103 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Great Hopewell Road Ancient peoples had a thing about processional roads; that is, roads used for rituals rather than commerce or simply getting from one place to another. In Britain, for example, there are the grand processional avenues at Avebury and the longer, wider Icknield Way. In South America, the famed Inca roads were preceded by thoroughfares 100feet wide that had no obvious practical purpose. The hundreds of miles of unnecessarily straight roads leading to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico seem to have been primarily for pilgrims making ritual treks to the great ceremonial complex in the canyon. Did the Indians east of the Rockies construct special roads for ritual processions? We do know of the Mohawk Trail, the Virginia Warriors Trail, and other utilitarian roads through the wilderness. And before the settlers plowed them up, there were travel-worn trails six feet deep in the earth of Iowa. Now, we learn that, indeed, the Hopewell Culture may have built a long road mainly for ritual processions. It is called the Great Hopewell Road, and it is thought to connect the Hopewell centers at Newark and Chillicothe -- a distance of 60 miles through the heart of Ohio. In 1862, the first 6 miles of this controversial road, marked by parallel earthen banks, were surveyed by two brothers, C. and J. Salisbury. They noted that the road extended much farther in the direction of Chillicothe. B. Lepper ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 26 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf127/sf127p15.htm
... Ninos have not been all bad. All around the Pacific Basin, scientists have been collecting evidence that, between 12,000 and 5,000 years ago, El Nino was virtually nonexistent and that its reappearance coincided with great cultural changes. To illustrate, coral records from the western Pacific and sediments in the Great Lakes indicate that El Nino was going strong before 12,000 BP, but then there was an unexplained, 7,000-year lull. This lull is also seen clearly in sediments in Laguna Pallcacocha, a lake in the Andes of southern Ecuador, so is El Nino's sudden resurgence around 5,000 BP. This resurgence and the associated worldwide climatic turmoil also marks the emergence of complex societies all over the planet. The Egyptians built pyramids, the Peruvians constructed temple mounds, civilizations rose and collapsed in the Middle East, and settled agrarian societies developed in many locations. Although not all cultures responded well to the climate changes, El Nino seems to have sparked the rise of modern civilizations. We are assuming that this was good! (Kerr, Richard A.; "El Nino Grew Strong As Cultures Were Born," Science, 283:467, 1999. Sandweiss, Daniel H., et al; "Transitions in the Mid-Holocene," Science, 283:499, 1999.) Comment. Wasn't that period of Global Warming between 12,000 and 5,000 BP the Golden Age when Atlantis throve, when Antarctica was ice-free, when the Sphinx was really built, and when the Garden ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 14 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf122/sf122p01.htm
... and maize are also prodigious seed producers, suggesting that these three plants were valued as fertility symbols and may not have been consumed as food. The pre-Columbian Pacific was a twoway conduit for plants and even a few animals. For example, the Old World contributed black-boned chickens, cotton, and coconuts to the New World. As for China, Johannessen has gathered evidence for early Chinadestined Pacific crossings of maize, sunflowers, a squash, chili peppers, sweet potatoes, the yambean, and grain amaranths. Most startling, though, has been the discovery of New World peanuts at two Neolithic sites in eastern China. The associated dates are astounding: 2,400 BC and 4,400 BC. Who was sailing the wide Pacific while the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge were under construction? Supporting the fossil peanuts is a written Chinese record of 300 AD describing a plant that buries its flowers in the soil and makes seeds that rattle when dry. Peanuts are very unusual that they flower above ground and then burrow into the ground to form nuts -- a characteristic one must see to believe and a story hard to fabricate. (Johannessen, Carl L.; "American Crop Plants in Asia before A.D . 1500," Pre Columbiana , 1:9 , 1998.) From Science Frontiers #125, SEP-OCT 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf125/sf125p01.htm
