremacists is if they question the dogmas of modern archaeological theory. All right. So should we go on? How much time we got left? Should we go on? I want to know more. Let's look. Let's learn more. Let's keep going then. Lake George Group, Holly Bluff, Mississippi. I mean, look at this.

You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

hunter-gatherer site to me yeah yeah well what they had they had uh deer blinds up on top of the truncated pyramids yeah yeah it's basically it's hunter-gatherers saying you know what let's move the river to trap the deer in this square yeah so that they're easier so that we don't have to hunt and gather

Well, I mean, now they could have advanced hunter gathering. You start not having to hunt and gather at all because you're just a sophisticated hunter gatherer. Uh-huh. Well, I guess you could have done. All of your crops are right there. All of your animals are right there. And you could have done fishing, perhaps, in the Menard mounds. Again, always proximal to water.

This is cool. Now, this is totally cool. I mean, it's almost like we're getting more into almost like artwork or architecture or something here. I mean, what the hell is going on here? And what's the source of the water? Did they connect that to a river? Did they just dig down until there was water?

I don't know, but each one of these things is worthy of deeper research. And I mean, look, I think if there's any takeaway out of this, it's like this is a whole phenomena that we barely even are beginning to understand what was going on here. Yeah. There's so much to learn and so many questions raised by all of this. The Fitzhugh Mound in Louisiana, circa 1200 A.D. Look, here's your long barrel. Beautiful example of that.

And is that body of water that it goes through, is it man-made or did they... I'm going to guess. I would guess. My first guess would be that these were the borrow pits from which they excavated the earth in the creation of the mounds and the long barrel. The lungs and the spine. Well, it kind of looks like that, doesn't it? Yeah. And then here's a little twist where you've got these structures connecting...

Yeah. Yeah. Interconnectedness of the mound bottom, Kingston Springs. There's another one where there's one tilted structure. Well, okay. So given that the maps are oriented to the cardinal directions, this suggests to me that the tilting has to have been astronomically determined. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So they aligned everything north-south, and then they tilted one for some reason.

But, you know, that could be solstitial or maybe marker. I mean, I don't know if it's tilted enough. Okay, so you're looking towards the southeast. So it would have been a sunrise. I wonder if it was a lunar. It could have been lunar. Again, the thing that the research I haven't done is take these maps and lay them out and determine the azimuths of the Earth.

of risings and settings. First of all, what you do is you determine the azimuth of this orientation and see where does that intersect the horizon, and then you could open up some astronomy software and move through the course of a year and see if there's anything significant rising. If you're looking to the east, you're going to be seeing rising, and you're looking to the west, you're going to be setting. It could have been any number of things. It could have been the Pleiades were often played an important role. Rising and setting of Pleiades were known to have been

of significance to many native american peoples uh but look at the date on this one this is 1200 yeah this is uh 2 000 years after the other ones yeah or more if these dates are correct correct right and is that a natural bend in a river or did they make that canal again right i mean

If it's not a natural bend in the river and see, so there, what we need to do is go right now, probably utilizing, uh, you know, Google earth, Google maps, uh, the natural map viewer and really get in and start doing some research that I haven't done yet. I've collected this stuff together into one place. So it's, you know, it would be, you know, ready to start doing that kind of research. I just haven't had the time. Yeah, of course.

There's just so many questions for each site. It's just so amazing. I know. Look at that. Now, these are all like parallel to the river, but almost like a 45 degree angle. Uh-huh. And again, is the river modified or is that a canal? Is it? Well, the straightness of it. Yeah, very straight. Right. Yeah. And.

I'm looking like at these and, you know, are we assuming that this are structures like wooden structures on top of the truncated mounds or are they additional smaller? Additional smaller mounds up there. Yeah. Capstone. Hinges. Yeah, those are. And you can see little humans in here for scale. Is this what they built out into the river? Is that Brad? That's Brad out there. Yeah, it is. Yep.

Brad, and I'm not sure who's with him. That's me. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because I write the baseball cap. Right. Oh, wow. That's cool. The man in the moon. Yeah. I mean, are we, is there some kind of like perhaps lunar significance to this? So you've got this arched, raised, elongated mound, kind of almost like an arched barrow.

And then you have this... The present of water. Yeah. You got the pit. Yeah. And I'm assuming the pit would have been where most of the earth came from. Looks like this mound is oriented to the cardinal directions, but the rest of them, well, that one and this one, but then you've got these, you know... And again, I don't know how tall... You know, if you were back there with the mound still existent, obviously this has looked like the biggest one.

So if you were on top of this, could you have sighted over some of these other mounds to various astronomical sites? Or maybe it was the other way around. You're on the lower one looking past the tall one. It's sticking up above the horizon. It's like you're, I don't know. What? Yeah.

And the thing that you don't so much appreciate just looking at this is that these plaza areas and the building sites were almost in all cases perfectly leveled over many, many acres. And that had to take place before the actual construction of the mounds themselves. So there's a whole lot of prep work.

That's a snake that has swallowed a mound. He's regretting it. Yeah. So, yeah, this is the Perkins site, Mississippi unknown date. So these two are very similar, but they're different. You got the Maggie complex and the alligator mounds.

So, you know, again, just like you see in Central America, you've got the mounds are facing onto this plaza area. Now, what went on in this plaza area? And did it hold a gnomon pole or were there hinges out here? I mean, again, there's so much we don't know. Yep. There's that terrorist mound you've been pointing at. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it kind of reminds me a little bit of how it's the sort of the downtown effect.

with a lot of ancient sites where once they do LIDAR, they see that there were all these structures surrounding these things that are still there. Yeah. Sort of just the downtown area. You're seeing the remnants of the big structures, but all around this, people lived in large numbers. Well, it would certainly seem to be the case because, I mean, obviously, you had to have a lot of people to build these things. Yeah. Look at this. So they dug this...

canal yeah that's that's sort of how i imagine it is we got this big plaza these big enclosures with these waterworks these large mound structures and when it was that was the the middle of the so these could be towns i don't know except that these there weren't people living in not in the mounds right but maybe around yeah that's what i'm saying so like these would be the um

I don't know, the equivalent I guess we would have is this is a courthouse and the library and, you know, this is the big communal structures here in the middle. Mm-hmm. Look at this one here. It looks like sort of a stepped pyramid, and then it's got a flat top with a conical pyramid on it. Wow. Now, what in the hell do you make of this? Brooms. Wow.

shrooms definitely it's interesting that's the first thing that came to your mind that's it all i mean it also you know it has a looks like a strange kind of writing uh well it does kind of doesn't it yeah all right this next one is one that just completely freaks me out wow yep yep man now okay big tony's huh

I mean, crop circles. It does kind of crop circles that look like this. And yeah, it looks like a diagram of something. Doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, I look at this and I go, okay, is this just, you know, like, hey, guys, let's do this. It'd be cool if we just put this here. Right. Or, you know, is there some systematic rationale behind this? I mean, I just I can't quite fathom it.

And the amount of work that we're seeing that was going on in pre-Columbian America is utterly astonishing. I mean, the isolation of those little mounds out in all that water, like, makes it where the only... I mean, without bridges or something, the only access is to walk down those long, narrow... Yeah. Well, they're completely islands. I mean, there's no place to get to them without a bridge. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But is this... Is it...

I'm just curious if the water is a possibility or is this, are they for sure that there was water in these areas? Yes. Well, yeah, because you can see, I mean, you know, the sediment, you know, is consistent with being the bottom of a pool. Man. What does it mean? Yeah, what are they pointing at? Stars? Yeah. Planets? Strange. And again, the perfect circles?

So, I mean, this is in Florida. And so you've got these groups, whoever these people were, they obviously knew some kind of level of geometry, and they're able to build these vast circles. You know what? What's the distance from Florida up to Newark? I mean, I don't know, but that's got to be 1,000 miles, I'm thinking. And this is 2,000 B.C. Very old. Yes, very old. So...

Uh-huh. So this is Shiloh. This is in Tennessee. So, you know, these are the dates that are given in the literature, and I don't necessarily know if I, you know, accept that without a little bit of critical thought. I mean, I would say, okay, how are these dated? Is it convincing or is it just speculative data?

Or is it possibly based on, you know, occupation by later peoples, not the original believers? Exactly. Exactly. Well, like with Serpent Mound, I think, you know, they dug, they did a trench in the mound and they found artifacts that are consistent with an already established group at a certain time period. Yeah. And then they're just like, wow, they built them out. Right. Yeah. Right.

Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

a very interesting article that appeared in Popular Astronomy back in 1933 by an astronomer named Stansberry Hagar. So this is where he's talking about the Portsmouth Works, which is going back up to Ohio. He says, until about a century ago, let me see, maybe, yeah, until about a century ago, a series of earthworks approximating 10 miles in length

extended through the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, the adjacent country on the east and two parts of Kentucky across the Ohio River. These earthworks were constructed by the unknown pre-Columbian people whose remains cover the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and a large part of the adjoining states.

These constructions have now been entirely destroyed except a horseshoe-shaped mound preserved by the wisdom and generosity of Dr. Hempstead. Ah, Hempstead, important clue there. And a group of small mounds near the center of the main avenue, some formless remains in the nearby cemetery, and the square at the western end. Wait, why is this name an important clue?

Hemp, Steve? But the plan of the works has been definitely established by three independent surveys made by competent surveyors while the works were still complete or nearly so. And these surveys agree except in minor details. So among the thousand groups of earthworks erected by the mound builders, the plan of the Portsmouth works is unique.

Most of all of them, it challenges attention by the striking peculiarity of its design. It suggests to the eye the figure of a gigantic serpent curving like a bow from the four circles at its head to the square and smaller avenues at its tail, which are almost due west of the head.

Apparently, then, our only recourse is to ascertain whether the plan of the works reveals a definite design. If so, what was its significance? And does that significance provide an adequate motive to explain the enormous labor expended on the works as a whole?

So this is the implication we're seeing here that the mound builder culture survived for 3000 years. Yes, that would be that would be the implication. Yes. Or that it was in waves. But, you know, it's yeah, like there was a flurry of activity. It was then interrupted by something. There was a passage of time and then another group picked up where the previous group left off. That's very continued to work.

Egypt did this too. They had dynasties and then there were intermediary periods, more dynasty and waves of construction and destruction. Waves of construction and destruction. Yeah. Okay. So were you going to,

Cover the other little interesting thing about Shiloh back there. I thought you were going to end up on that because, yeah, we're 20 minutes past our 10 minutes. Oh, we are. Okay. Well, I didn't have that slide handy, so I could save it for 108. But, yeah, Shiloh's a good one because of, yes. Okay. Well, we'll end up with Portsmouth because Portsmouth is one hell of an impressive structure.

So the total length of the main avenue, as represented by Squire and Davis' plan, and including the avenues at the tail, if you look down here, follow it from the multi-ringed circle here, crosses the Ohio, comes up here. There's a collection of mound structures up here, and this is where you have this, almost like he was saying, the suggested the head of a serpent. That comes down here, and then it crossed the river again, and this was...

part of the complex here with a square and long barrows attached to the square. So he says here that the main avenue, okay, and including the avenues at the tail is about eight miles. But if we include the missing parts of the avenue, which doubtless have been destroyed, and the two crossings of the Ohio River, its length is closer to 10 miles.

The secondary avenues at the head and center of the walls of the four circles down here and the crescent mound contributed about six miles to the length of the earthworks. So that if we double the length of the avenue for the double wall and add the earthworks just named, the total length of the earthworks in the works was over 24 miles.

The dimensions of the works indicate the tremendous labor involved in their construction by a people who, to the best of our knowledge, conveyed thither the whole of the necessary earth in wicker baskets.

It is self-evident that no such labor would or could be expended without some adequate motive and that the works were not haphazard constructions but had some definite significance associated with that motive.

And here's another, here's from Squire and Davis's survey. You can see the multi-ringed structure down here, the double-walled avenue crossing the river. Now, was there a bridge here at one time?

And I'd be interested to see how this configures in with the floodplain, because it's very possible that we're looking at these embankments here and here, that this would be the underfit stream, because we know that post-glacial meltwater flows in the Ohio Valley were sometimes more than 200 feet deeper than the modern floodplain.

So it looks like they built this thing on the floodplain. So they, you know, at some point, you know, see, here's the thing. If we don't accept that these things were just each the result of an isolated phenomena, but behind all of this, I mean, are we reasonable to speculate that there might have been a grand plan to all of this? I don't see how we can conclude otherwise.

In other words, each of these sites was not conceived and executed in isolation from all of the others, but was in fact part of a much grander plan that covered half of America. Yeah, or at least some kind of common culture because of the similarity in structure types and construction types that, yes, there was a...

That they have something in common, that the culture continues across all these sites. They're not built by isolated groups of people at each place. Right. So this is what you're calling square A down here, which is 15 acres. Those are definitely Thurses.

Yeah, with the double walls, you mean like the avenues? Yes, yeah. Very similar to these structures they have in the UK that no one really knows what they were for. These long, narrow, enclosed spaces. Yeah, and this is, let's see, the width here of this one is 210 feet. So that's not like you're walking down a little garden path with some raised mounds. I mean, this is a huge structure. And then again, you see the erosion here that's cut across.

So I would think that the erosion was subsequent to the building of the mounds. And then let's look at the ringed earthwork structure. That's where the impact happened. Aha. So, yeah, that's quite a complex right there. Outer ring approximately 1,490 feet in diameter. Sort of Atlantean. Atlantean. That's what I was thinking about.

A lot of these with the water and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And the water and the rings. Yeah. Uh, I agree. Um, yes. Concentric rings, part of the Portsmouth earthwork complex. And, uh,

He says here, Stansberry goes on to say that there's an unmistakable serpent head with four circles, central mound, and four intersecting avenues appears on a conventionalized copper design from the Hopewell mound, supporting the association of these features of the Portsmouth works with the head of a serpent. The elements of the design of the works seem to be repeated on shell gorgets exhumed within the works themselves.

and in mounds of Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.

The conventional design inscribed upon them represents a plumed rattlesnake coiled around the outer rim. The head is formed by concentric circles that surround an inner ring, and we are surrounded by an outer band with small circular dots at frequent and regular intervals, and plumes issue from the head.

So maybe that's where we should leave it for now, except we'll show this at Stonehenge, an avenue with parallel embankments. Look, clusters. How can we not see the parallels and similarities? Transatlantic across two sides of the ocean. There's something going on here. And no, I'm sorry. The mainstream guys do not have it figured out.

I think we can categorically state that. But for whatever reason, they want to defend their turf and dissuade any of those who are not accepting and swallowing the dogmas of history and censoring them. But why? What's the motive there? Why be so afraid of the fact that there may be more to our past and our history than we've even begun to suspect?

Anyways, I suppose we'll curtail it there. If you want for 108, we can actually pick this up. I'm glad you brought up Atlantis because I think that will be a good place to kind of return back to to complete the cycle. Because we kind of started with Atlantis, didn't we? Yeah, we did. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to this one because I got some more surprises for you guys. All right.

Very good. Thanks, Randall. Great show. Thank you. Randallcarlson.com. Sign up for the newsletter. Get your cool Cosmographia caps. Yeah, look at that hat Brad's got on. And stay tuned for an announcement. You know, I'm going with Rumble. Oh, yeah. That looks pretty definite now. I'm going to do a program on Rumble. So, you know, I'll be able to fill in the gaps. And you guys, you know, we're having to take a break from Cosmographia, but we're going to figure out how to keep something going.

Bradley and I anyway, but Russ and Kyle, I know you guys have got a hectic schedule of really valuable, cool things coming up that you got to deal with. So, yeah, get me on your show and we can carry out some of these.

We'll finally get to have Randall back on our show as a guest. What about me? I want you to tell me what was going on here with all this. Mike, yeah, let's not forget about Mike. Yeah, let's not forget about Mike. Yeah, what about me? Mike, you can go back to total normality. Back to NSA. Yeah. Just, yeah.

This was your little excursion into the etheric realms, Mike. The realms of abnormality. The realms of abnormality. I don't know. You know, Mike, are you getting to the point where you're starting to get comfortable? Yeah.

Out in the realms of weirdness? Well, that and the fame. He's figured out how to be totally normal in the middle of all this weirdness. I think it's just completely cemented his normality. He's got it as a shield. It's strengthened it. He's not become more abnormal. He's become more normal by hanging out with us.

At least until the day he eats a mushroom, but we'll definitely, Hey, listen, if you're going to get Mike to do some shrooms, we can come up back on for a cosmography episode. Okay. We'll see you guys for one Oh eight. Good night. Oh, I should have brought us before we concluded. I should have brought us back to full screen.

Sorry. Well, there we go. All right. All right. Good night, everyone. Now we're at full screen. Okay. You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

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Episode #107 America's Earthworks: Common Measure - Uncommon Designs / The Lost Prehistoric Civilization

Kosmographia

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Episode #107 America's Earthworks: Common Measure - Uncommon Designs / The Lost Prehistoric Civilization 01:55:06 Share

Kosmographia

Shownotes Transcript

Episode #107 America's Earthworks: Common Measure - Uncommon Designs / The Lost Prehistoric Civilization