Fort Ancient

Friday, Daniel, Than Tu and I went to visit Fort Ancient. It is a Hopewell indian settlement built about 2000 year ago and was lived in forabout 400 years. This area is a hill top above the Miami river and the mounds surrounding it are 18,000 feet long. Some of the mounds these natives built in the mid-west were for burial, some cerimonial and some unknown. In this case the mounds do not seem to be for defense since there are about 67 gaps in them. The mounds were about 20 feet tall. Three of the gaps line up with movements of the moon and sun which they probably used to determine when to plant, etc.

Here are some pictures of the mound and Thanh Tu having fun on one of the trails.

There was a nice museum there with artifacts showing the inhabitants traded with others thousands of miles away. They alsonhad a kids area and Thanh Tu had a fun time there too. Here is with his dad playing on a drum.

Fossils in Cincinnati

Well I returned some movies to the library which is close to my son's house. On the way home I noticed some rocks that looked like they had fossils in them. They did.

Today I went and found some specimens. There is coral and clams and crinnoids which look like little tires. Apparantely the whole area around southern Ohio and northern Kentucky is loaded with them.

Here are a few representative pictures with a penny for reference.