Monks Mound Update
By Bill Iseminger
December, 1999
To recap the story about "the stone in the mound," in 1998, contractors were drilling from ground level horizontally into the west side of Monks Mound to install drains to relieve the internal water that was causing severe slumping. In one of the transects, the drill operator went through 32 feet of stone, approximately 150 feet into the mound and some 40 feet below the present surface of the Second Terrace.
The operator told archaeologists from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE) who were monitoring the project, that it felt like cobbles of soft stone (such as limestone or sandstone), based on his experience in other drilling projects. How far the stone mass extended in other directions was unknown.
Subsequently, SIUE under Dr. William Woods, and SIU-Carbondale, under Dr. John Sexton conducted a series of remote sensing tests, using magnetometry and electronic resistivity, hoping to determine something about the dimensions of the stone mass. However, those tests were inconclusive as the stone was apparently deeper than these methods would penetrate. The magnetometry did show two linear anomalies about 20 meters apart and apparently above the stone, but what they are is unclear at this time. SIUE did hand auger down over 30 feet and did not hit the stone but did hit a water saturated layer (the water actually rose 10 feet in the hole) and below that a dense black clay which had a lot of compacted organic matter. This may represent a clay mound over the stone that eventually had some vegetation cover.
A target of opportunity occurred in mid-December, 1999, when a coring rig from Madison, Wisconsin became available for one day for some vertical coring, operated by Michael Kolb and Andy Jalbert. They first tried to drill through the bottom of the old auger hole, but the water and soil that had collapsed into it, making it impossible to drill properly. They came back and spent a half day drilling a new core and got down 43 feet, but did not encounter stone. They did get a couple feet into the dense black clay at the elevation where the stone was expected and may be just above it.
Unfortunately, the drilling team had to get back to Wisconsin and could not take the hour or two needed to go down a few more feet, so that will have to wait until a future date.
Despite the disappointment, important information was retrieved as a soil column was recovered which will provide information about the stratigraphy and soils of that part of the mound. Future remote sensing tests are planned that should penetrate deeper into the mound and hopefully reveal information about the size and shape of the stone mass. We will keep you updated when this takes place.
Monks Mound Update 2000
Monks Mound: SIU Edwardsville continued its program of trying to understand more about Monks Mound, following up on work they began with the repairs to the west slump and the installation of the new stairs up the front over the past few years.
Dr. William Woods led the project, which involved field school students from SIUE, SIU Carbondale under Dr. John Sexton, and also students from the University of Goettingen, Germany. Most of their project at Cahokia focused on the First Terrace of Monks Mound to test the hypothesis of its being a late addition to the front of the mound. They also are trying to identify other possible features, such as structures or pits, that lie below the surface.
Excavations during the 1960s-70s had identified historic period (mid 1700s) occupation, burials and a French chapel location on the west side of the First Terrace, all relating to an occupation by Illini (Illinois) Indians long after the Mississippians had left. The testing for the new stairway in the late 1990s also identified some large refuse pits near the center of this terrace, full of the remains of deer, bear, turtles, swans, fish, and other animals, as well as French period ceramics, gun parts, glass and knives. Recently, SIUE and SIUC have been using resistivity and other methods on the eastern portion of this terrace to see if they can identify additional features.
They also have been taking vertical cores across the terrace. The preliminary results seem to confirm that the First Terrace was indeed a late addition to the front of the mound, based on detected soil changes and angles of slope. The other resistivity test results are still being analyzed, but it will be interesting to see what they determine. No additional testing was done in the area of the stone mass under the Second Terrace, due to time and equipment restraints, but some work may be done this fall.
In fact, it is only in recent times that modern man has been able to map this coastline using sub-surface surveying techniques that can penetrate the ice sheet that lies on top of it.
Ohlmeyer had no idea how a map existing in the 16th century could have got hold of such knowledge.
This was one of the many mysteries that lead Graham to begin his epic journey into man's past that is Fingerprints of the Gods - and it is a mystery whose solution is mindblowing.
Travelling first to South and Meso-America, Graham finds evidence of myths of a white-skinned 'god' named Quetzalcoatl or 'Viracocha' who came from a drowned land bringing knowledge of farming and culture after a great flood. Tied in with these myths Graham begins to crack an ancient code imprinted in these ancient tales that refer to the 'great mill' of the heavens.
It is an astronomical code that deals with the position of the stars over vast periods of time - a code that reveals the ancients knew far, far more than they are generally credited with. Traces of the same code appear in Egyptian myth, and it is to this desert land that Graham and Santha travel, finding there haunting parallels in architecture and ritual to the New World sites they have just left behind.
Moreover, the whole layout of the Giza plateau seems to point to a date many thousands of years earlier than the date of its supposed construction - a date revealed in the astronomical alignments of the Pyramids, the 'mansions of a million years', home of the god Osiris, the bringer of agriculture to the Egyptians, like Quetzalcoatl, after a flood.
Could the Piri Reis maps be evidence for a previously unknown complex maritime civilisation, capable of mapping the globe? A global culture, cataclysmically destroyed at the end of the ice age, remnants of which survived the devastation to pass on their knowledge to the shaken world?
Were the figures of Osiris and Quetzalcoatl survivors of this lost race - passing down not only advanced geographical knowledge, but a secret astronomical code veiled in myth that pointed to the devastation in the past, and warned of that which is to come?
From the mysterious sites of Tiahuanaco and Teotihuacan, to the enduring enigmatic Sphinx and pyramids of Egypt, the grandiose Nazca lines of Peru to the stark primal beauty of the Osireion at Abydos, this is a journey both around the globe and into the heart of the true prehistoric origins of man. Part adventure, part detective story, this book will force you to revaluate your beliefs of the past.
Perhaps we need smarter science guys.
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Gods |
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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