Archaeology | Indigenous people knew little about vast ancient American earthworks

When the first Europeans entered the Ohio valley, they encountered hundreds of mysterious earthen mounds and enclosures.

According to University of Cincinnati architectural historian John Hancock, a primary reason the ancient American earthworks seemed so mysterious was their vast scale and subtle geometries. That made them fundamentally different from traditional Western ideas of what architecture should look like.

Wanting to learn more about these strange and monumental structures, European-American settlers, soldiers and missionaries often asked local American Indians about them. The answers the Indians provided tell us much about what the historic tribes of the eastern Woodlands thought about the earthworks, but they do not appear to cast much light on their original purpose and meaning.

In the current issue of the Journal of Ohio Archaeology, I reviewed early historic American Indian testimony about the ancient earthworks of eastern North America and found that the indigenous peoples living in this region in the 18th and early 19th centuries actually knew little about them.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2014/08/24/indigenous-people-knew-little-about-vast-ancient-american-earthworks.html