...We stood on a hill overlooking the Hopeton Earthworks near Chillicothe, Ohio, south of Columbus. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Native Americans built 800,000-square-foot geometric shapes in this meadow, an enormous circle and square aligning with the movements of the sun and the moon.
...This month, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee considered 53 new sites for the list. Among the most curious submissions was the United States’ proposal: a group of eight sites in southern Ohio featuring earthen mounds and walls, collectively called the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. For nearly two decades, a mostly volunteer group of dedicated archaeologists, historians, and Native American tribal officials has been patiently making the case that these mysterious, not particularly photogenic piles of dirt are as culturally and historically significant as Stonehenge or the Colosseum. They’ve battled local opposition and national obscurity, and in some ways, the sites themselves, which are sprawling, sometimes heavily forested, and at several locations...
The journey to this honor started about 2,000 years ago, when Native people began building the earthworks that now dot southern Ohio. Since the early 19th century, white settlers have marveled at them, misinterpreted them, destroyed them, rebuilt them, studied them, and—in recent years—made the case for their historical importance...more
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