Posted on 09/02/2002 4:23:13 PM PDT by blam
Contact: Andrea Lynn
a-lynn@uiuc.edu
217-333 -2177
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ancient Illinois village unearths lode of questions
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Digging under a blazing sun in an Illinois cornfield, archaeologists this summer unearthed a fascinating anomaly: a 900-year-old square hilltop village. The discovery near Shiloh -- about 15 miles southeast of St. Louis -- challenges previous notions of the area's first people and adds a piece to the puzzle that was Cahokia, a huge "mother culture" that suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly vanished, leaving only traces of its majesty and meaning in the 11th century.
Until now, archaeologists believed that large Cahokian populations settled only on the floodplains and that their villages sprawled in free-form fashion. This "new" ridge-sitting village with four linear sides and a rigid orientation of buildings "was mind-blowing," said lead archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I can't think of another village in this area that's like this." The great mystery: What was the purpose of this unique hinterlands village 12 miles from the major population center in Cahokia, and why did it have a large central residence and religious structures -- a plaza and four temples, all atypical of Cahokian villages?
Pauketat's hunch is that it was a farming village, a "feeder" for Cahokia, and an administrative outpost where a top official and, perhaps, functionaries, oversaw farming and "controlled that piece of the economy." The "evidence of authority" in the hinterlands "makes Cahokia look more like a centralized civilization and less like an elusive free gathering of Native Americans," Pauketat said.
University archaeologists have been digging near or at the so-called "Grossmann Site" for several years, but it was only this summer that Illinois graduate student and chief supervisor Susan Alt, Pauketat and a group of Illinois students found the third and fourth sides -- now only stains in the ground – of the village, the 75 small rectangular houses that lined the sides, and the four giant temples. In the center of each temple, they found the holes that once held the telephone-pole-sized roof supports. The temples had huge vaulted ceilings and thatched roofs, "something you usually see on a mound top. We were completely shocked." They also found some temple "ritual debris," including a figurine -- fire-splintered into perhaps 2,000 pieces, plus crystals and burned tools. These probably are "the remains of annual ritual burnings, ceremonies called 'renewing the temple.' "
Cahokia was "drawing great numbers of people into it," Pauketat said. "It goes from 1,000 to 10,000 people in a matter of 50 years. Most went to Cahokia, but some ended up in places like this, sent to help administer the farmers." Why so many people relocated so rapidly is still a mystery, he said.
Some archaeologists, including Pauketat, think of Cahokia as a mother culture. "They do something that is entirely unique and they do it much earlier. Within a century or two, people up and down the Mississippi and across the coastal plain of the Southeast are copying them, so you get Mississippian mounds and large settlements, but you never get anything that rivals this. So, Cahokia is just a moment, an experiment in civilization, that falters and goes away and never really comes back."
### The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society also supported the dig.
Yup. By the Corp Of Engineers at the direction of 'officials' high in the Clinton Administration. A court has just awarded the scientists the bones of Kennewick Man for further study. (a win!)
I seriously find that hard to believe. Unless said evidence would redirect grants away from said academics.
Anything for a grant, don't you know?
For the bureaucrats, more ways to p*ss away tax dollars, more private land to control.
Those fascists in the EPA during X41's term, I believe, declared a rut in the desert that fills once
every hundred years, "protected wetlands".
Looked up KM and can't find anything about the site being destroyed, but saw a diagram of the site, essentially on a river bank.
Even the Polynesians tried to grab some cash, huh?
Oh, it was destroyed. I read a blow by blow account of it in James C. Chatters (he did most of the Kennewick Man work and in fact lives in Kennewick) book titled, Ancient Encounters. He was called a MF and threatened a number of times by the indians.
I despise these members of the academic community so much. Evidence doesn't support their theories so they destroy, and accuse others of believing in myths. They are the ones that believe in myths and will suppress knowledge to protect their sacred cows.
A court has just awarded the scientists the bones of Kennewick Man for further study. (a win!)
That's good, but Kennewick man is a high profile case. There are other acts of evidence destruction going on all the time that we don't hear about. The academic community is no better than the Romans who destroyed the library at Alexandria.
No it's not that. They are motivated by the oldest motivation there is: pride and worship. These people came up with their theories decades ago and will do anything to suppress evidence that may show that they were wrong so they can continue to be worshipped and cited in books. There are acts of destruction going on all the time because most of the theories of the habitation of this continent that they came up with then were wrong. Kennewick Man's discovery site was quickly destroyed, because Kennewick Man proves that the academic community does not know what they're talking about. Plus it provides proof that the Asiatic Indians were not the first inhabitants of this continent.
For the bureaucrats, more ways to p*ss away tax dollars, more private land to control.
I think it's pride and with a little bit of protection of the minority's victim status thrown in.
Those fascists in the EPA during X41's term, I believe, declared a rut in the desert that fills once every hundred years, "protected wetlands".
There's more to it than environmentalism, it's the protection of the academic elite. Like I said, they are no better than the Romans who destryoed the library at Alexandria.
I haven't had much time to read through his stuff online (whatever there is) so I don't know if he has it well documented or if it is just based on legends.
Don't know where I get these things (some from FR to be sure) ... just bookmark as I go. Will have to categorize all of these things some day. But I do love this Ancient, and catastrophism (is there such a woid? LOL) stuff.
Sorry, but I can't get excited over my bones being studied for archealogical purposes in 10K years.
Would be glad to help out slighter sooner, but Kennewick time is fine by me. (Shame on John Williams though.)
Now if they were using my bones for some satanic rite, or pulling an Ed Gein...that's a horse of a different color.
I thought that was caused by an accidental fire during a battle or something?
The burning of the Temple of Jerusalem could be considered partially an accident, but I had never heard that the Library fire was an accident.
If the Library fire wasn't an accident, then that means that our academic community is worse than the Romans.
So as long as they purposely destroy evidence that you don't care about, that's fine? If they're willing to cover up the truth about this, then they're willing to destroy the truth about anything. That hurts us all.
It's just one of many cases. For those of us who like to know the truth about the ancient past, what they have done is utterly disgusting. No wonder the Clinton Administration was involved. Seems like they were involved with everything that could be labeled "disgusting" in the 90s.
Pity...
Found: January 1989, at a gravel quarry near Buhl, Idaho
Age: 10,600 years
Discoverers: Highway workers
Significance: Having been reburied by Shoshone-Bannock tribes in 1991 before thorough study could occur, Buhl Woman underscores scientists' fears of losing access to ancient Paleoindian skeletons.
Yup. And the order to do so came from the highest levels of the Clinton administration. SOB'S
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