Archaeologists in East St. Louis, Illinois, dig to find an ancient civilization that vanished.

The largest excavation of a prehistoric site in the country is poised to solve a riddle about Illinois prehistory that has lingered for a century — where did the Mississippians (the Indigenous People) go? And why?

The Mississippian culture was a mound-building civilization of indigenous people that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 1600 AD to 800 AD, varying regionally.

An enormous dig of a village site in 2011 first inhabited about 1000 A.D. on 78 acres of what used to be the St. Louis National Stock Yards Company [1]. The stockyards company built 'National City, a small town for its employees, just 2 miles north of East St. Louis, Illinois. The site is providing so much data and so many artifacts that archaeologists are daring to speculate that basic questions about the indigenous people may finally be answered.

The St. Louis National Stockyards Company.

The indigenous people, whose pottery and building styles identify them as a single cultural group, lived in or near the Mississippi Valley more than 1100 years ago. They erected complex cities, built enormous mounds for ritualistic purposes, and disappeared in the space of about 200-300 years.

But the stockyards dig, known as the "East St. Louis site," was abandoned by the indigenous people after only 150 years.

This site is 8 miles west of the region's main group of mounds, now the grounds of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site near Collinsville, which was occupied for about another 150 years after they left the East St. Louis site. However, less than 1% of the Cahokia Mounds site has been excavated because of a policy that the area should be reserved for future study.

But the East St. Louis village site will be fully excavated.

"By 1200 AD, the indigenous people are gone from this site with no evidence of any other occupation," said archaeologist Patrick Durst about the dig at the old stockyards. Durst, of the Prairie Research Institute of the University of Illinois at Champaign, supervises 90 hired diggers.

"What happened to them is one of the research questions we're hoping to answer. Having an opportunity to completely investigate a major portion of a site, this large is almost unheard of. When we are finished with this project, more of the East St. Louis mound group and the complex associated with it will have been excavated than all of Cahokia," says Durst.

One of the questions is whether the people who lived in the East St. Louis village site were the same people who lived at the much larger Cahokia Mounds site.

"We're trying to identify how this community, and its large mound center, relates to Cahokia, the largest mound center," Durst said, "We don't know exactly the direct relationships between these groups. It could be different groups that didn't necessarily work together. We don't necessarily think they were enemies, but they may not be the exact same cultural groups."

For residents of Southern and central Illinois, the ancient indigenous people represent a presence that turns up in daily life, from the "birdman" symbol etched into state highway overpasses to the term "Cahokia."

The Real Cahokia "Birdman Tablet."

But what is still unknown is: Where did they come from and what happened to them? Did they die off, or did they become the "Indians" of more modern times?

The small army of diggers has been working since 2008 to finish this excavation by the end of the year. This area, once home to 3,000 people who lived 500 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, lies in the path of the New Mississippi River Bridge Project (rebuilding a new Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge beginning in August of 2018) and must be excavated or lost to bulldozers. Less than a mile away near St. Clair Avenue, construction crews are already repaving roads that will lead to the bridge.

For archaeologists, this location is significant because it would have been the first habitation seen by visitors in prehistoric times to this region as they cruised down a much wider and shallower Mississippi River in dugout canoes. The village would have been in the path of native people headed for the Cahokia Mounds ritual center 8 miles further inland.

Durst speculated that from the river, the village would have been an awesome sight easily visible because the years of habitation would have deforested the slope leading from the rivers-edge. Hundreds of smoke plumes from campfires would have filled the horizon. And marker poles, which were tree trunks set upright in the ground and possibly containing forbidding carvings of gods or animals, warned visitors that they were entering a place where highly civilized people ruled.

Artifacts usually found in other states, including pieces of finely decorated pottery from Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa and beads carved from shells from the Gulf of Mexico, are being found almost daily. These discoveries support a long-held theory that the entire Cahokia area was the center of a culture that built mounds throughout the Midwest and southeastern United States.

A 6-inch high stone statue of a kneeling woman holding a conch shell was found in 2010. It is believed to be one of only a few that are known to exist.

Durst said that the sheer amount of data being collected all from one place is likely to lead to answers to basic questions about the indigenous people.

A smaller but very artifact-rich, nearby site just east of Brooklyn, Illinois, called "Janey B. Goode," was excavated in the early 2000s. Durst said that it contained about 800 features. A feature can be the remains of a dwelling or communal structure, a waste pit, fireplace or hearth or the dark stains in the earth where large, log-like poles were placed upright in the ground.

But the larger East St. Louis site has more than 2,500 features, including the remains of 500 dwellings, although many more ancient homesites might remain buried, Durst said.

"How and when this urban commercial and ritual center all came together and what caused it to fall apart is what we want to answer," said Brad Koldehoff, an archaeologist and cultural resources director for the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). The dig is a joint effort by the Illinois State Archaeological Survey and IDOT.

Koldehoff said that the village's abandonment might have been a result of the overexploitation of animals and plants. While the indigenous people depended on fishing and growing a primitive type of corn and other vegetables, like squash and beans, they needed firewood and meat from game animals to augment their diet.

"Staying in one place too long almost sets you up to fail," Koldehoff said.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] National City was a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois. Incorporated in 1907, it was a company town for the St. Louis National Stock Yards Company. In 1996, the company, which owned all residential property in the town, evicted all of its residents. The following year, because it had no residents, National City was dissolved by a court order. Its site was subsequently annexed by nearby Fairmont City, Illinois.

[2] The Birdman Tablet was discovered in 1971 during excavations at the base of the eastern side of Monks Mound, conducted by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Archaeologists theorize that the bird of prey on the front of the tablet symbolically represents the Upper World. The Middle World (of man) is represented by the human figure wearing the costume, and the Lower World is represented by the snakeskin pattern found on the back of the tablet.

Prehistoric Saltwater Shark Nursery Fossils Found in Illinois.

Not far from Chicago, in a region now dominated by cornfields and whitetail deer, scientists say they've found fossil evidence of a “shark nursery” where prehistoric predators hatched.

The finding, which challenges long-held notions about ancient marine life, highlights a collection of prized local fossils preserved for more than 310 million years by a rare geologic process and then brought to the surface in recent decades by coal mining.

Like salmon in reverse, long-snouted "Bandringa Rayi" sharks (henceforth; Bandringa) migrated downstream from freshwater swamps to a tropical coastline to spawn 310 million years ago, leaving behind fossil evidence of one of the earliest known shark nurseries.

Photo of a fossil impression left by a juvenile Bandringa Rayi shark. These long-extinct sharks are known for their extremely long spoonbill snouts, which resemble those of modern-day paddlefish. This individual measures about 4 inches from snout to tail and was found in marine sediments at the Mazon Creek deposit in Illinois.

Fossils of Bandringa was discovered in 1969 in Will County as strip mining altered the landscape south of Chicago. Coal companies would discard piles of dirt rich with fossils, said Paul Mayer of the Field Museum, and allow people to pick through the churned earth.

Michael Coates, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist, said the Bandringa sharks likely spent most of their adult lives in the rivers that run through present-day Ohio and Pennsylvania, citing fossils found in those states in recent decades. But Coates and a colleague suggest that the long-snouted critters laid their eggs and spent the early part of their lives in shallow coastal waters, such as the sea that once covered Illinois' Mazon Creek area and much of the Midwest.

Fossils of Bandringa Rayi were discovered in Will County, Illinois in 1969.

Amateur archaeologists and experts alike combed through the piles, and many of the fossils they brought home ended up at the Field Museum, which has the two Illinois samples studied by Coates, a public display about Mazon Creek, and thousands of the region's specimens in storage.

Mazon Creek's fossils began forming hundreds of millions of years ago when flowering plants and grass were nonexistent and when dinosaurs — not to mention humans — had yet to roam the Earth, Mayer said.

“When these sharks died, they fell into the mud of an estuary or even freshwater ponds in a little delta-like area,” said Mayer, who oversees about 40,000 Mazon Creek specimens as the Field's fossil invertebrate collections manager. “They were buried in the mud, and, for whatever reason, iron came in and cemented the rock around them.”

The process preserved many organisms that would have simply decomposed elsewhere, allowing today's scientists to study ancient jellyfish, worms, and the soft-bodied Tully Monster. It also led to a fuller picture of sharks.

The Tully Monster is found only in Illinois and is the state's official fossil.

“The preservation of Mazon Creek allowed us to reconstruct this animal in detail using the fossil record,” said Lauren Sallan, a University of Michigan evolutionary biologist, who started the research as a graduate student rotating through Coates' Chicago lab.

Coates and Sallan's analyzed two Bandringa samples from Mazon Creek originally identified by scientists as separate species. The juvenile sharks, just 4 to 6 inches long, had pronounced spoon-billed snouts that stretched half as long as their bodies and, Coates said, “looks a little bit like the things you see today in sturgeon, paddlefish.” Their findings suggest that the two sets of fossils are in fact members of the same bottom-feeding species, and a juvenile version of the adult sharks found fossilized in Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

After reevaluating 24 fossils, including latex “peels” of Bandringa’s scale-covered skin, it was concluded that Bandringa was a single species that lived, at various times during its life, in fresh, brackish water, and salt water.

Young Bandringas — but not adults — have turned up in Illinois and adult ones — but not their offspring — were found farther east suggests that the sharks thrived in freshwater but used saltwater havens (like the one south of present-day Chicago) as a “shark nursery” to lay eggs and allow young animals to live safely.

Although no sharks living today are known to travel from freshwater to saltwater to lay eggs, most sharks do use shark nurseries.

An artist’s rendering of a 310 million-year-old Bandringa Rayi shark, originally found in fossil deposits from Mazon Creek in Illinois.

The physical differences between the two purported species were due to different preservation processes at marine and freshwater locations, Coates and Sallan concluded. The freshwater sites tended to preserve bones and cartilage, while the marine sites preserved soft tissue.

By combining the complementary data sets from both types of fossil sites and reclassifying Bandringa as a single species, Coates and Sallan gained a far more complete picture of the extinct shark’s anatomy and discovered several previously unreported features. They include downward-directed jaws ideal for suction-feeding off the bottom (getting their nutrients from algae and other plant material), needle-like spines on the head and cheeks, and a complex array of sensory organs (electroreceptors and mechanoreceptors) on both the extended snout and body, suited for detecting prey in murky water.

It’s also the earliest evidence for segregation, meaning that juveniles and adults were living in different locations, which implies migration into and out of these nursery waters. Adult Bandringa sharks lived exclusively in freshwater swamps and rivers, according to Coates and Sallan. Females apparently traveled downstream to a tropical coastline to lay their eggs in shallow marine waters, a reverse version of the modern-day salmon’s sea-to-stream migration. At the time, the coastline of the super-continent Pangaea ran diagonally between the Mazon Creek freshwater and marine sites.

All the Bandringa fossils from the Mazon Creek marine sites are juveniles, and they were found alongside egg cases -- protective capsules that enclose eggs of the next generation -- belonging to an early species of shark. Adult Bandringa fossils have been found only at freshwater locations, including several in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

An artist’s rendering of a 310 million-year-old, bottom-feeder, Bandringa Rayi shark.

Coates and Sallan said that the juvenile Bandringa sharks hatched from the Mazon Creek egg cases and that the deposit’s marine sites represent a shark nursery where females spawned and then departed, returning upstream to freshwater rivers and swamps.

“This is the first fossil evidence for a shark nursery that’s based on both egg cases and the babies themselves,” Sallan said. “It’s also the earliest evidence for segregation, meaning that juveniles and adults were living in different locations, which implies migration into and out of these nursery waters.”

The findings, both scientists say, were possible only because of the fossils found south of Chicago, which are renowned in scientific circles even if they're unknown to many locals. Coates said he learned about the fossils as a graduate student in the United Kingdom and was eager to study them when he arrived here. “The Mazon Creek fossils are world-famous,” he said, “and it's on Chicago's doorstep.”

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals of Illinois.

Tyrannosaurus Rex

No dinosaur bones or fossils have ever been discovered in Illinois -- for the simple reason that this state's geologic sediments were being eroded away, rather than actively deposited, during most of the Mesozoic Era [1] (250,000,000 BC to 65,000 BC). No dinosaur bones or fossils have been found in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana or Ohio.

Still, Illinois can boast a significant number of amphibians and invertebrates dating to the Paleozoic Era [2] (541,000,000 BC to 251,900,000), as well as a handful of Pleistocene period (2,600,00 BC to 12,000 BC) pachyderms (Woolly Mammoths, Mastodons and other elephant type mammals). Illinois was geologically unproductive for much of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras (250,000,000 BC to 2,000,000 BC), hence the lack of fossils dating from this vast expanse of time.

Woolly Mammoths

American Mastodon

However, conditions improved tremendously during the Pleistocene period when herds of Woolly Mammoths and American Mastodons tramped across this state's endless plains (and left scattered fossil remains to be discovered, piecemeal, by 19th and 20th-century paleontologists).

Joe Devera has been an Illinois State Geological Survey geologist for over 30 years. "Other dinosaurs, such as T-Rex, could be found in Illinois, but they're covered up by vegetation and soil," he said. "People think of dinosaur bones out West because the ground is dry and eroded, and bones are much easier to find," Devera said he believes dinosaurs roamed the state during the Cretaceous period (145,000,000 BC to 66,000,000 BC).

Devera is particularly interested in finding the bones of duckbilled dinosaurs -- plant-eaters known as hadrosaurs -- because their remains have already been detected in northeastern Missouri. Devera said a researcher got "darn lucky" in Missouri and found dinosaur fossils when a well was being dug. Three kinds of dinosaur fossils have been found in Missouri: Hadrosaurs, Parrosaurus, and a small Tyrannosaurid (perhaps Albertosaurus).

After hours of research, I finally found Tyrannosaurus Rex bones in Illinois. It's SUE, the famous T. Rex we all know and love. 

SUE in the Main Hall of the Field Museum in Chicago.

She is no longer featured in the main entrance hall of the Field Museum in Chicago.

SUE is in Chicago's Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet of the Field Museum.

SUE is in her new home in the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet display on the upper level of the Field Museum.

Is it possible to find dinosaur fossils in Illinois?

To find dinosaurs, you need Jurassic or Cretaceous-age rocks. Unfortunately, there are no Jurassic rock outcroppings in Illinois and very little Cretaceous. As you can see, there is just a tiny bit of dark green at the southern point of Illinois and an even smaller patch in western Illinois. These dark green colored locations are mapped as "Undifferentiated" Cretaceous -- which means their age has not been accurately determined yet. It's not hopeful. If the rocks contained common, well-preserved fossils, we would already know their age.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] The Mesozoic Era includes the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.

[2] The Paleozoic Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from 541,000,000 BC to 251,900,000, and is subdivided into six geologic periods: the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian.

Out Of Place ARTifacts (OOPArt) found in Illinois.

Throughout recorded history, diggers — amateur and professional — have been finding objects that appear modern or made of advanced materials but are located in old rock or other places where they shouldn't, or couldn't, be. Such objects have become known as Out Of Place ARTifacts (OOPArt) are artifacts of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in an unusual context that challenges conventional historical chronology by being "too advanced" for the level of civilization that existed at the time or showing "human presence" before humans were known to exist. Other examples suggest contact between cultures that are hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.

An 1870 OOPArt found in Illinois Rock
During the drilling of an artesian well at Lawn Ridge, 20 miles north of Peoria, Illinois, in August 1870, one of the workmen, Jacob W Moffitt (1841-1922) of Chillicothe, discovered a coin-like object (usually referred to as a 'medallion,' although it lacks any hole or loop by which it might have been suspended) when the bit had reached a depth of about 114 feet according to Peter Kolosimo. The object was made from an indeterminate copper alloy, about the size and thickness of a U.S. quarter of that period and was decorated on both sides.

On one side were two human figures, one large and one small; the larger was wearing a headdress. This is usually described as a crowned woman holding a crowned child, but the sketch does not bear this out: it looks more like a warrior in a feathered headdress about to strike a fallen enemy.

The other side is said to have depicted a central crouching animal with long, pointed ears, large eyes and mouth, claw-like arms and a long tail, frayed at the tip, with a horse below it and to the left; again, the drawing seems to show something slightly different from this. Around the edges of the 'medallion' were obscure symbols usually described as hieroglyphs, although they resemble no known script. It was of uniform thickness and appeared to have cut edges.

A sketch of the medallion from Lawn Ridge, Illinois.

According to an account by Professor Alexander Winchell (1824-1891), State Geologist for Michigan, in his book Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer, he received a statement from another eye-witness, Dr. William H Wilmot, dated December 4, 1871, of the deposits and depths of materials made during the boring. The numismatist William Ewing Dubois (1810-1881) gave a report to the American Philosophical Society where he suggested that it had passed through a rolling mill, with the edges showing evidence of machining. The figures appeared to have been etched with acid.

Professor Winchell presented the object to a meeting of the Geological Section of the American Association at its meeting in Buffalo (New York) in 1876. One participant, J.R. Lesley, suggested that the artifact was a practical joke and that it might have been dropped into a hole by a passing French or Spanish explorer centuries earlier. He also suggested that the figures on either side of the object represented the astrological signs of Pisces and Leo and claimed to find the date 1572 in the symbols.

Winchell was adamant that the symbols were indecipherable in terms of any known script and that the practical joke hypothesis failed because no one could have dropped an object into a hole in the expectation that someone several hundred years later would happen to drill at that precise spot. He was convinced the coin had been in the deposit from 200,000 to 400,000 years ago at 114 to 125 feet before its discovery and had not just fallen into a hole.

It is difficult to know what to make of this curious object without descriptions and a preliminary sketch. It was clearly not a coin of recent date, but there are problems in accepting it as ancient or pre-Columbian.

There are good reasons for this. Firstly, coinage is a historically specific development, beginning in the first millennium BC in the eastern Mediterranean region: all coins and coin-like medallions derive from these original models. Secondly, copper alloy production was unknown in pre-Columbian North America. It might have been a curio or souvenir of the nineteenth century if it was not a hoax.

An 1891 OOPArt found in Illinois Coal
According to the World Coal Association, the process responsible for coal formation began 360 to 290 million years ago. With this in mind, finding any human artifacts within this ancient substance is impossible. Incredibly, many items have reportedly been found in such deposits, either inside the coal itself or deep down within coal veins found in mines that have been tunneled out far beneath the Earth's surface. OOPArts found in coal and stone are some of the strangest unexplained artifacts.

The Morrisonville Times, an Illinois newspaper, reported on June 11, 1891, the unusual discovery of a modern artifact found embedded in a lump of coal that had originated from a Southern Illinois mine, which the Illinois State Geological Survey said had formed between 320 and 260 million years ago, at some time during the Carboniferous Period (about 359 to 299 million years ago) or the Permian Period (about 299–252 million years ago). 

The bizarre report printed as follows:

"A curious find was brought to light by Mrs. S.W. Culp last Tuesday morning. As she was breaking a lump of coal preparatory to putting it in the scuttle, she discovered, as the lump fell apart, embedded in a circular shape a small gold chain about ten inches in length of antique and quaint workmanship."

According to the report, Mrs. Culp initially suspected that the chain must have accidentally been dropped into the coal container. However, as she picked up the chain, she saw that it was still attached to the coal itself.

No picture of the delicate gold chain exists.

The news article read:

"The idea of its having been recently dropped was at once made fallacious, for as the lump of coal broke, it separated almost in the middle, and the circular position of the chain placed the two ends near to each other; and as the lump separated, the middle of the chain became loosened while each end remained fastened to the coal."

Finding a human artifact such as this, with the possibility of being crafted hundreds of millions of years ago, raises the most unlikely of questions, should we choose to accept that the object was actually located inside the coal as reported and not simply discovered alongside it and the geological age of coal itself has been accurately dated. Should these two factors prove correct as they initially appear, one must question civilized man's place in history.

An examination of the item clearly displayed some hard fragments of the coal that still clung on to the links of the chain, while the part of the coal that had broken apart also bore the distinct impression of where the chain had been encased in it. True or false, this is still a part of Illinois history!

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

An 1870s Study of Pre-Historic Man in Whiteside County, Illinois.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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When Europeans first penetrated the country beyond the Appalachian Mountains, they found it covered with dense forests and presented no evidence of ever having been cultivated. Still, here and there were hillocks (a hill or mound) of regular form, some of them of great size, usually occupying commanding positions on the highlands overlooking streams. Besides these hillocks, evidently the work of man, there were walls of great extent, some of them enclosing tracts of many acres, in several cases of more than 100 acres in area. Of these works, the Indians living in the country at that time could give no account whatsoever but a vague and unsatisfactory one. Research has resulted only in theories and conjectures, often of the wildest and most improbable character.

One of the larger-sized mounds (Site 7) was found at the Sinnissippi Site in Sterling, Illinois.

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The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe Indian Tribe (Algonquian language family) word "Messipi" or "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River" or "Gathering of Waters." French explorers, hearing the Ojibwe word for the river, recorded it in their own language with a similar pronunciation. The Potawatomi (Algonquian language family) pronounced "Mississippi" as the French said it, "Sinnissippi," which was given the meaning "Rocky Waters."

In Sterling, Whiteside County, Illinois, many mounds are found. Three or four are placed on the high point southwest of Albany, commanding a fine view of the Mississippi in both directions. They appear to contain only bones, which crumble as soon as exhumed. Several were in Fenton, on the slope overlooking the Rock River Bottom. In Como, a number are found. Some of these have been examined (in the 1870s), and fragments of bone were discovered. In Carroll County, Mr. J.M. Williamson found a vast collection of flint chippings, the material of several varieties as if brought from different localities, which are believed to mark the site of an arrow and spearhead production.

The articles found in mounds are of considerable variety, embracing arrow and spearheads, stone axes, shaped and pierced fragments of stone, intended either for ornament or as charms, earthenware coarse and unglazed but usually ornamented with simple designs, earthen vessels of various sizes and forms, beads, etc. Some pieces of copper and other minerals foreign to the locality and evidently esteemed for their beauty and rarity have been obtained. In a few instances, stone tablets have been unearthed and covered with hieroglyphic characters [1], which seem to be designed as a sort of record from their grouping and arrangement.

Most of the mounds were undeniably tombs, as they contain only bones and such articles as were buried with the dead; others contain nothing and seem to have been designed as places for lookouts, while others, no doubt, were at one time places at which religious exercises were held and where sacrifices were offered, and these we have reason to believe were often of human beings.

Are all the mounds the same age? Certainly not. Assuming that all of the buildings in Whiteside County were erected in the same year, then building ceased.

Were the builders the ancestors of the present Indians? There is nothing to prove that they were not; some facts show they were. 

If skeletons are of any value as evidence, then we must admit that there is a good reason for assuming those ancient builders and the present Indians to be of the same race. It's doubtful if a mound 2,000 years old exists in the United States. Seeking an age much greater than 4500 years old defies common sense because the earliest known Egyptian pyramid (at Saqqara, Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djoser) was built around 2630 BC. Investigators, unfortunately, generally construct a theory and then search for facts to prove it, viewing each fact captured through the microscope of prejudice and prepossession, and, of course, succeed in getting at everything but the truth.

The flint implements, arrowheads and spearheads that have been discovered are of various grades of workmanship, some highly finished and others rough and clumsy. The material differs from a fine semi-translucent horn stone to a dull oolitic chert of two or more shades of color.

The earthenware is of various colors, some almost a cream tint through all shades to a dark brown. It is generally rough, coarse, as to material, thick, clumsy in form, and ornamented in geometrical designs of straight parallel lines, either of one or two series. Some specimens are, however, of a higher type, of fine form, and skillfully modeled.

The beads are generally of bone or stone. They are of irregular forms, of various sizes and were probably worn for ornament. Circular and triangular pieces of stone pierced with one or more holes seem to have been intended for the same purpose but may have been used as amulets or charms. They do not appear to have been numerous. The pieces of copper found in these tombs were probably collected from the drift, but that at one time and for a considerable length of time, it was mined on Lake Superior cannot be doubted, and it may have been an article of traffic among these people. Masses of it weighing several pounds have, however, been obtained in the drift of the Illinois River and the Rock River.

W.C. Holbrook, Esq., of Genesee, who has thoroughly investigated the labors of the mound builders in Whiteside County, presents his conclusions and observations as follows:

There are fifty-one mounds near Albany; a large number in the vicinity of Como. He has examined four mounds and two altars in Clyde. Several groups of mounds and earthworks are to be seen on Rock River above Sterling. Below the Sterling fairgrounds are twenty-two mounds, one of which is the largest in the county. The Albany mounds are rounded heaps of loose sandy soil, from two to twelve feet in height, usually circular, of a diameter five times the height. Several of the mounds are elliptical, their long diameter parallel with the river. In these mounds have been found galena, mica and fragments of pottery, the pottery bearing the impression of some kind of woven or matted fabric, bone implements and various portions of human skeletons.

Using a comparative table of the length of long bones, Dr. Farquharson of Davenport, Iowa, found that none belonged to a person taller than six feet. In May 1877, Mr. Holbrook examined several mounds north of the Catholic Cemetery in the vicinity of Sterling, one of which was a large mound, one of a number in a row parallel with the river. On moving the clay, it was found that this mound contained a Dolmen [2] built of flat pieces of fossiliferous limestone. The stones used were quite large. The wall was a right-angled parallelogram, twelve feet long and five wide; the foundation was laid upon clay, and the wall was built artistically, with no cement. The inner surface was smooth and even, although the stones were unhewn. The inside of the Dolmen revealed fragments of eight skeletons, the bones badly decomposed. Apparently, the bodies were cast into the sepulcher (a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried ) promiscuously. The skulls found indicated that these people were acquainted with the division of surgery known as "trepanning" (removing portions of the bones of the skull or portions of other bones). A thigh bone that had been fractured was found replaced and united in a manner that would do honor to a surgeon of the present day. The skulls were found to plummet, fossils not found in this locality, finely black polished pebbles, and several large teeth. In another mound was found an altar of burned rock, oval in shape, long diameter of six feet, and short diameter of four and a half feet. The altar was of fossiliferous limestone. Over the mounds were found one to ten feet of vegetable growth and a decayed stump of a hickory tree, about twelve inches in diameter. On and about the altars were usually found charcoal and charred remains of human beings, also evidence of great and continued heat.

At Sterling, the indications are that the body was placed upon the clay, covered with black loam [3], and a great fire built over the whole. After the fire, the mound was raised. This is indicated by the thick strata of charcoal and ashes found. As a rule, the remains unearthed furnish unsatisfactory evidence. Significant numbers of perfect molar teeth are exhumed, thus certifying that pre-historic man was unacquainted with the sharp pain of a toothache. Stone scrapers were found in the Sterling mounds but were very rude in design and execution. Fragments of pottery were found, as well as implements made from the antlers of the elk and deer. 

At Sterling is a work that many call a fortress. The two embankments are parallel, 66 feet apart, in an east/west direction. The south embankment has two gateways. The north embankment is 264 feet long and has two gateways. The construction indicates a knowledge of the cardinal points of the compass (North, South, East and West). These people evidently had a practical acquaintance of astronomy, as the north star appears to have been a governing point with them.

The Mound Builders wore cloth and dressed in the hides of animals, carved rude ornaments and engraved characters upon the stone, ate food from earthen dishes, and worshiped at altars erected upon high hills and in low valleys. There are abundant reasons for believing that human sacrifice was common to them. Trepanned skulls (a form of surgery that involves boring holes through a person's skull) are frequently met with on-opening mounds, evidence being presented that the operation was made before death. The superstition of the Mound Builders seems analogous (performing a similar function but having a different evolutionary origin, such as the wings of insects and birds) to that of the South Sea Islanders and tribes of savages of the 18th & 19th centuries who trepan for vertigo, neuralgia (a stabbing, burning, and often severe pain due to an irritated or damaged nerve), etc., believing that these complaints are demons in the head that should be let out.

Copper was the king of metals among the Mound Builders, and metal was worked on imperfectly.

Anatomically considered, the Mound Builders were no larger nor stronger than the men of the 18th & 19th centuries. Their skulls differ widely from the Indian or Caucasian and have been thus described as: 

"The frontal bone recedes backward from a prominent superciliary ridge, leaving no forehead, or rather the eye looks out from under the frontal plate, very similar to a turtle shell, and no more elevated." 

Their jaws were protruding, prominent and wide. The evidence is that the Mound Builders were half-civilized agricultural people, prominently differing from the Indians in the manner of burial and habits of life. The scientifically developed fact that bones undergo great changes by age, as applied by Dr. Farquharson and Mr. Holbrook, proves the great antiquity of the bones found in the mounds of this county.

About the Stone Age of Whiteside County, Mr. Holbrook says that stone implements are occasionally found in all parts of the county. The number of implements found in some localities indicates that primitive men lived in villages, and each village had at least one arrow maker. The men of the Stone Age evidently admired the beautiful and sublime in nature, for the sites of their ancient villages are in the county's most picturesque and grand localities. In one of these villages in the southwestern part of Genesee, eighty-four arrowheads and spear points were found while plowing an acre of ground. Several small, sharp, triangular flint pieces that had perhaps been used for the "teeth" of war clubs were also found. In another village, on Mr. Deyo's farm in Clyde, we find the number of domestic implements to be greatly greater than that of the weapons. More than one hundred scrapers, stone hoes, corn pestles, and some implements of doubtful or unknown uses have been found here. Mr. Deyo plowed up about twenty scrapers that had been carefully buried near the roots of a large white oak; only a small portion of the decayed stump of the once venerable oak now remains. Some of the scrapers found in this "nest" are very interesting because they are half-finished and reveal the method of their manufacture. 

Various stone arrowheads, scrapers, ax heads and other tools are found in Illinois.

The implement maker -- for some were undoubtedly devoted to that business -- found or broke from some larger piece of flint or hornstone, a flat piece of rock; he then began to break off small flakes near the edges on one side, finishing it before he began to chip off the other side; when finished, these scrapers were oval in form, about four inches long and two and one-half broad, one side convex resembling in shape a turtle shell, the opposite side nearly flat or slightly concave. Stone hoes resemble the scraper in form; they are longer and less oval, with an edge upon one end instead of the side and the end opposite the edge smooth for the hand; they had no handles. Pestles for crushing corn are about eight inches long and two inches in diameter. Fish spears are sometimes found among the pebbles in the bottoms of the smaller streams; unfortunately, many of these specimens are broken, so it is not easy to determine their prevailing form. Broken arrowheads and spear points are sometimes found. Arrowheads have been found once broken and chipped into specimens of different forms; others bear evidence of having been broken at the point and repaired afterward. Implements for dressing hides have been found; a good specimen of this class of implements was found by J. M.Williamson in Ustick; it is a small oval boulder about eight inches in diameter and two inches thick; on one side, there is a flat and a very smooth polished surface. The materials from which the implements of the Stone Age are manufactured are all found in the drift of Whiteside County. There are, however, several exceptions: a pipe of the Minnesota pipe-stone has been found in Genesee, and a spearhead of a peculiar quality of quartzite found at Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, has been picked up in Clyde. Arrowheads were made from almost every variety of horn-stone; a few were made of milky quartz, and one in the collection of J. M. Williamson is pure yellow jasper. Stone axes weighing from four ounces to thirteen pounds have been found. An ax in Mr. Holbrook's collection weighs eleven pounds and is unfinished. Large quantities of flint chippings are found in some localities; they prove that the arrow-makers understood the conchoidal fracture and planes of cleavage of the materials used. Some specimens are rude and imperfect, others are perfect and exhibit great skill; some appear very ancient, for their surfaces are weathered or corroded by the tooth of time.

Conclusion
I find that the assumptions made and, thus, some misinformation from this 1877 account of a pre-historic man in Whiteside County have been mostly corrected in the 21st century. Most rough-looking arrowheads, spearheads, and tools were from youth or the inexperienced learning the trade and were tossed into piles as unusable.

History of Whiteside County, Illinois. Published: 1877
Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] The Birdman tablet was discovered in 1971 during excavations at the base of the eastern side of Monks Mound conducted by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

The Real Cahokia "Birdman Tablet."

Archaeologists theorize that the bird of prey on the front of the tablet symbolically represents the Upper World. The Middle World (of man) is represented by the human figure wearing the costume, and the Lower World is defined by the snakeskin pattern on the back of the tablet.

The Ramey Tablet was also found on site. The tablet was found east of Monks Mound on the Ramey farm sometime during the 19th century. It dates to around 1250 AD. The Ramey tablet is broken in quarters. Only one-half of the tablet was found. The original Ramey tablet is in the Madison County Historical Museum collection in Edwardsville, Illinois.

The Ramey Tablet displays war symbols of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex with human heads, hair buns, beaded forelocks, ear spools, and pileated woodpeckers.

[2] A dolmen (or cromlech) is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more vertical megaliths supporting a large, flat horizontal capstone or "table." Most date from the early Neolithic (4000–3000 BC) and were sometimes covered with earth or smaller stones to form a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves.

[3] Many people confuse loam soil with topsoil, but the truth is that there is a difference between the two.

"Topsoil" refers to any kind of soil that is on top. What you are walking on, riding your bike on, or turning with your shovel is known as topsoil. Topsoil is basically different kinds of organic matter that has decayed with time. There are all kinds of organic matter, like decayed food, grass, rocks, and dirt, so it is usually a bit darker than the soil beneath it.

Loam refers to a unique mixture of sand, clay, and silt. Loam is usually made of half sand, one-quarter silt, and clay. It is considered the best topsoil, as it allows enough water to be soaked into the ground to keep plants hydrated – yet it still drains well enough that air can circulate.

So, the difference between loam soil and topsoil is the exact difference between your thumb and fingers: all loam is a kind of topsoil, but not all topsoil is a kind of loam.

The History of Cahokia's Five Woodhenges.

The Cahokia Woodhenge was a series of large timbers forming a circle located roughly one-half mile west of Monks Mound in the Indian Village of Cahokia site (Collinsville, Illinois, today).

An Illustration of the Cahokia Woodhenge.

They are thought to have been constructed between 900 and 1100 AD, each being larger and having more posts than its predecessor. The site was discovered as part of salvage archaeology in the early 1960s interstate highway construction boom, and one of the circles was reconstructed in the 1980s. The circle has been used to investigate archaeoastronomy at Cahokia Mounds. Annual equinox and solstice sunrise observation events are held at the site.

DISCOVERY AND EXCAVATION
The series of woodhenges at Cahokia was discovered during salvage archaeology undertaken by Dr. Warren Wittry in the early 1960s in preparation for a proposed highway interchange. Although most of the site contained village house features, several unusually shaped large post holes were also discovered. The post holes were 7 feet in length and 2 feet in width, and sloping ramps were formed to accommodate the insertion and raising of the estimated 20-foot tall posts to a 4-foot depth into the ground. When the holes were plotted out, it was realized that they formed several arcs of equally spaced holes. Detailed analytical work supported the hypothesis that the placement of these posts was by design. Wittry hypothesized that the arcs could be whole circles and that the site was possibly a calendar for tracking solar events such as solstice and equinoxes. He began referring to the circles as "woodhenges," comparing the structures to England's well-known circles at Woodhenge and Stonehenge.

Woodhenge lies west of Monks Mound, at the lower-left edge of the illustration.

Dr. Robert L. Hall undertook additional excavations at the site in 1963. Hall used the predicted locations from the arcs found in the previous excavation and found more post holes and posts near the centers of the circles now thought to be central observation points. Wittry undertook another series of excavations at the site in the late 1970s and confirmed the existence of five separate timber circles in the vicinity. The circles are now designated "Woodhenges 1 through 5." Each was a different diameter and had a different number of posts. Because four of the circles overlap, it's thought they were built in a sequence, with each iteration generally becoming more extreme and containing twelve more posts than its predecessor.

The remains of several posts were discovered in the post pits. The type of wood used, red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), is considered sacred by many Native American groups. The red cedar is the only native evergreen species in the area and is resistant to disease and decay. Traces of red ochre pigment were also found, suggesting that the posts were probably painted at some point. In 1985, William R. Iseminger led a series of excavations to see an entire circular sequence of posts. He completed the sequence for what has become known as Woodhenge 3 (except for nine posts on the western edge that had been lost to dump trucks for road construction fill) and then led the circle reconstruction. The reconstruction team obtained enough red cedar logs for half of the holes. Then, it made do with black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) for the other half, placing them into the originally excavated postpositions. The Illinois Historic Preservation Division (Illinois Department of Natural Resources) oversees the Cahokia site. It hosts public sunrise observations at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices. Out of respect for Native American beliefs, these events do not feature ceremonies or rituals.

CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE
The structure was rebuilt several times during the city center's roughly 300-year Woodhenge history. The presence of single-set posthole houses and midden [1] deposits suggests the area was habitation during the early Emergent Mississippian period before the timber circles were constructed. A separate layer of later Mississippian wall trench houses suggests it became a habitation area again after the final woodhenge was no longer used.

Woodhenge 1 was located to the east of the other circles, the only one not built on the same spot as the other four. It had 24 posts and was 240 feet in diameter. This circle was dismantled and at a later date Mound 44 was constructed, partially covering this location.

Woodhenge 2 was constructed to the west of the previous circle. It had 36 posts and was 408 feet in diameter.

Woodhenge 3 had 48 posts and was 410 feet in diameter. It is thought to have been constructed in approximately 1000 AD. This version of the woodhenge was reconstructed in 1985 using the original holes found during excavations. The 48 posts of the circle are set at 7° 30′ apart as measured from the geometric center of the circle, although the central post of the circle is offset from the true center by 5.6 feet to the east. This facilitates the alignment with perimeter posts marking the winter and summer solstice sunrise positions, correcting for the latitude of Cahokias location.

Woodhenge 4 had 60 posts and was 476 feet in diameter.

Woodhenge 5 had an arc and post spacing that suggests it was 446 feet in diameter and could have had 72 posts, although only 13 posts were found in a short arc facing the direction of the sunrise. Archaeologists suspect it may not have been a full timber circle and that by this time the large trees needed for the posts may have been getting scarce in the vicinity of Cahokia.

ALIGNMENTS
Archaeologists think the woodhenge is a solar calendar capable of marking equinox and solstice sunrises and sunsets for the timing of the agricultural cycle and religious observances. During the equinoxes, the sun rises due east of the timber circle. From the vantage point of the circle's center, it appears as if the sun is emerging from the front of Monks Mound, roughly a half-mile away. One of the reasons for the changing position and size of the timber circles may have been the growing size of the Monks Mound as additional layers of earth raised its height and increased its geographic footprint and the desire to keep this symbolic emergence and alignment intact.

View of the reconstructed Woodhenge 3 and its alignment with the equinox pole. You can see Monks Mound, which is 1/2 mile away.

The winter solstice sunrise pole is aligned with the Fox Mound (Mound 60, a rectangular platform mound paired with a conical burial mound, Mound 59), which sits across the grand plaza 1,640 feet south of Monks Mound. The top of the roughly 46-foot tall mound projects above the horizon, and back in Cahokian times, it would have had a large temple structure at its summit, raising it even higher. From the central pole of Woodhenge 3, the sun would have appeared to rise from this mound and temple at the winter solstice. Besides their celestial marking functions, the woodhenges also carried religious and ritual meaning reflected in their stylized depiction as a cross-in-circle motif on ceremonial beakers.

Ceramic beaker with woodhenge motif.

One prominent example has markers added to the winter sunrise and sunset positions and was found in an offertory pit near the winter solstice post pit. It also had radiating lines that symbolized the rays of the sun.

As there are many more posts than are necessary for these simple alignments, some archaeoastronomers have speculated that they were also used to observe other celestial events, such as lunar cycles, the motion of the Pleiades star cluster [2], or other stars and planets;. In contrast, others have suggested they were used to align mound and causeway construction projects.

CAHOKIA'S MOUND 72 WOODHENGE
Archaeologist Marvin Fowler has speculated that the woodhenges also served as "aligners" and that there may have been as many as three more in other strategic locations around Cahokia, built to triangulate and layout construction projects. Fowler has put forward at least one other possible circle at Cahokia, but his suggestion has not yet gained full acceptance from other archaeologists.

This location was discovered near Mounds 72 and 96, directly south of Monks Mound. Several post holes may have been a ceremonial area with 412 feet in diameter circle and 48 posts. Archaeologists have dated the placement of at least one of the posts to approximately 950 AD.

Solstice and equinox markers at the Mound "Md" 72 Woodhenge, with the hypothesized full circle of posts.

Archaeological research has shown that four posts were at the cardinal locations of north, south, east, and west, with eastern and western posts marking the equinox sunrise and sunset positions. Four other posts in the circle were shown to be at the summer solstice sunrise and sunset and the winter solstice sunrise and sunset positions. This setup is nearly identical to the diameter and post positions of Woodhenge 3, differing only in that Woodhenge 3 was 2 feet smaller in diameter. The placement of the two mounds at the location and the directions they are oriented correspond to several of the solstice marking posts. The post nearest the later elite burial spot of the "Birdman" is the location that marked the summer solstice sunrise at the time of the site's use. The early stages of the mounds were actually constructed around the posts, although at a later point, the posts were removed.

The Birdman tablet was discovered in 1971 during excavations at the base of the eastern side of Monks Mound conducted by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

The Real Cahokia "Birdman Tablet."

Archaeologists theorize that the bird of prey on the front of the tablet symbolically represents the Upper World. The Middle World (of man) is represented by the human figure wearing the costume, and the Lower World is defined by the snakeskin pattern on the back of the tablet.

The Ramey Tablet was also found on site. The tablet was found east of Monks Mound on the Ramey farm sometime during the 19th century. It dates to around 1250 AD. The Ramey tablet is broken in quarters. Only one-half of the tablet was found. The original Ramey tablet is in the Madison County Historical Museum collection in Edwardsville, Illinois.

The Ramey Tablet displays war symbols of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex with human heads, hair buns, beaded forelocks, ear spools, and pileated woodpeckers.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] A midden is an old dump for domestic waste, consisting of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, shells, sherds, and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation.

[2] The Pleiades star cluster – also known as the Seven Sisters or M45 – is visible from virtually every part of the globe. It can be seen from as far north as the North Pole and farther south than the southernmost tip of South America. It looks like a tiny misty dipper of stars.

This star chart for M45 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.

Pleiades Star Cluster.