Native Americans of 400 AD and Earlier

History With RCS: People of the the Hopewell tradition were ancestral to many modern Indian Nations.    

                 They may also represent an important tradition extending back in what seems a continuous line, to a time of the mega Fauna. They may even have used the atlatl as early as that. They had certainly maintained a recognizable way of living extending hundreds of years into the past.

                The Hopewell people, like many other Native American people, were matrilineal. In such cultures a man and a woman may have joined under the name of the woman's family. The children of such union may have had the responsibilities and privileges of the female line. If I, as a male, were a member of the culture, my "surname" would become that of my wife's mother, grand mother, and great grandmother. My children would bear that name. I might become known for the doings of my wife's family. 

                I am far from sure of the ways matrilineality effected their culture. However even the little we can learn may help us to better consider how Patrilineality may effect a culture. 

                The Hopewell have been called Mound Builders and came from a long line of such builders. They built more than complex mounds; they built a variety of interesting earthworks. They also made tools and artworks of stone, mica, copper, bone, wood, and much else.

                A work of theirs is called the Newark Earthworks and is located near Newark and Heath, Ohio in what is now the U.S.A. Three sections of this work have been identified and called: the Great Circle, the Octagonal, and the Wright Earthworks. As you may guess the complex was built by people we call Hopewell, The work was done between 100 BC and 500 AD. The Hopewell may have begun a decline as early as 400 AD. The Great Circle has called the biggest earthwork circle in the world or in the U.S. It is very big. It is believed to have been used as a place of ceremony, social gatherings, trade, worship, and honoring the dead. 

                Scholars have demonstrated that the Octagonal Earthwork was used as a lunar observatory for tracking the moon's orbit during its 18.6 year cycle.

                Trade: Evidence of their work and commerce has been found from south Florida and near the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes, and from the Rocky mountains to the Appalachian mountains. and some say, to the Atlantic coast of North America. Much of such evidence is concentrated in the drainage areas of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers.

                After 1500 Europeans were becoming aware of the earthworks of the Hopewell and Adena people. First the Spanish and latter the French commented on some of the mounds being abandoned and over grown with grass, brush, and trees. The English and American colonists became curious of mounds at an even latter date, They dug into them. They found goods; goods of many kinds from pottery to gold. Some of their finds were wonders. Including skeletal remains of persons of a bigger of a size than any of the finders.

                Some of the finders were interested in that which could be sold. Others wondered who the builders could be. Certainly not the few sad Indians they saw around them. The Indians they saw around them were the children who's families had been diseased and cruelly exploited  by Europeans for over 300 years. What you see is what you get. They were not seeing the "noble redman." We are still learning about who those builders were. We still have much to learn. Most of the evidence points tot  the Native people living near us today.

                For now, I will say that it has seemed reasonable to believe that the Hopewell people experienced a peak in their culture from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. They were proceeded by an interesting and long lived culture called the Adena. Like the Hopewell they traded from the Gulf of Mexico to a bit beyond the Great Lakes and all along the Mississippi Drainage system, including the Ohio and Missouri rivers. There is much evidence that the Adena were active from about 1,000 BC to about 200 BC.

                Experienced ones say that we have much of value to learn from the signs left by our Native predecessors, if we would dig carefully.

                                                                                            RCS

 

Ancient Mining

  How do miners become alchemists? Suggestive evidence does make one think a bit. We have a lot to learn. We can learn from anyone. Still most of what they say may be poorly thought out. He may be even more poorly educated than we are. 

When DID ancients begin systematically taking metals from the stone? Was it in the Stone Age?

Evidence of block cave mining is certainly old, but the evidence is only of several hundred years. There is much research to be done.



selected by Richard
for Mago Bill

Back to the Adena Culture

History With RCS, archaeology: People of the the Hopewell tradition were ancestral to many modern Indian Nations. 

                They may also represent an important tradition extending back in what seems a continuous line, to a time of the mega Fauna. They may even have used the atlatl as early as that. They had certainly maintained a recognizable way of living extending hundreds of years into the past.

                 The Hopewell people, like many other Native American people, were matrilineal. In such cultures a man and a woman may have joined under the name of the woman's family. The children of such union may have had the responsibilities and privileges of the female line. If I, as a male, were a member of the culture, my "surname" would become that of my wife's mother, grand mother, and great grandmother. My children would bear that name. I might become known for the doings of my wife's family. 

                I am far from sure of the ways matrilineality effected their culture. However even the little we can learn may help us to better consider how Patrilineality may effect a culture. 

                The Hopewell have been called Mound Builders and came from a long line of such builders. They built more than complex mounds; they built a variety of interesting earthworks. They also made tools and artworks of stone, mica, copper, bone, wood, and much else.

                A work of theirs is called the Newark Earthworks and is located near Newark and Heath, Ohio in what is now the U.S.A. Three sections of this work have been identified and called: the Great Circle, the Octagonal, and the Wright Earthworks. As you may guess the complex was built by people we call Hopewell, The work was done between 100 BC and 500 AD. The Hopewell may have begun a decline as early as 400 AD. The Great Circle has called the biggest earthwork circle in the world or in the U.S. It is very big. It is believed to have been used as a place of ceremony, social gatherings, trade, worship, and honoring the dead. 

                Scholars have demonstrated that the Octagonal Earthwork was used as a lunar observatory for tracking the moon's orbit during its 18.6 year cycle.

                Trade: Evidence of their work and commerce has been found from south Florida and near the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes, and from the Rocky mountains to the Appalachian mountains. and some say, to the Atlantic coast of North America. Much of such evidence is concentrated in the drainage areas of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers.

                After 1492 Europeans were becoming aware of the earthworks of the Hopewell and Adena people. First the Spanish and latter the French commented on some of the mounds being abandoned and over grown with grass, brush, and trees. The English and American colonists became curious of mounds at an even latter date, They dug into them. They found goods; goods of many kinds from pottery to gold. Some of their finds were wonders. Including skeletal remains of persons of a bigger of a size than any of the finders.

                Some of the finders were interested in that which could be sold. Others wondered who the builders could be. Certainly not the few sad Indians they saw around them. The Indians they saw around them were the children who's families had been diseased and cruelly exploited  by Europeans for over 300 years. What you see is what you get. They were not seeing the "noble redman." We are still learning about who those builders were. We still have much to learn. Most of the evidence points tot  the Native people living near us today.

                For now, I will say that it has seemed reasonable to believe that the Hopewell people experienced a peak in their culture from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. They were proceeded by an interesting and long lived culture called the Adena. Like the Hopewell they traded from the Gulf of Mexico to a bit beyond the Great Lakes and all along the Mississippi Drainage system, including the Ohio and Missouri rivers. There is much evidence that the Adena were active from about 1,000 BC to about 200 BC.

                I hope to post about the Adena When I believe there is interest among my readers.

                Experienced ones say that we have much of value to learn from the signs left by our Native predecessors, when we would dig carefully.

RCS

 

History of Mound Robbing and Looting in the U.S.

  History of mound robbing and looting in the U.S. Bad archaeology at the Spiro Mounds Complex in Oklahoma. The history of this site looting has been largely recovered thanks to the people of the great state of Oklahoma (Way down yonder in the Indian nation). This site was such a treasure trove that it was call the King Tuts Tomb of the Arkansas Valley.

A Fireplug: we could say that its about plumbing

History With RCS: From fireplug to fire hydrant    

                 You may know a fireplug as a place often found at the corner of a city street. A dog may urinate there. A fireplug has been called a fire hydrant. 

                Reminiscing, it comes to me that the justly famous US judge, Learned Hand, was once figuratively associated with the term, fireplug. I have forgotten the story, but am pretty sure that it included a dog.  Read on and you will be able to make an educated guess as to the origin of the word "fireplug" before reaching the climax of this post. You might find useful information in the historical section at www.theplumber.com

                In the early US trunks  and limbs of hemlock and elm trees were used to make piping to carry water from one place to another. Logs from 9 -  10" thick might be cut into 7 - 9' lengths for this purpose. Not an easy piping to use.  
                

                The men who made and laid this piping were called borers. They were named for their use of the five foot steel auger they carried with them. In those days of 1600 - 1700s these men attracted a great deal of curious attention as they traveled from town to town to carry out their unusual craft. They also brought welcome news and gossip with them. No TV or radio in those days. Up the www!

                Borers bored and formed sections of trunk so that they could tightly ram log sections together to form a series. The joints were usually sealed with pitch or tar. Sometimes a log might b split, hollowed out, bound with metal hoops, and caulked with lead with the help of a blacksmith. Plumbers were later named for their use of lead. Blacksmiths was the name for iron workers to distinguish them from goldsmiths, silversmiths, bronze smiths, etc. 

                Most water systems were gravity flow outfits. They would start at perhaps a spring or stream on high ground and allow the water to flow downhill to, say, a farm house. The line might lead to the back of the house, then on to the barn, and from there on to a catch basin.

                Water was tapped by a smaller ole bored into the log and stopped with a wooden plug.

                The city of Boston was one of the earliest places in the country to have a real waterworks. It probably first went online about 1652. In those days nearly every house was of wood and had an open hearth fireplace. Fire was a major danger. So, the first water works was for both domestic and fire fighting use.

                It was comprised of a hole drilled into the side of one of those log pipes at a strategic spot and a wooden plug used to stop that hole. A fireman could then remove the plug when and where water was needed to fight a fire. Thus fireplug!

                Let me add a bit. The line supplying water to Boston's wharves and other buildings ran from Jamaica Pond to the Faneuil Hall area, the meeting place for the Massachusetts rebels who held their Boston Tea Party in the nearby harbor on Dec. 16 1773. Not so long ago a section of a wooden water main was removed from that same vicinity. The log measure 22 feet long, the bore  4"  in diameter for the lower half of the tree, and 2-1/2 in the upper. Common with early wood pipe, the trees natural forks branched out in wyes and tees.

                In 1795, The Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Corp. followed through with 15 miles more of 3" and 5" wooden water pipe of bore logs, again using hemlock trees for construction. Since open wells provided easy prey to contamination from nearby privies, the new supply of fresh water contributed to a lower death rate.

           

                 These rustic new pipelines were valuable to firefighters. They would bore a hole into the side of the wooden pipe along the edge of the street, insert a smaller pipe, and connect the hose of their fire wagon, a two man pumper. The fire out, they would plug up the hole again with a wooden plug. A fireplug.

                                                                                                                                RCS