Octagon Earthworks' alignment with moon likely is no accident

February 13, 2007
BRADLEY T. LEPPER
Columbus Dispatch
The Octagon Earthworks in Newark is one remnant of the Newark
Earthworks, recently listed by The Dispatch as one of the Seven Wonders
of Ohio.
Earlham College professors Ray Hively and Robert Horn demonstrated in
1982 that the walls of this 2,000-yearold circle and octagon were
aligned to the points on the horizon, marking the limits of the rising
and setting of the moon during an 18.6-year cycle. The implications of
this argument for our understanding of the knowledge and abilities of
the ancient American Indian builders of the earthworks are astounding.
But how can we know whether they deliberately lined the walls up with
the moon or whether the series of alignments is just an odd coincidence?
In the current issue of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology,
Hively and Horn use statistics to address this question. And while they
acknowledge that they cannot provide a definitive answer, their analyses
certainly offer compelling evidence to support their idea that the sites
are among the world's earliest astronomical observatories.
Hively and Horn focused on five alignments. These are the main axis of
the site, which points toward the maximum northerly rise point of the
moon, and the orientation of four of the octagon's eight walls, which
align variously with the moon's maximum southern rise point, the minimum
northern rise point, the maximum northern set point and the minimum
southern set point.
They performed a "Monte Carlo" analysis in which a computer randomly
generates more than 10 billion equilateral octagons, randomly aligned
them to a compass bearing and then checked how many astronomically
significant alignments resulted.
They determined that, even "making the most generous plausible
combination of assumptions favoring chance alignments," the odds that
the alignments at Newark are merely accidental are about one in a
thousand. Using more reasonable assumptions, the odds are more like one
in 40 million.
This does not take into account several other lunar alignments
incorporated somewhat more subtly into the earthworks. Neither does it
consider the fact that Hively and Horn have shown that High Bank Works
in Chillicothe, the only other circle and octagon combination built by
the Hopewell culture, also is aligned to the same series of lunar rise
and set points.
It's a safe bet that these ancient Ohioans understood a lot more about
astronomy than most of us have recognized.

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

blepper@ohiohistory.org








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