A huge archaeological site has been unearthed in Ohio dating to the Hopewell time period. From the news report: Five weeks of digging this summer by professional and amateur archaeologists from the Cleveland Museum and the Firelands Archaeological Research Center, guided by the magnetic readings, have confirmed the presence of a major occupation, and have [...]
Chickasaw.tv, the Chickasaw Nation’s online video network, has produced an amazing video featuring the Moundville site in Alabama. The video features aerial flyovers of the Moundville site revealing its true majesty. The site notes, Moundville was a preeminent ancient center of mound culture on the Black Warrior River, just west of present-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It [...]
New research reveals that symbols which appear on ancient Georgia pottery are identical to Mayan glyphs, the symbols used to write the Mayan language. The pottery known as Swift Creek was a highly decorated form of pottery produced around 2,000 years ago beginning around 0 A.D. Many of the Swift Creek designs were collected in [...]
One of the many mysteries involving the ancient Maya is the origin of a blue pigment they used to paint murals and buildings. Archaeologists have searched far and wide for the source of this pigment. It now appears that the largest source of the clay that makes this pigment can be found in southwest Georgia. [...]
Dennis Stanford spent thirty years of his career searching the Arctic and Russian Siberia for the origins of the Clovis Culture, the supposedly first Native American culture in America. After thirty years of searching he found no evidence that Clovis came across a land bridge from Siberia. What the evidence suggested was that the Clovis [...]
Chihuahua pot from Niesler Mound in Georgia The origins of the Chihuahua have been lost in the mists of time yet new research reveals they once roamed the southern states of Georgia and Tennessee. The discovery was made by analyzing dog effigy pots unearthed in Georgia and Tennessee to determine the most likely breed they [...]
Watch an excerpt from the Lost Worlds: Georgia DVD. Buy today or make a donation and help support LostWorlds.org. All proceeds help fund future videos and exhibits. Six hours southeast of Atlanta off the Georgia coast on Sapelo Island, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient walled city which predates the construction of [...]
Architect and scholar Richard Thornton has published his findings about an archaeological site on the side of Georgia’s highest mountain peak, Brasstown Bald. His conclusion, that the site was built by the Maya, could rock the archaeological community who have insisted for decades that no evidence existed for the presence of people from Mexico in [...]
This engraved conch shell was unearthed in Craig Mound at Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma. LeFlore County, often referred to as “Little Dixie,” was once home to a thriving national center of commerce. This lively metropolis enjoyed its heyday not in recent memory, but between 700 and 1400 A.D. According to Dennis Peterson, archaeologist and site manager [...]
Close to the end of the last ice age there was a sudden disappearance of many mammalian species which some paleontologists say was the most severe since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In North America 95 percent of the megafauna became extinct, these being predominantly mammals having body weights greater than [...]
To the untrained eye, there’s nothing special about the earthen hump that runs for hundreds of feet alongside picturesque Miami Bluff Drive and curves down along the edge of the woods toward the Mariemont Swimming Pool. At certain points, it’s undetectable from the road because trees, honeysuckle and weeds grow on parts of it. But [...]
Was the course of life on the planet altered 12,900 years ago by a giant comet exploding over Canada? New evidence found by UC Assistant Professor of Anthropology Ken Tankersley and colleagues suggests the answer is affirmative.
COLUMBIA — Fans of the Saluda River now have a new place to learn about the area’s Native American history. Officials from South Carolina Electric & Gas and the Saluda Shoals Park are holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday to open a new display at the Saluda Shoals Environmental Education Center in Columbia. The center [...]
EVANSTON, Ill. — Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago. This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by [...]
Sunflowers were grown as a domesticated crop in Mexico more than 2,000 years ago, according to a new study. The new findings run counter to a theory that sunflower farming began in what is now the U.S. East and then trickled south into Mexico.
Kings living in palaces may have ruled New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago, causing Pueblo people to reject the brawny, top-down politics in the centuries that followed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist.
A rock carving discovered in Arizona might depict an ancient star explosion
seen by Native Americans a thousand years ago, scientists announced today.
If confirmed, the rock carving, or “petroglyph” would be the only known
record in the Americas of the well-known supernova of the year 1006.
Before the advent of calendars, the only way to mark the changing of the seasons was through direct observation. Ancient peoples observed the passage of the sun north from the Winter Solstice, and then south from the Summer Solstice. In Mesoamerica the people observed the sun passing directly overhead twice a year by using special tubes in the temples that pointed at the zenith.
Dr. Hugh Berryman, research professor, was one of only 11 experts
from across the United States to scrutinize the bones of Kennewick
Man, a 9,300-year-old skeleton found 10 years ago along the Columbia
River at Kennewick, Wash.
Native American cultures that once flourished in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia constructed geometric and animal-shaped earth works that often rivaled Stonehenge in their astronomical accuracy. This lost heritage from the Adena, Hopewell and Fort Ancient cultures is returning in the form of a traveling exhibit that will include virtual reconstructions of earthworks from 39 sites.
Amateur archeologists will get a chance to search this summer for the lost mission of Santa Isabel de Utinahica, built in the wilderness in the 1600s for a lone friar who was dispatched to evangelize among the Indians on the edge of Spain’s colonial empire.
Jaguars and panthers aren’t from Indiana but they show up at the Mann Hopewell Site as beautifully detailed carvings. Put them together with clay figurines that have slanted eyes — not a Hopewell feature — and Linderman says we could be looking at a connection between Indiana and Central or South America.
Watson Brake, an area of mounds south of Monroe, was discovered by local archaeologist Reca Jones more than 30 years ago. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to have the area declared a state park to preserve its treasures.
An ancient civilization of mound builders who lived near the Ocmulgee River just northeast of what is now downtown Macon may have been home to more native people than originally thought. Though the research, much of it done with a ground-scanning instrument to roughly map underground shapes and forms, is still under way, early analysis seems to indicate more unearthed dwellings at the site than were previously known to have existed.
