Posted on 09/02/2002 4:23:13 PM PDT by blam
Contact: Andrea Lynn
a-lynn@uiuc.edu
217-333 -2177
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ancient Illinois village unearths lode of questions
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Digging under a blazing sun in an Illinois cornfield, archaeologists this summer unearthed a fascinating anomaly: a 900-year-old square hilltop village. The discovery near Shiloh -- about 15 miles southeast of St. Louis -- challenges previous notions of the area's first people and adds a piece to the puzzle that was Cahokia, a huge "mother culture" that suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly vanished, leaving only traces of its majesty and meaning in the 11th century.
Until now, archaeologists believed that large Cahokian populations settled only on the floodplains and that their villages sprawled in free-form fashion. This "new" ridge-sitting village with four linear sides and a rigid orientation of buildings "was mind-blowing," said lead archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I can't think of another village in this area that's like this." The great mystery: What was the purpose of this unique hinterlands village 12 miles from the major population center in Cahokia, and why did it have a large central residence and religious structures -- a plaza and four temples, all atypical of Cahokian villages?
Pauketat's hunch is that it was a farming village, a "feeder" for Cahokia, and an administrative outpost where a top official and, perhaps, functionaries, oversaw farming and "controlled that piece of the economy." The "evidence of authority" in the hinterlands "makes Cahokia look more like a centralized civilization and less like an elusive free gathering of Native Americans," Pauketat said.
University archaeologists have been digging near or at the so-called "Grossmann Site" for several years, but it was only this summer that Illinois graduate student and chief supervisor Susan Alt, Pauketat and a group of Illinois students found the third and fourth sides -- now only stains in the ground – of the village, the 75 small rectangular houses that lined the sides, and the four giant temples. In the center of each temple, they found the holes that once held the telephone-pole-sized roof supports. The temples had huge vaulted ceilings and thatched roofs, "something you usually see on a mound top. We were completely shocked." They also found some temple "ritual debris," including a figurine -- fire-splintered into perhaps 2,000 pieces, plus crystals and burned tools. These probably are "the remains of annual ritual burnings, ceremonies called 'renewing the temple.' "
Cahokia was "drawing great numbers of people into it," Pauketat said. "It goes from 1,000 to 10,000 people in a matter of 50 years. Most went to Cahokia, but some ended up in places like this, sent to help administer the farmers." Why so many people relocated so rapidly is still a mystery, he said.
Some archaeologists, including Pauketat, think of Cahokia as a mother culture. "They do something that is entirely unique and they do it much earlier. Within a century or two, people up and down the Mississippi and across the coastal plain of the Southeast are copying them, so you get Mississippian mounds and large settlements, but you never get anything that rivals this. So, Cahokia is just a moment, an experiment in civilization, that falters and goes away and never really comes back."
### The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society also supported the dig.
"Giants" have been associated with many of the mounds.
Moundsville, Alabama boasts a small forward (6' 6", as I recall), who was buried with the trappings of authority.
I don't know. I was hoping someone with knowledge in this area would show up and supply some answers. I know very little about all this and am hoping to learn.
The biblical account then continues by saying that the offspring of the Sons of God and the daughters of men were "the giants who were in the earth in those days." So numerous did these giants become that they were a threat to the survival of the patriarchal race. Accordingly, the scripture tell us, God gave Enoch a magical or miraculous sword, called the "Sword of Methuselah," with which to slay them in a great purge. The race of giants then dwindled and finally became extinct, Goliath being the last of his race, slain by young David, future King of Israel, sometime prior to 1,000 B.C.Sentence 1: The passage in question doesn't say this.
Genesis 6:4
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Numbers 13:33
And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Deuteronomy 2
10 The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims;
11 Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites called them Emims.
Years ago, when I visited the site, the park displayed a reconstructed section of a perimeter wall around the Great Mound. I assume this was based on posthole diggings and that it's still there.
The wall surprised me. I would have taken a simple palisade in stride, but the reconstruction depicted a bastioned wall with fighting platforms and a complex gate. (All wood, of course.) No ditching was depicted, but the effect was, nonetheless, to suggest a considerably more sophisticated style of warfare than I would have imagined. I had recently read a very little bit (strictly a layman's idle curiosity) about stone age hillforts in Britain, and that was the comparison that popped into my head.
I wonder if anyone here knows if this kind of fortification is found in other pre-Columbian sites and whether there is related physical evidence (of fires, human remains, etc.) for large scale fighting among the mound builders?
From one of my favorite articles in The Atlantic Monthly, The Diffusionists Have Landed:
The Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad's famous identification, in 1961, of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, from just after A.D. 1000 is, of course, a notable exception, no longer in dispute. But that discovery has so far gone nowhere. The Norse settlers, who may have numbered as many as 160 and stayed for three years or longer, seem to have made no lasting impression on the aboriginal skraellings that, according to Norse sagas, they encountered, and to have avoided being influenced in turn. The traditions of the Micmac people, modern-day inhabitants of the area, have not been seriously investigated; another people historically associated with this area, the reputedly fair-skinned Beothuks, have been extinct since 1829. The Vikings came, kept to themselves, and left -- that appears to be as much revision of the long-standing history of New World settlement as the hard-core academic establishment will entertain.I love is when random data from totally unrelated sources play hell with any conventional whizdumb.Snip
To many, the inventionists have clearly gained the upper hand, having marshaled shards, spearpoints, and other relics that indicate the independent cultural development of a native people whose Ice Age ancestors came overland from Northeast Asia. Still, the diffusionists have a habit of raising awkward questions -- questions that even some mainstream scholars find hard to ignore, much less to explain away. Who carved Phoenician-era Iberian script into a stone found at Grave Creek, West Virginia? How did a large stone block incised with medieval Norse runes make its way to Kensington, Minnesota? Why would a rough version of the Ten Commandments appear in Old Hebrew script on a boulder-sized tablet near Los Lunas, New Mexico? Conversely, how could the sweet potato, known to be indigenous to the Americas, have become a food staple throughout Polynesia and the Pacific basin as early as A.D. 400? And why would dozens of eleventh- to thirteenth-century temple sculptures in Karnataka, India, include depictions of what appears to be American maize?
Why are these large buildings always considered as temples? Especially when we know zero about their daily life.
Ain't no way...I remember the locals telling me that if a dog shat, and then it snowed, everyone broke out their cross country skies.
Hey fella, don't rock the boat or your grant money will be pulled.
I am a fan of Gloria Farley.
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And wouldn't you know it, but it was looted in the past 20 years or so, AND someone DYNAMITED the entrance to keep
such adventurers as himself from finding that the treasure trove has been looted and melted down.
I think I've seen this story on one of the documentary channels.
(Also, posthole interpretations are in the eye of the beholder :-).
It came back as St. Louis. :^)
I live in this latitude of Illinois, there is a huge hill within about 15 miles of me that is said to be of the Indians. Plus Burrows Cave is within about 20 miles in the other direction, although the artifacts from that cave seem to be from thousands of years ago instead of from Cahokia's accepted era. Maybe there was a major Indian thouroughfare along the approximate route of Route 40 and Interstate 70. I'll have to keep my eyes open for anomalies when I'm out mushroom hunting. :^)
If it's Burrow's Cave, it hasn't been dynamited. The artifacts from it are from ancient India, like 4000 - 5000 years ago, I think. There were 20,000 artifacts, too many to be carved by pranksters.
And he "knows" that it must have been the looters...
I've heard that academia used their ties to Clinton to have the Federal Government destroy evidence. Was Kennewick Man's finding place destroyed, I heard it was? Also, a place in the Southwest was destroyed when it was found to be thousands of years old and had a type of ceramic engineering skill as yet unknown to us. Academia accuses Christians of denying science, but I believe lately they're denying much more science than the short-sighted Christians they like to ridicule. Academia certainly has their sacred cows. They are hypocrits.
Yup. By the Corp Of Engineers at the direction of 'officials' high in the Clinton Administration. A court has just awarded the scientists the bones of Kennewick Man for further study. (a win!)
I seriously find that hard to believe. Unless said evidence would redirect grants away from said academics.
Anything for a grant, don't you know?
For the bureaucrats, more ways to p*ss away tax dollars, more private land to control.
Those fascists in the EPA during X41's term, I believe, declared a rut in the desert that fills once
every hundred years, "protected wetlands".
Looked up KM and can't find anything about the site being destroyed, but saw a diagram of the site, essentially on a river bank.
Even the Polynesians tried to grab some cash, huh?
Oh, it was destroyed. I read a blow by blow account of it in James C. Chatters (he did most of the Kennewick Man work and in fact lives in Kennewick) book titled, Ancient Encounters. He was called a MF and threatened a number of times by the indians.
I despise these members of the academic community so much. Evidence doesn't support their theories so they destroy, and accuse others of believing in myths. They are the ones that believe in myths and will suppress knowledge to protect their sacred cows.
A court has just awarded the scientists the bones of Kennewick Man for further study. (a win!)
That's good, but Kennewick man is a high profile case. There are other acts of evidence destruction going on all the time that we don't hear about. The academic community is no better than the Romans who destroyed the library at Alexandria.
No it's not that. They are motivated by the oldest motivation there is: pride and worship. These people came up with their theories decades ago and will do anything to suppress evidence that may show that they were wrong so they can continue to be worshipped and cited in books. There are acts of destruction going on all the time because most of the theories of the habitation of this continent that they came up with then were wrong. Kennewick Man's discovery site was quickly destroyed, because Kennewick Man proves that the academic community does not know what they're talking about. Plus it provides proof that the Asiatic Indians were not the first inhabitants of this continent.
For the bureaucrats, more ways to p*ss away tax dollars, more private land to control.
I think it's pride and with a little bit of protection of the minority's victim status thrown in.
Those fascists in the EPA during X41's term, I believe, declared a rut in the desert that fills once every hundred years, "protected wetlands".
There's more to it than environmentalism, it's the protection of the academic elite. Like I said, they are no better than the Romans who destryoed the library at Alexandria.
I haven't had much time to read through his stuff online (whatever there is) so I don't know if he has it well documented or if it is just based on legends.
Don't know where I get these things (some from FR to be sure) ... just bookmark as I go. Will have to categorize all of these things some day. But I do love this Ancient, and catastrophism (is there such a woid? LOL) stuff.
Sorry, but I can't get excited over my bones being studied for archealogical purposes in 10K years.
Would be glad to help out slighter sooner, but Kennewick time is fine by me. (Shame on John Williams though.)
Now if they were using my bones for some satanic rite, or pulling an Ed Gein...that's a horse of a different color.
I thought that was caused by an accidental fire during a battle or something?
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