On a hilltop overlooking the valley within which sit the Newark Earthworks, there perches an earthwork over 200 feet long, an effigy of sorts with a name that is a mystery in its own right, and a one-time stone mound with stories all its own now missing, but hidden in plain sight nearby.
A network of ancient American Indian ceremonial and burial mounds in Ohio described as “part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory” was added Tuesday to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.Preservationists, led by the Ohio History Connection, and indigenous tribes, many with ancestral ties to the state, pushed to recognize the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks for their good condition, distinct style and cultural significance — describing them as “masterpieces of human genius.”UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee approved the application during a meeting in Saudi Arabia.The massive earthworks comprise eight ancient sites spread across 150 kilometers (90 miles) of what is present-day southern Ohio, including one located on the grounds of a private golf course and country club. The designation puts the spot in the same category as wonders of the world including Greece’s Acropolis, Peru’s Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China.
In a paper published in the current issue of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, avocational archaeologist George Colvin and American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Neil Landman consider “one of the lesser known but more unusual and exotic items recovered from the Hopewell Site.”The item in question is a culturally modified fragment of an ammonite fossil. Ammonite fossils are the mineralized spiral shells of squid-like critters that went extinct at the same time as most of the dinosaurs — about 66 million years ago.Ohio’s rocks are all much older, so this fossil must have come from somewhere else. According to Colvin and Landman, it came from the Badlands of southwestern South Dakota.
