Georeactor Blog

Rather than finish India reads with Goa, 1961, I'm picking up the Decolonization series by getting to the end of a book that I've been reading a while, a little closer to home:

The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a Lost White Race (Jason Colavito, 2020)

Colavito, an author with experience dissecting modern conspiracies and half-baked "science" takes on an old myth. The theory peaked in the 19th century, influencing presidents, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Mormon history of the Americas.

We start with early European explorers, who left few comments on the mounds other than observing a chief's house might be placed on top. Jefferson's interest in natives of Virginia ultimately led to him opening a burial mound for evidence of who was buried there. At this point, there were still Native Americans in Virginia who visited and revered the mounds on some level. The Monticello website says some encouraging things about Jefferson not taking bones or artifacts from this site, and this being early days for archaeology (this was the same time period as Europeans took interest in Pompeii).

By the time of Jackson and Lincoln, white historians believed that some lost group had created the mounds and been replaced by the tribes of the time. This appears in Jackson's arguments to Congress about Indian Removal, early Mormonism and treasure-seeking, and Abraham Lincoln's papers. Rival factions copying sections of each other's work suggested groups of Vikings or monks, a tribe of Israel or giant nephalim, Atlantis, or Aztecs (interestingly this was most popular in the lead-up to the Mexican War - giving the empires a separate racial identity and connection to the Great Lakes region). The settlers were finding more evidence of a collapsed civilization connected by trade and culture, and could not accept that in their colonial worldview.
There were also some historians who connected the mounds to a migration from Asia (claiming religious, linguistic, and phrenological connections). It was weird to see this among other theories. Wiki and other sources start a detailed discussion of Beringia research in the 1920s, so I didn't find a ton of information on early Bering believers beyond 'looks close enough'. https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/the-bering-land-bridge-theory.htm

The fever lifted in the 1890s, only when Smithsonian leadership changed hands and a report to Congress debunked various hoaxes and promoters. Some researchers were still so indoctrinated in Atlantic migration, that a hoaxer put Hebrew letters into a mound, believing as a given that the old Cherokee language was Hebrew.

Unfortunately some version of these questions and false artifacts continues through modern conspiracies, everything from Ancient Aliens, to revived Atlantis theories, to white nationalist claims to the Americas.
Despite disagreements on what arguments are worth pursuing, the book acknowledgements include Graham Hancock, for challenging archaeology's fixed beliefs and racist precepts.

The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve website says:

One radical theory claims […] the first Americans didn't cross the Bering Land Bridge at all and didn't travel by foot, but rather by boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Though the evidence for this theory is minimal, proponents argue that the artifacts were developed by an earlier and still more ancient European group, known as the Solutrean culture

Genetics disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzick-1

As someone from New Hampshire, I should mention the ongoing historical weirdness around America's Stonehenge

The Ocmulgee's mounds were recently covered in a CNN story about Macon, GA.

A visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan

I made a short bike trip in Western Michigan. In downtown Grand Rapids, between the river and the Gerald Ford Library, there are two replica mounds in Ah-Nab-Awen Bicentennial Park. These are designed to be publicly accessible, and similar in size to the mounds which were built in the region 1,500+ years ago.

Southwest of the city, in a former quartz mining area, there are several real mounds which are unusually well-preserved. These are now in the forest and not viewable from the road - I only saw equipment related to the mine. Wikipedia shows photos of a large-scale excavation in 1966: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Mound_group
While this is called the Hopewell Indian Mounds, that label covers a very large area and time period (just describes common traits on archaeological digs). The people of Western Michigan within the Hopewell Culture are now known as the Goodall Focus.

Updates to Previous Reads

Wondery has a new podcast, Hysterical, about the 2011 outbreak of an unknown sickness in girls in Le Roy, New York. The podcast has present-day interviews and new details. I hadn't heard that there was a student with Tourette's at the high school before the outbreak. I have thought about doing a blog or video presentation on the 2016 Elizabethkingia outbreaks in Wisconsin and Illinois.

Maybe insight into why small libraries are falling for self-published AI-generated works on Amazon: https://www.reddit.com/r/Libraries/comments/1eo7yar/any_good_training_videos_on_how_to_detect_ai/

Very good answer about how Malta historically accessed drinking water: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1etjcnt/how_did_the_people_from_malta_get_drinking_water/