Imagine walking through the dense, muddy forests
of 1840s Ohio. You're hacking your way through
this incredibly thick underbrush. Oh, and the
mosquitoes are just absolutely swarming everywhere.
Right, exactly. And you finally decide to cut
down this massive, maybe 800 -year -old oak tree
just to clear a path. Just to get your bearings,
yeah. Yeah. But when the trunk finally falls
and the dust clears, you look down and you realize
the hill this ancient tree was growing on. It
isn't a natural hill at all. No, it's an earthen
wall. It's a wall. And as you trace that wall
through, like, miles of untamed forest, you discover
it forms this perfectly engineered geometric
octagon built by some entirely vanished civilization.
I mean, it completely shatters your understanding
of the landscape. Suddenly, you're standing inside
a prehistoric monument of just staggering proportions.
And you have absolutely no idea who built it.
Right. Who built it, when they built it, or,
you know, why. Well, welcome to another deep
dive into the source material. We are so glad
you are here with us today. Yeah, thanks for
joining us. Today we are opening up a text that
is, well, it's essentially the holy grail of
American archaeology. It's called Ancient Monuments
of the Mississippi Valley. Written by E .G. Squire
and A .H. Davis. Right. Published back in 1848.
And this book is so foundational that it was
literally the very first volume ever published
in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge
series. Which is really a testament to the sheer
weight of this work. Before this book, there
really wasn't a scientific discipline of archaeology
on this continent. Not at all. This text completely
set the baseline. So our mission today for you
is to explore the breathtaking scale and the
deep mysteries of these ancient earthworks of
North America. Yeah. But crucially, And this
is the really important part. We are going to
focus on how Squire and Davis actually pulled
this off. Yeah, the methodology is wild. It is.
We're going to look at how they pioneered rigorous
field surveys and ensured strict scientific accuracy
in an era that was, frankly, completely dominated
by wild myths and armchair speculation. And we
really need to understand the climate of the
1840s to appreciate their achievement. Because,
you know, as the American frontier pushed westward
and these massive, inexplicable structures of
Earth were being revealed. I mean, we're talking
thousands of mounds. Thousands. Giant earthen
walls, perfect circles covering hundreds of acres.
People's imaginations were just running completely
wild. OK, let's unpack this. Yeah. Because the
level of speculation was Well, it was off the
charts. You had popular books and newspaper articles
claiming these mounds were built by, like, ancient
giants. Right, or the lost tribes of Israel.
Yes, or wandering Hindus. Some people even claim
they were built by refugees from the lost continent
of Atlantis. I mean, it sounds funny to us now,
but this was serious public discourse. Because
there was this underlying prejudice, right? This
idea that the Native American tribes currently
living in the region couldn't possibly have engineered
these structures. Exactly. So 19th century society
just started inventing these incredibly romantic,
fabulous origin stories to explain it away. And
that is exactly where the newly formed Smithsonian
Institution comes into play. James Smithson,
who was an English scientist, he had left his
fortune to the United States. to found an institution
for the, quote, increase and diffusion of knowledge
among men. Right. But when the Smithsonian was
actually established, they had a real problem.
They had to decide what actually constituted
knowledge. Like, how do you filter out the giants
and the Atlanteans? You do it by creating an
uncompromising standard of evidence. The Smithsonian
laid down some incredibly strict rules for publication.
Like really strict. Oh yeah. For a memoir to
be published by them, it had to rest entirely
on original research. It had to provide a positive
addition to human knowledge. And most importantly
for our story today, absolutely all unverified
speculations had to be rejected. Tossed out completely.
And what's fascinating here is that the Smithsonian
didn't just take Squire and Davis's word for
their findings. They submitted the manuscript
to a rigorous peer review commission set up by
the American Ethnological Society. And this commission
included some serious heavyweights of the era,
like Albert Gallatin, the former secretary of
the treasury. A brilliant scholar in his own
right. And Gallatin and the committee reviewed
the work and explicitly praised Squire and Davis
for their love of truth. I love that phrase,
love of truth. Right. They noted that the authors
completely eschewed the what they called fondness
for the marvelous, which had plagued literally
every other piece of writing on Western antiquities
up to that point. So to get that kind of praise,
Squire and Davis had to make a vow before they
even stepped foot into the field. They promised
to abandon all preconceived notions. They decided
to start de novo from scratch. Yeah, they approached
these monuments as if nothing had ever been written
about them before. No giants, no lost tribes.
Yeah, just. dirt, geometry, and whatever the
empirical evidence told them. Because the Smithsonian's
rules forced them to rely entirely on what they
could measure, weigh, and map. Right, if they
couldn't mechanically verify it. It didn't go
in the book, period. But, okay, that raises a
massive logistical nightmare. Because how exactly
do you map a prehistoric civilization when all
that is left are overgrown piles of dirt hidden
under centuries of old growth forest? It's incredibly
difficult. You can't just stand on a hill and
sketch what you see. The sight lines are completely
blocked by trees. Right, you can't see 50 feet
in front of you, so you have to invent a methodology
for the field. You have to put boots on the ground
and rely on the art of the scientific survey.
And their methodology was elegant in its simplicity?
but incredibly demanding in its physical execution.
Very demanding. They relied exclusively on the
surveyor's compass, the measuring line, and the
rule. And we should talk about the sheer physical
reality of using those tools in the 1840s wilderness.
Because a surveyor's compass isn't some little
plastic thing you hold in the palm of your hand.
Oh, no. It's a heavy brass instrument. It's mounted
on a tripod. It has these sighting vanes. And
the measuring line was often a Gunter's chain,
right? Yes, a literal heavy metal chain that
you had to physically drag through the mud. Over
massive tree roots, across uneven terrain, up
and down hills. It's exhausting work. And there
is absolutely no eyeballing allowed, no estimating
distances by, you know, just pacing them out.
Every single angle, every single length was mechanically
verified. Which brings us to one of the most
remarkable parts of their survey, which is the
circle tests. Oh, this is so cool. So Squire
and Davis were looking at these massive circular
earthworks, right? And some of them are a mile
in circumference. Huge. And they needed to know
scientifically, are these actually true circles
or are they just rough blob -like loops that
happen to look roundish to the naked eye? To
prove they were perfect geometric shapes, they
devised a brilliant method, which is detailed
right there in the source text. So what did they
do? They raised flags at regular intervals along
the top of the embankments. Specifically, they
set these stations exactly 300 feet apart. OK,
300 feet apart. Then they placed their heavy
surveyor's compass alternately at these stations,
sighted down the line to the next flag, and calculated
the bearings. OK, so if the structure was a true
circle? Then the angles between these stations,
measured every 300 feet along the entire circumference,
would match perfectly. The mathematical progression
of the angles would be flawless. The angles matched
perfectly. Perfectly! Which is insane. Stop for
a second and think about the implications of
that for you listening. You can't just draw a
circle. that is a mile in circumference by tying
a rope to a center stake and walking around in
a loop. No, a rope of that length would weigh
an incredible amount. It would stretch. It would
stretch. It would sag. It would snag on trees
and boulders and brush. It's physically impossible
to use a simple radius line for a structure of
that magnitude. Absolutely impossible. To build
a perfect circle on that scale requires an advanced
understanding of geometry and a sophisticated
method for keeping a consistent curve over vast
distances without a central anchor point. But
it wasn't just the circles that blew their minds.
It was the squares. Oh, the squares are fascinating.
Right. Through their strict standardization of
measurement, Squire and Davis discovered mind
blowing geometric consistency. They mapped multiple
square enclosures separated by miles and miles
of rugged terrain. Different river valleys, even.
Yeah. And they found that these squares measured
exactly 1080 feet on each side. 1080 feet, repeated
flawlessly at entirely different sites. I mean
the exactness of those 1080 foot squares. proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the ancient builders
possessed a standard of measurement. They had
their own version of a meter or a yard. Right.
And if they didn't have a written language that
has survived, how are they communicating that
exact standard unit of measurement across hundreds
of miles? Well, that's the genius of the architecture.
The structure itself is the record. Wow. And
laying out a square that is 1 ,080 feet on a
side requires 90 degree angles that are absolutely
true. Because if you're off by even a tiny bit,
if you are off even half a degree on your first
corner, by the time you try to close that square
nearly a mile later, your walls will miss each
other entirely. They just won't line up. Exactly.
They had the means to determine precise angles
without the modern magnetic compasses that Squire
and Davis were using. So Squire and Davis are
tromping through the mud, dragging their metal
chains, plotting these incredibly precise angles.
And as they accumulate all this data, their measurements
quickly reveal that the earthworks were divided
into two distinct categories based entirely on
their design. because the architecture dictates
the purpose. As they mapped, a really clear pattern
emerged in the landscape. The first category
they identified were the defensive works, the
fortresses. And the way they deduced this is
really a master class in reading topography.
because defensive works were always located on
naturally strong, easily defended positions.
Right, we are talking about the tops of steep
bluffs, or peninsulas formed by the sharp bends
of rivers where nature has already provided a
wall on three sides. Topography was the first
clue. But the engineering itself confirmed it,
because in these defensive works, the ditch,
the Foss, was almost always on the outside of
the wall. Which is exactly what you see in medieval
European castles or modern military bunkers.
You want the enemy to have to climb down into
a trench, right? And then scale the steepest
part of the wall while you were firing down at
them from above. Exactly. And they also documented
complex overlapping gateways. Instead of just
leaving a gap in the wall for a door, the ancient
engineers would overlap the walls, creating a
narrow winding corridor. So attackers would have
to funnel through this maze. Funnel through,
slowing them down and exposing their unprotected
flanks to the defenders standing on top of the
walls. The text actually highlights the fortified
hill in Butler County, where Squire and Davis
even found stone pavements and earthen lines
specifically built to cover the entrances. Yeah,
it was serious life or death military engineering.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
When you look at the second category of earthworks,
the symmetrical works, the contrast is absolutely
stark. Night and day. If the defensive works
are like military bunkers built for survival,
the symmetrical works are like grand cathedrals.
Yeah, the sacred works were almost never built
on high defensible ground. No, they were down
on the broad, flat, fertile river terraces. And
instead of following the irregular, jagged contours
of a hilltop, They were characterized by that
perfect geometry we just talked about. The exact
squares, the perfect circles, and the massive
octagons. And here is the mechanical clincher
that proves they weren't forts. In these symmetrical
works, the ditch is almost always on the inside
of the wall. Which is completely useless for
defense. Totally useless. If you are defending
a wall from an invading force and the trench
is behind you on the inside, You have nowhere
to retreat. Right. The enemy has a clear, flat
run at the outside of your wall, and if they
breach it, you are trapped in your own ditch.
It's a death trap. So the interior ditch proves
these structures had a different likely religious
or civic purpose. It was perhaps meant to separate
sacred ground from the mundane world rather than
to repel an army. The ultimate example of this
civic architecture has to be the Newark Works
in Ohio. According to the source material, this
single complex covered an area of two miles square.
It's massive. It featured a huge octagon connected
to a perfect circle by parallel walls that formed
these broad, sweeping avenues. And presiding
over it all was the observatory mound, this massive
elevation that overlooks the entire Newark complex.
When you look at the Newark works, you are looking
at pattern recognition at a societal scale. The
ancient builders weren't just throwing up dirt
randomly. They had a plan. They had a highly
organized society with dedicated military engineering
for times of war and dedicated civic or religious
architecture for times of peace. That level of
societal organization totally shatters the 19th
century prejudice that these were just primitive
wandering hunter -gatherers. Absolutely shatters
it. But mapping the surface, you know, tracing
those walls with a compass that was only half
the job. Right, because to truly understand the
scientific accuracy of Squire and Davis, we have
to look at how they investigated the inside of
the earthworks. They had to get their hands dirty.
They had to invent a way to look underground
without destroying the very thing they were studying.
And the transition from surface surveying to
excavation is where their methodology truly shines.
Because before Squire and Davis, excavating a
mound usually meant some treasure hunter with
a shovel hacking recklessly into the side of
a hill until they found a shiny rock or a bone.
Completely ruining the structural integrity of
the process. Destroying all the context, yeah.
But Squire and Davis applied strict engineering
principles to their excavations. They didn't
just dig a haphazard hole. No. They sink precise
vertical shafts, typically five to nine feet
square. Directly from the apex, the very top
of the mounds, straight down to the original
ground level. And if they needed to explore the
base further, they would push horizontal drifts
or tunnels outward from the bottom of that central
shaft. And as they dug these vertical shafts,
they didn't just shovel dirt into a pile and
ignore it. They actively read the dolt. They
recorded the stratigraphy. Yes. The text details
how they meticulously mapped the layers of the
mound as they descended. They noted alternating
convex layers of earth, thin strata of sand and
layers of gravel. Okay, let's talk about the
mechanics of those layers. Because some skeptics
at the time still argued that these mounds might
just be natural formations, you know, left behind
by ancient floods or retreating glaciers. But
Squire and Davis pointed out a fundamental rule
of geology. Water deposits material in flat,
horizontal layers as it settles. Right. But the
layers inside the mounds were perfectly convex.
They curved over the center, forming a dome shape.
You only get that specific stratigraphy if human
beings are walking up a ramp and systematically
dumping baskets of earth, sand and gravel layer
upon layer over a central point. Exactly. It
was an airtight, empirical argument for artificial
origin. But the stratigraphy solved an even bigger
problem for them. I want you to picture this.
You are digging in a mound and you find a skeleton,
and next to it is a metal button from the 1700s.
Uh -oh. Right? Does that mean the mound was built
in the 1700s? How do you know that artifact isn't
from someone who just dug a hole and dropped
it there centuries after the mound was actually
built? Temporal contamination is the absolute
nightmare of every archaeologist. It really is.
Squire and Davis solved it by using the continuity
of those thin, convex sand layers to determine
if a mound had been disturbed. Because over the
centuries later, Native American tribes would
often bury their dead in the upper portions of
these ancient mounds. It makes total sense. You
find a pre -existing dry hill that stands above
the floodplain and you think, well, that's a
great place for a grave. Without necessarily
knowing who built the hill a thousand years earlier.
Precisely. And when those later tribes dug their
graves, they would inevitably break through those
upper layers of sand. Squire and Davis noted
that if the strata were broken, the burials were
recent. I like to compare those undisturbed sand
layers to an unbroken wax seal on a sealed letter.
Oh, that's a great analogy. Right. Because if
the wax seal is broken, you know someone has
tampered with the contents. Yeah. But if you
dig down and those incredibly thin sand layers
are perfectly intact, completely unbroken all
the way across the walls of your five by nine
foot shaft, then you have absolute scientific
certainty. You know that whatever is underneath
that layer has been there since the very day
the mound was built. By documenting the exact
strata, they established a chronological timeline
within a single structure. It allowed them to
isolate the original undisturbed artifacts of
the true mound builders at the base, completely
separating them from centuries of historical
mix -ups. So they follow these unbroken sand
layers down, proving no one had disturbed the
earth since it was built. But what were they
actually protecting down there? That's the big
question. When they hit the bottom of the mounds
on the Scioto River, they didn't find graves.
They found ash. They discovered the altars of
fire. This is where Squire and Davis's excavations
revealed a deeply complex religious and economic
life. Let's focus on a site they named Mound
City. It is a group of 26 mounds, all contained
inside one massive earthwork enclosure. And when
they sank their shafts down through the unbroken
wax seals of these specific mounds, resting right
on the original surface of the earth, they found
symmetrical basins of fine clay. These clay basins
were perfectly shaped, round, square, or oval.
But what was truly remarkable was the thermal
alteration. Yeah, explain that. These clay basins
had been baked to extreme hardness by intense,
continuous fire. The text specifies that the
clay was burned up to 22 inches deep. 22 inches?
Think about the physics of that. A regular campfire
might bake the soil an inch or two. To bake solid
clay almost two feet deep, requires a roaring
inferno, sustained over an incredibly long period
of time, and deposited directly into these altars,
right into the fires, were incredible treasures.
These were offerings. Everything placed in these
basins had been subjected to the immense heat,
often fracturing and shattering from the intensity.
The text has amazing detailed descriptions of
these artifacts. They found over 200 intricately
carved porphyry pipes. And we really have to
talk about porphyry. What is it exactly? It is
an igneous rock, incredibly hard, much harder
than marble or limestone, yet these pipes were
sculpted into astonishingly accurate animal forms.
Herons, frogs, beavers. The detail was so precise
that zoologists could identify the exact species
of the animal just by looking at the stone carving.
Wow. But to carve porphyry with that level of
anatomical precision? without hardened steel
tools. I mean, that is a staggering technical
achievement. That requires sand, water, and friction.
Just slowly, slowly wearing away the stone over
thousands of hours. It implies a society that
has specialized artisans. Yeah. People whose
entire job is to create these masterpieces. Which
means someone else is growing the food to feed
them. You have a divided labor force. And the
treasures didn't stop at stone. They found copper
axes and thick copper ornaments. And Squire and
Davis noted the metallurgy here, which is fascinating.
This copper was hammered cold from pure native
copper. Which is a very specific metallurgical
process, right? They didn't smelt the ore by
melting it down into a liquid and casting it?
No, they pounded it into shape. But cold hammering
copper makes it brittle. It will eventually crack.
So how do they do it? To shape an axe, you have
to hammer it, then gently heat it, which is called
annealing, to soften it, then hammer it again.
Over and over. It shows a deep, practical understanding
of the material properties of metal. They also
found mica, this shiny, flaky mineral, cut into
perfect geometric shapes and crescents. Thousands
of pearl beads, too. But the thing that really
made me stop and reread the page was this. In
the ashes of these altars, they found obsidian.
Volcanic glass. Volcanic glass shaped into spears
and knives. Wait a minute. Volcanic glass in
Ohio. This raises an important question. Where
did it come from? Yeah. Because there are no
volcanoes in Ohio. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, we were looking at empirical
evidence of a massive continent -spanning supply
chain. Let's trace the map they built just from
the contents of these altars. The native copper
came from the shores of Lake Superior, hundreds
of miles to the north. The mica came from the
Allegheny Mountains to the east. The pearls and
marine shells came from the Gulf of Mexico to
the south. And the obsidian. That had to come
from the distant west, either the Rocky Mountains
or central Mexico. Just by scientifically logging
the items in these fire pits, Squire and Davis
mapped a trade network that would span thousands
of miles. They didn't need to guess about whether
these people were isolated. The empirical evidence
proved they were tapping into resources across
the entire continent. You don't have obsidian
traveling from the Rockies to Ohio without well
-established routes. Right. Diplomacy and an
economy capable of supporting that kind of long
-distance exchange. It is breathtaking. It completely
rewrites the assumption of a sparsely populated,
disconnected frontier. Absolutely. But while
Mound City was defined by fire and sacrifice,
Squire and Davis' systematic excavations revealed
that other mounds served very different purposes,
highlighting the vast diversity of the culture.
Because not every mound was an altar, they identified
a second major type. The sepulchral mounds. Cities
of the dead. Exactly. These were distinct from
the altar mounds. Instead of baked clay basins,
they usually contained a single skeleton at the
base, often encased in a complex timber or log
vault. The standout example they highlight is
the Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia. This
thing was a monster 50 feet high. Massive. And
instead of just sinking a vertical shaft, they
mapped it using horizontal excavation, driving
a drift straight into the side of the mound.
And inside, they found distinct timber vaults
containing skeletons. It was a massive labor
-intensive monument dedicated entirely to the
dead. And then there is a third category which
represents a massive shift in architectural style,
the temple mounds. These are mostly found in
the south. Instead of the cone shapes we see
in the Ohio Valley, these are massive, flat -topped,
truncated pyramids. They're built with graded
ascents, essentially giant earthen ramps and
flat terraces. Likely serving as the foundations
for massive wooden structures or temples. The
absolute granddaddy of them all, which the text
discusses, is Cahokia in Illinois. The source
material notes that the main pyramid at Cahokia
contains 20 million cubic feet of earth. It's
hard to even picture that. I want to give you
a true sense of scale for that number. A standard
modern dump truck holds about 400 cubic feet
of dirt. To move 20 million cubic feet, you would
need 50 ,000 modern dump trucks. and they did
it by hand exactly dug with stone or shell tools
carried in woven baskets that held maybe 50 pounds
at a time dumped and then stamped down basket
by basket 50 000 dump trucks worth of soil that
is the equivalent of building the great pyramid
of giza but doing it entirely with dirt it is
a staggering logistical feat And it implies something
fundamental about the mechanics of their society.
What's that? You cannot feed an army of earthmovers
year after year by just hunting deer and gathering
berries. Oh, you would exhaust the local game
in a month. Right. These massive civic works
imply an incredibly dense, highly organized,
and deeply agricultural population. You need
massive, sustained agricultural surplus, vast
fields of corn, just to free up the thousands
of laborers required to build Cahokia. The scale
of the architecture proves the scale of the agriculture.
So we have the altars of fire, the sepulchers
of the dead, the massive temple pyramids. But
perhaps the strangest earthworks of all are found
in the Northwest, specifically in Wisconsin.
The animal effigies. Yes. Relying on surveys
conducted by R .C. Taylor and Professor Locke,
Squire and Davis include detailed accounts of
mounds shaped like gigantic animals. Bears, foxes,
birds, some of them stretching over 150 feet
long, molded perfectly out of the prairie soil.
And what I love is how Professor Locke approached
them. He didn't just sketch a rough picture and
say, well, it looks like a fox. No. He applied
that exact same rigorous scientific approach
that Squire and Davis demanded. He recorded exact
anatomical measurements of the earthworks. He
would measure the distance from the, quote, eye
to the shoulder, end quote, and from the shoulder
to the foot of the earthen animal. He was capturing
their exact proportions to prove they were intentional,
scaled representations of wildlife, not just
random lumps of soil. It is a perfect example
of keeping the scientific methodology consistent,
even when the subject matter changes from the
pure geometry of the Ohio squares to the animal
effigies of Wisconsin. It's all about the data.
So let's step back and look at what they have
accomplished so far. Through their meticulous
surveying, we know what they built. We know how
they built it, moving tens of millions of cubic
feet of dirt. We know they traded across the
entire continent. Right. But one massive scientific
question remained for the authors, the biggest
mystery of all. When were they built? How old
is this civilization? This is perhaps their most
elegant deduction, because we have to remember
this was 1848. Right. Radiocarbon dating, which
modern archaeologists use to date organic material,
wouldn't be invented for another century. So
what does this all mean? Without carbon dating,
without a written calendar left behind, how did
Squire and Davis scientifically calculate the
age of the earthworks without resorting to guesswork?
They turned to the natural world. First, they
used botany as a biological clock. OK, how did
that work? Well, when the first European settlers
arrived in these valleys, these massive mounds
and geometric enclosures were already completely
covered by primitive old -growth forests. They
weren't bare earth. No, they looked like natural
hills covered in huge trees. Squire and Davis
literally cut down the mass of trees growing
directly on top of the earthwork walls and counted
the annual rings. And they found trees that were
600 to 800 years old, just growing right out
of the top of the embankments. But that was only
the minimum age. Why? Because they also noted
that these 800 -year -old trees were often growing
out of the decayed, crumbling remains of equally
massive predecessors. Think about the timeline
that requires. After the mounds were finally
abandoned, seeds took root. A forest grew, lived
its entire lifespan of many centuries, died,
decayed into rich soil. And then another old
growth forest grew on top of those remains. And
lived for 800 years before Squire and Davis came
along with an axe to count the rings. Exactly.
That pushes the timeline back incredibly far.
But the botany was just the warm -up. Yeah. The
most brilliant deduction they made, the one that
truly cemented the antiquity of the mounds, was
based on geology. specifically the formation
of the river terraces. I love this part because
it is so incredibly logical once you see it.
The rivers in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys
have slowly cut down through the earth over millennia.
Right. As a river cuts deeper into the bedrock,
it leaves its old floodplains behind as distinct
step -like terraces on the sides of the valley.
Like giant stairs. Yes. The highest terrace is
the oldest. That's where the river flowed tens
of thousands of years ago. As you walk down the
steps toward the water, the terraces get younger.
The lowest terrace, the one right next to the
modern river, is the newest floodplain formed
most recently. So Squire and Davis mapped thousands
of these earthworks across multiple river valleys.
They found them heavily concentrated on the second
terrace. They found them on the third terrace.
They found them on the fourth, the highest terraces.
But as they looked at their exhaustive data,
they noted a complete 100 % absence of any works
on the first terrace, the lowest and latest formed
floodplain. And that is the geological smoking
gun. Why does that matter so much? Because human
civilizations, especially agricultural ones that
rely on river transport, always build near the
water. You want to be close to the river. Exactly.
The first terrace has the most fertile soil and
the easiest access to the river. So if that lowest
terrace had existed when the mound builders were
alive, they absolutely would have built their
cities and enclosures on it. They wouldn't have
ignored the best land. The fact that there isn't
a single earthwork on the first terrace scientifically
proves that the ancient civilization flourished,
built their massive cities, and completely vanished
before the river had even finished forming its
current lowest floodplain. It is an airtight
empirical argument. They didn't need to invent
a myth about wandering tribes or ancient giants.
They used the earth itself to date the earthworks.
The river carving down, step by step, century
by century, acted as a geological clock. And
the earthworks are just stranded up there on
the upper steps of time, waiting for someone
with a surveyor's compass to finally read the
landscape correctly. It is just brilliant deduction.
It really is. And it brings us to the end of
our journey for today. We have traveled with
you from the strict, truth -seeking mandates
of the young Smithsonian Institution through
the muddy, mosquito -filled forests where Squire
and Davis dragged heavy chains to prove the existence
of giant, perfect octagons. We descended down
the square vertical shafts into the altars of
fire, examining the mechanics of cold -hammered
copper and tracing trade routes to the Rockies
through pieces of obsidian. And finally, we climbed
up the geological terraces of time to see how
rivers and tree rings proved the immense antiquity
of it all. Squire and Davis didn't just uncover
artifacts. They brought the scientific method
to the American frontier. They laid the bedrock
for all of scientific archaeology in this hemisphere.
They taught a young nation how to look, how to
measure, and how to deduce truth from the soil
without ever letting romantic imagination compromise
the hard facts. And that leaves us with a final
lingering thought for you to take away. If a
civilization so vast and powerful, capable of
moving tens of millions of cubic feet of earth
by hand, capable of engineering perfect geometry
on a massive scale and maintaining supply chains
from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico.
If they could vanish so completely that their
actual names are lost to time, leaving only silent
geometry beneath ancient trees. What monuments
are we currently building on our own latest terrace
that will puzzle the scientific surveyors of
a distant unknown future? We are sitting here
today in our modern world, confidently categorizing
our reality, but someday Our cities might just
be the murky, mysterious earthworks for someone
else's surveyor compass. Thank you so much for
joining us on this deep dive into the source
material. We will see you next time.