Earthworks of the Native American Hopewell - Lunar Alignments

"Hively and Horn (1982)¹ added a significant dimension to our appreciation of the Hopewellian achievement when they determined that the major rising and setting points of the moon, encompassing an 18.6 year cycle, are incorporated into the architecture of the Newark Earthworks. They speculate that this astronomical information is not just symbolically encoded into the site plan, but that the substantial earthen walls, with their long sight lines and a height that corresponds, more or less, to eye level, are massive (and therefore long-lived and tamper proof) fixed instruments for making astronomical observations." 

-- Dr. Brad Lepper, from A View from the Core, A synthesis of Hopewell Archaeology, edited by Paul J. Pacheco




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