America Before

by Graham Hancock

  8. Pauketat, Cahokia, 28–29. See also Chappell, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos, 89–91.

  9. Pauketat, Cahokia, 15, 23.

  10. Sparked by the publication of Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Institution, 1848). Reprinted and republished by the Smithsonian, with an introduction by David J. Meltzer, in 1998.

  11. Iseminger, Cahokia Mounds, 42.

  12. Ibid., 3.

  13. Ibid., 40.

  14. Sarah E. Bairres, “Cahokia’s Rattlesnake Causeway,” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 39, no. 2 (May 2014), 145.

  15. William F. Romain, “Monks Mound as an Axis Mundi for the Cahokian World,” Illinois Archaeology 29 (2017), 27.

  16. Ibid., 30.

  17. Ibid., 32.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid., 34–36.

  20. Ibid., 34.

  21. The reader who wishes to pursue the matter further is directed to Romain, “Monks Mound as an Axis Mundi for the Cahokian World,” 27–52.

  22. Ibid., 40.

  23. Pauketat, Cahokia, 2–4, 15.

  19: MOON

  1. Ray Hively and Robert Horne, “Hopewellian Geometry and Astronomy at High Bank,” Archaeoastronomy, no. 7 (1984), S88.

  2. Ohio Hopewell, http://anthropology.iresearchnet.com/ohio-hopewell/.

  3. See, for example, Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (Smithsonian Institution, 1848, reprinted and republished by the Smithsonian, with an introduction by David J. Meltzer, in 1998), 67–72.

  4. Jonaas Gregorio de Souza and Denise Pahl Schaan, “Pre-Columbian Earth-Builders Settled Along the Entire Southern Rim of the Amazon,” Nature Communications (March 27, 2018), 3–4.

  5. Martti Pärssinen, Denise Schaan, and Alceu Ranzi, “Pre-Columbian Geometric Earthworks in the Upper Purús,” Antiquity 83, no. 322 (December 1, 2009), 1087–1088.

  6. Sanna Saunaluoma, Martti Pärssinen, and Denise Schaan, “Diversity of Pre-colonial Earthworks in the Brazilian State of Acre, Southwestern Amazonia,” Journal of Field Archaeology (July 9, 2018), 7–8.

  7. Ibid., 10–11.

  8. Bradley T. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks: A Monumental Engine for World Renewal,” in Lindsay Jones and Richard G. Sheils (eds.), The Newark Earthworks: Enduring Monuments, Contested Meanings (University of Virginia Press, 2016), 41.

  9. Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio,” Archaeoastronomy, no. 4 (1982), S4.

  10. Bradley Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks,” in Richard F. Townsend and Robert V. Sharp (eds.), Hero, Hawk and Open Hand (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2004), 75; Mark J. Lynott, Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio (Oxbow Books, 2014), 148.

  11. Hively and Horn, “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio,” S4.

  12. Ibid., S7–S8.

  13. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks: A Monumental Engine for World Renewal,” 47.

  14. Ibid., 75.

  15. Ibid., 47.

  16. Ohio History Connection, “Great Circle Earthworks,” http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Great_Circle_Earthworks.

  17. Lynott, Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio, 148–149.

  18. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks,” 75.

  19. T. Darvill et al., “Stonehenge Remodelled,” Antiquity 86, no. 334 (2012), 1021–1040, esp. p. 1028: “Stonehenge first consisted of a circular bank and external ditch with an overall diameter of about 110m.”

  20. L. Falconer, “Interactive Virtual Archaeology: Constructing the Prehistoric Past at Avebury Henge,” in the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications and 2016 International Symposium on Cyberspace and Security (IUCC-CSS), December 2016, 153–158). See p. 155.

  21. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks: A Monumental Engine for World Renewal,” 47–48.

  22. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks,” 75.

  23. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks: A Monumental Engine for World Renewal,” 48.

  24. Ibid., and see also Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “The Newark Earthworks: A Grand Unification of Earth, Sky and Mind,” in Lindsay Jones and Richard G. Sheils (eds.) The Newark Earthworks: Enduring Monuments, Contested Meanings (University of Virginia Press, 2016), 64.

  25. William F. Romain, Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands (University of Akron Press, 2000), 63.

  26. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Roberson provide a concise history, beginning with the Egyptian Rhind papyrus that was scribed by Ahmes and was based on an original dating from 1850 BC or earlier. A square nearly equal in area to that of a circle is accomplished when the square is constructed on 8/9 of the circle’s diameter. See J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, “Squaring the Circle” School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, 1999, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/PrintHT/Squaring_the_circle.html.

  27. Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio,” S8.

  28. Ibid., S9.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks,” 79. Emphasis added.

  32. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks: A Monumental Engine for World Renewal,” 54–56.

  33. Squier and Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 50.

  34. Ibid, Plate XVI. However, in Cyrus Thomas, Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution, 1894), p. 479, this figure is revised to 20.6 acres—about the same area as the circle.

  35. Lepper, “The Newark Earthworks,” 75; and Lynott, Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio, 148.

  36. Discussed in chapter 17 of this book, and see Christopher Sean Davis, “Solar-Aligned Pictographs at the Paleoindian Site of Painel do Pilão Along the Lower Amazon River at Monte Alegre, Brazil,” PLoS One (December 20, 2016).

  37. Hively and Horn, “The Newark Earthworks: A Grand Unification of Earth, Sky and Mind,” 63.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid., 64.

  41. Hively and Horn, “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio.”

  42. Ibid., S11.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Ibid., S12.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Hively and Horn, “Hopewellian Geometry and Astronomy at High Bank,” S94, S98.

  49. Ibid., S95.

  50. Ibid., S95–S96.

  51. Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “A Statistical Study of Lunar Alignments at the Newark Earthworks,” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 31 (Fall 2006), 306–307; and see the discussion in Lynott, Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio, 153.

  52. Hively and Horn, “A Statistical Study of Lunar Alignments at the Newark Earthworks.”

  53. Hively and Horn’s original observation to this effect in their paper “Geometry and Astronomy in Prehistoric Ohio,” S11, has subsequently been confirmed by Christopher S. Turner in his “Ohio Hopewell Archaeoastronomy: A Meeting of Earth, Mind and Sky,” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 4, no. 3 (November 2011), 308. Note, however that Hively and Horn did subsequently go on to identify solstice alignments at Newark, not in the earthworks themselves but between topographical features in surrounding hills in the midst of which the earthworks appear to have been deliberately situated. See Ray Hively and Robert Horn, “A New and Extended Case for Lunar (and Solar) Astronomy at the Newark Earthworks,” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 38 (Spring 2013), in particular pp. 101–104.

  54. Hively and Horn, “A New and Extended Case for Lunar (and Solar) Astronomy at the Newark Earthworks,” 102.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Hively and Horn, “Hopewellian Geometry and Astronomy at High Bank,” S94, S98.

  20: THE POVERTY POINT TIME MACHINE

  1. For example, Poverty Point.

  2. For example, Emerald Mound and the Winterville Mounds.r />
  3. For example, Moundville.

  4. For example, the Pinson Mounds.

  5. The prime example is, of course, Cahokia.

  6. What’s left of High Bank and Newark (much of the latter now in a private golf course and only open to the public 4 days a year), and also such sites as Mound City, Seip, the Great Miamisberg Mound, and Fort Ancient.

  7. For more see Indian Country Today, “Florida’s Incredible Indian Mounds” (Indian Country Today, October 13, 2011), https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/florida-s-incredible-indian-mounds-H8O3ekXxpE2Buote33jInA/.

  8. For more see Explore Georgia, “5 Native American Sites Not to Miss in Georgia” (November 2015), https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/florida-s-incredible-indian-mounds-H8O3ekXxpE2Buote33jInA/ and “Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site,” https://www.exploregeorgia.org/cartersville/general/historic-sites-trails-tours/etowah-indian-mounds-state-historic-site.

  9. For more see Texas Historical Commission, “Caddo Mounds State Historic Site,” http://www.thc.texas.gov/historic-sites/caddo-mounds-state-historic-site.

  10. For more see Arkansas State Parks, “Toltec Mounds Archaeological State Park,” https://www.arkansasstateparks.com/parks/toltec-mounds-archeological-state-park.

  11. For more see Kentucky State Parks, “Wickliffe Mounds,” https://parks.ky.gov/parks/historicsites/wickliffe-mounds/.

  12. For more see Indiana Museum, “Angel Mounds,” https://www.indianamuseum.org/angel-mounds-state-historic-site.

  13. See, for example, A. P. Wright, and E. R. Henry, Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast (University Press of Florida, 2013), 1: “The Early and Middle Woodland periods, respectively, to circa 1000–200 BC and 200 BC–AD 600–800.” Note, however, that the dates vary from subregion to subregion and the authors’ end date for the Middle Woodland period is fairly late compared to most cultural frameworks, the reasons for which are not of concern here. This is clear upon reflection of Late Woodland periodization by authors of the comprehensive compendium M. S. Nassaney and C. R. Cobb, Stability, Transformation, and Variation: The Late Woodland Southeast (1991), who ascribe a window of AD 600–900 to the Late Woodland Period.

  14. Jenny Ellerbe and Diana M. Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City (Louisiana State University Press, 2015), 60.

  15. Ibid., 57.

  16. Gary Everding, “Archaic Native Americans Built Massive Louisiana Mound in Less Than 90 Days, Research Confirms” (Washington University in St. Louis, January 28, 2013), https://source.wustl.edu/2013/01/archaic-native-americans-built-massive-louisiana-mound-in-less-than-90-days-research-confirms/.

  17. Mound B. See Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 28.

  18. Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 57.

  19. Ibid., 59.

  20. Ibid., 57.

  21. A. M. Byers, The Real Mound Builders of North America: A Critical Realist Prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, 200 BC–1450 AD (Lexington Books, 2018), 22: Established nineteenth-century North American archaeologists believed that the earthworks were the result of an ancient Old World civilization “washing up” on the shores of North America. “The aggregate range of foreign sources postulated became quite broad, such as shipwrecked sailors from an ancient Mediterranean Phoenician colony, or wandering and lusting sets of Vikings, or one or other of the lost tribes of ancient Israel, or groups from ancient Irish and/or Scottish Celtic kingdoms, or even travelers from advanced civilisations from the lost civilisation of Atlantis, and so on,” states Byers.

  22. Anna C. Roosevelt et al., “Early Mounds and Monumental Art in Ancient Amazonia,” in Richard L. Burger and Robert M. Rosenwig (eds.), Early New World Monumentality (University Press of Florida, 2012), 257.

  23. Jon L. Gibson, “Before Their Time? Early Mounds in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” Southeastern Archaeology 13, no. 2, Archaic Mounds in the Southeast (Winter 1994), 163.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. A. L. Ortmann and T. R. Kidder, “Building Mound A at Poverty Point, Louisiana: Monumental Public Architecture, Ritual Practice, and Implications for Hunter‐Gatherer Complexity,” Geoarchaeology 28, no. 1 (2013), 66–86. And see Amélie A. Walker, “Earliest Mound Site,” Archaeology 51, no. 1 (January/February 1998), https://archive.archaeology.org/9801/newsbriefs/mounds.html.

  27. Joe W. Saunders et al., “A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400–5000 Years Before the Present,” Science 277 (September 19, 1997), 1796.

  28. Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 28, 110.

  29. Ibid., 69.

  30. Ibid., 111.

  31. Robert C. Mainfort Jr. (ed.), Archaeological Report No, 22: Middle Woodland Settlement and Ceremonialism in the Mid-South and Lower Mississippi Valley (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1988), 12.

  32. Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 42–44.

  33. Reported in ibid., 42. Transcribed by Diana Greenlee from “Bringing the Past Alive,” a seminar recorded in April 1989 at Louisiana State University.

  34. Boston University, “Kenneth Bracher,” https://www.bu.edu/astronomy/profile/kenneth-brecher/.

  35. K. Brecher and W. G. Haag, “The Poverty Point Octagon: World’s Largest Solstice Marker?” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 12, no. 4 (1980), 886.

  36. Ibid.

  37. As they themselves conceded 2 years later in Kenneth Brecher and William G. Haag, “Astronomical Alignments at Poverty Point,” American Antiquity 48, no. 1 (January 1983), 161. See also Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 43.

  38. Robert D. Purrington, “Supposed Solar Alignments at Poverty Point,” American Antiquity 48, no. 1 (January 1983), 160.

  39. Ibid., 161.

  40. Brecher and Haag, “Astronomical Alignments at Poverty Point,” 162.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Robert D. Purrington and Colby Allan Child Jr., “Poverty Point Revisited: Further Consideration of Astronomical Alignments,” Archaeoastronomy, no. 13 (JHA, xx) (February 1, 1989), S49–S60.

  43. Ibid., S54.

  44. Ibid., S54–S55.

  45. Ibid., S55.

  46. Ellerbe and Greenlee, Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City, 46.

  47. Ibid., 50.

  48. Ibid., 51.

  49. William F. Romain and Norman L. Davis, “Astronomy and Geometry at Poverty Point,” Louisiana Archaeology, no. 38 (2011), 49.

  50. Ibid., 48.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Ibid., 46–47.

  55. Ibid., 47.

  56. Ibid., 49.

  57. Joe Saunders et al., “An Assessment of the Antiquity of the Lower Jackson Mound,” Southeastern Archaeology 20, no. 1 (2001), 75. See also Jon L. Gibson, “Navels of the Earth: Sedentism in Early Mound-Building Cultures in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” World Archaeology 38, no. 2 (June 2006), 313.

  58. John E. Clark, “Surrounding the Sacred: Geometry and Design of Early Mound Groups as Meaning and Function,” in Jon L. Gibson and Philip Carr (eds.), Signs of Power: The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast (University of Alabama Press, 2010), Kindle locations 3795–3801.

  59. Gibson, “Navels of the Earth,” 315.

  60. Ibid., 315–316.

  61. Romain and Davis, “Astronomy and Geometry at Poverty Point,” 47.

  62. D. P. Mindell, The Evolving World (Harvard University Press, 2009), 224. How far Judaism dates back and to what extent its roots extend into prehistory is, however, debatable and obviously depends on what elements of the faith one traces. Most agree, however, that it dates at least as far back as the establishment of the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah, c. tenth century BCE.

  63. A predominant archaeological link between the Hindu Shiva cult and the Indus Valley civilization is, for example, the Pasupati Seal, displaying the horned “animal” manif
estation of Shiva, which was carbon dated to 2500–2400 BC in the early twentieth century. See Earnest John Henry Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro: Being an official account of archaeological excavations at Mohenjo-Daro carried out by the Government of India between the years 1927 and 1931 (Delhi: Government of India, 1937–1938).

  21: GLIMPSES BEHIND THE VEIL

  1. Joe Saunders, “Early Mounds in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” in Richard L. Burger and Robert M. Rosenwig (eds.), Early New World Monumentality (University Press of Florida, 2012), 26–27.

  2. Ibid., 28.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Robert C. Mainfort Jr. (ed.), Archaeological Report No 22: Middle Woodland Settlement and Ceremonialism in the Mid-South and Lower Mississippi Valley (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1988), 9.

  5. Joe W. Saunders et al., “A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400–5000 Years Before the Present,” Science 277 (September 19, 1997), 1797; Saunders, “Early Mounds in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” 36; Joe W. Saunders et al., “Watson Brake, a Middle Archaic Mound Complex in Northeast Louisiana,” American Antiquity 70, no. 4 (October 2005), 665.

  6. Kenneth E. Sassman and Michael J. Heckenberger, “Crossing the Symbolic Rubicon in the Southeast,” in Jon L. Gibson and Philip Carr (eds.), Signs of Power: The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast (University of Alabama Press, 2010), Kindle location 4198.

  7. Joe W. Saunders et al., “A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400–5000 Years Before the Present,” 1798.

  8. Saunders, “Early Mounds in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” 39.

  9. Joe Saunders and Thurman Allen, “Hedgepeth Mounds: An Archaic Mound Complex in North-Central Louisiana,” American Antiquity 59, no. 3 (July 1994), 471.

  10. Cultural Resources Evaluation of the Northern Gulf of Mexico Continental Shelf, Vol I: Prehistoric Cultural Resources Potential, Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, National Park Service, Washington DC, 1977, 243.