[Aztlan] Octagon Earthworks of Ohio Alignments

[michael ruggeri]

Octagon Earthworks’ alignment with moon likely is no accident
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

BRADLEY T. LEPPER
Columbus Dispatch


The Octagon Earthworks in Newark is one remnant of the Newark  
Earthworks, recently listed by The Dispatch as one of the Seven  
Wonders of Ohio.

Earlham College professors Ray Hively and Robert Horn demonstrated in  
1982 that the walls of this 2,000-yearold circle and octagon were  
aligned to the points on the horizon, marking the limits of the  
rising and setting of the moon during an 18.6-year cycle.

The implications of this argument for our understanding of the  
knowledge and abilities of the ancient American Indian builders of  
the earthworks are astounding. But how can we know whether they  
deliberately lined the walls up with the moon or whether the series  
of alignments is just an odd coincidence?

In the current issue of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology,  
Hively and Horn use statistics to address this question.

And while they acknowledge that they cannot provide a definitive  
answer, their analyses certainly offer compelling evidence to support  
their idea that the sites are among the world’s earliest astronomical  
observatories.

Hively and Horn focused on five alignments. These are the main axis  
of the site, which points toward the maximum northerly rise point of  
the moon, and the orientation of four of the octagon’s eight walls,  
which align variously with the moon’s maximum southern rise point,  
the minimum northern rise point, the maximum northern set point and  
the minimum southern set point.

They performed a "Monte Carlo" analysis in which a computer randomly  
generates more than 10 billion equilateral octagons, randomly aligned  
them to a compass bearing and then checked how many astronomically  
significant alignments resulted.

They determined that, even "making the most generous plausible  
combination of assumptions favoring chance alignments," the odds that  
the alignments at Newark are merely accidental are about one in a  
thousand. Using more reasonable assumptions, the odds are more like  
one in 40 million.

This does not take into account several other lunar alignments  
incorporated somewhat more subtly into the earthworks. Neither does  
it consider the fact that Hively and Horn have shown that High Bank  
Works in Chillicothe, the only other circle and octagon combination  
built by the Hopewell culture, also is aligned to the same series of  
lunar rise and set points.

It’s a safe bet that these ancient Ohioans understood a lot more  
about astronomy than most of us have recognized.

Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical  
Society.

blepper at ohiohistory.org




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