#just really fucking sick of the smug 'hahaha America doesn't have any old structures'

[topazadine]

Here in Ohio, we recently received a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for the Hopewell Mounds Ceremonial Earthworks. They were made by what is now known as the Hopewell culture approximately from around 500-800 BCE. This complex covered 130 acres and include an earthwork that could have enclosed four Roman Colliseums; they are the largest geometrically shaped earthworks on the planet.

This is what it's believed they looked like:

Note the enclosure and consider how much work it must have been to put all of that earth there on southern Ohio's relatively flat fields. It was a grand undertaking that took decades, even centuries, of hard work. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Hopewell Mounds weren't either.

Burials have been found in the mounds, as well as evidence of ceremonial gatherings that would have drawn people from all over the Eastern United States. BTW, the Hopewell Mounds are not just one single site; they are a vast network of separate earthworks all over the state that were connected by routes and were used in rotation.

Inside the mounds were found wonderful artworks from as far away as Yellowstone and the Gulf of Mexico, signifying long and complex trade networks:

What's most fascinating is that these giant complexes took generations to build ... and they are aligned to specific cosmic events. These enormous structures are essentially a depiction of the cosmos, including sun and moon cycles.

This map from the Newark Earthworks shows exactly how precise and beautiful the geometry of these mounds was:

So why have you, dear reader, never heard about them before now? Surely this incredibly ceremonial earthworks, vaster and more complex than Stonehedge, the largest mound structure in the world, an entire cosmological representation on earth, would be legendary.

Well, the reason you never hear about it is because the most intact and carefully-studied sites look like .... this now.

European colonizers FARMED OVER these beautiful ancient earthworks. They put a GOLF COURSE on top of gorgeous, culturally priceless artifacts of an advanced culture. (That golf course is still there, btw, and they're being quite stubborn about leaving despite the fact that this is now, you know, a World Heritgage Site.)

If you ever wonder why it seems like European has all the ancient historical places and no one else does, that's because they tore down, bombed, or built golf courses on top of everyone else's.

My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big