A Dust Up at Ohio’s Serpent Mound

My interest was piqued when a random post showed up on Facebook about a ‘dust up’ on December 20, 2020 at Ohio’s Serpent Mound. I don’t like snakes but decided to find out what exactly was this all about. Two groups were involved, a Christian prayer group and a Native American group both having some sort of vested interest in the Winter Solstice and the mound. The story goes that the Deputies were called to settle the dispute and I am happy to report there were no fatalities. It turns out this site is not only vintage, it is ancient and it is still actively a presence, so not bygone. This article tells us what the serpent mound is and why they are fighting over it: something to do with evil and something to do with artifacts. Read about it here.

Research took me down so many roads that I never imagined. It was mind boggling. People who plan tours have to make their information exciting. This travel website provides some good reading with all kinds of mythical information related to serpents, from Mexico to ancient Persia, including Ohio’s which is called the Great Serpent Mound. Even Canada is on the game. There is a Serpent Mound National Historic Site listed in Parks Canada directory of Federal Heritage Designations. Canada has determined their serpent mound is a burial site dating from 50 BCE to 300 CE. It actually is a group of six separate burial locations forming a serpentine shape that is approximately 60 metres long and almost 8 metres wide and 1.5 to 1.8 metres high. The site is open to the public and is within the grounds of Serpent Mounds Park on the banks of Rice Lake. I may decide to make a trek out there one of these years. Things are way more exciting in the US as compared to Canada and apparently there were mystery booms in 2014 at their Ohio serpent mound that is well documented by scientists and others who are still out there guessing what the heck caused those booms. I love a good legend about fairies and Greek gods and goddesses. Even Calypso is mentioned in this brief read on legends. (Today Calypso is part of the music culture of Trinidad).

Now for the serious stuff, we are talking United Nations here: The Ohio Great Serpent Mound is listed on the tentative list for being a UNESCO heritage site. UNESCO lists other similar sites. On that list they are called geoglyphs, which is they are effigy mounds in the form of animals or humans, also called intaglios and apparently they appear around the world.  The Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Pampas de Jumana (in Peru) is the only such site currently on the World Heritage List.  So there are serpent mounds in the Uffington Horse (UK), the Cerne Abbas Giant (UK), and the Serpent Mound at Loch Nell (UK), the Serpent Mound at Rice Lake (California, not Rice Lake in Canada), Effigy Mounds National Monument (Iowa), and the Blythe Intaglios (California).  The scale of the Ohio Serpent Mound “dwarfs all other securely documented effigy mounds and is larger than most of the geoglyphs in the world”.

Intriguing serpent stories are found in Egyptian lore and iconography and I should not fail to mention

the life force called kundalini found in eastern teachings. I even came across serpent information related to barber poles, those twirling red and blue poles outside the barber shops. There are intertwined serpents in the caduceus, the symbol of medicine used all over the world today (and later rod of Asclepius). Serpents seem to be pretty serious stuff to be connected with our health, although I would never want to meet a serpent in person. On the other side of the globe, Asian dragons, Japanese dragons, Vietnamese dragons and Chinese dragons tell a completely different story. There is some deep divine symbolism to the oriental dragons. Maybe they will bring us some luck in 2021.

So what started me wondering what people were fighting about on the day before the Winter Solstice has taken me down a long road of discovery! The posts on this blog are supposed to be short and sweet and I hope you enjoyed this one. There is much more information out there more than my brief mentions here.

Survival and Creativity: The Year without Summer - 1816

            British poet and politician, Lord Byron died at the age of 36 from Malaria. He lived through the summer that never was in 1816. The imaginativeness of his poem, Darkness, allows us to peek into the mood of that dreadful time, when men forgot their passions and all hearts came together in prayer; where looking into each other’s face was of utmost importance. It was only in the twentieth century that scientists made the connection between volcanic eruption and climate change.

            Mount Tambora erupted in a powerful blast in 1815 and thousands were killed. Scientists estimate the column would have shot up over 43 kilometres into the stratosphere. The eruption occurred in what is now Indonesia. By 1816, the huge and dense dust cloud that formed after the eruption blocked the sun, cooled the earth and moved across most of earth. Weather was affected for three years in the northern hemisphere, but mainly in 1816, which is called the ‘Year Without Summer’.  Conditions experienced were snow, sleet and frost in the summer.  People probably went through what we know today as SAD, seasonal affective disorder. Photography had not been yet invented, so information about the event was transmitted in several other ways, like the poem mentioned. There is a legend that the Old Farmer’s Almanac which was published continually in North America, since 1792 was recalled because winter was predicted for the summer of 1816 and new almanacs were printed instead.  No one has seen one of those recalled copies yet and collectors are still on the lookout for one.

Mass migration, civil unrest, floods; worldwide poverty, famine, disease and crop failures followed the eruption around the world. The North American economy, reliant on farming, crashed in 1816. It was reported lambs died and frozen birds dropped dead in the streets of Montreal. Lakes and rivers were covered in ice. The New England Historical Society noted people ate raccoons and pigeons. The widespread cholera killed more than had been killed in the eruption. In Europe food riots, beggars, typhus, arson and looting made news. Ireland suffered a potato famine. China would take to growing poppies for profit. Cholera (a new strain, it is said) spread from India to Moscow and almost wiped out the British army in Bengal. It killed more than had been killed in the eruption. Napoleon saw his defeat at Waterloo in 1816.

            Prometheus in Greek mythology is the giver of fire. The fire that rained on the planet in 1815 seemed to have sparked an abundance of creativity: Percy Shelley, Goethe, Beethoven and Schubert came from this period and moods are reflected in their works. Artists, painters and poets had a lot to reverberate with: climate change, destruction of all kinds, the environment, and the darkness. The inspiration from this period also went into the creating of Frankenstein (the Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley in 1818. In this gloomy people thought the world was ending and that prompted religious revivals. The stethoscope was invented in 1819, a new way of examining the human body.

            And here we are, almost 200 years later. The world is in seeming chaos: pandemics, lockdowns, climate change, pollution, and pesticides, pending financial gloom, wars between countries, religious strife, hunger, poverty and riots, to name some things. How are we managing with no haircut? Some of us can’t make the rent and put food on the table. We can’t connect; the bars and pubs are closed. Are we in a new paradigm shift and where would it lead us? The world is more connected than before and information/misinformation is rampant. The connectedness of today wasn’t the case in 1816. What is certain is that humans survived and their progeny (us) is here today. In 200 years into the future what would the artificial intelligence (probably implanted in the brain) of future generations have to say of this period? What new creativity are we now breeding in music, philosophy, architecture, the arts, literature and some art form yet to be created? What would the bounty of natural world look like? Would we be eating lab meat? Would we have a colony on Mars? Quantum physics and the neurosciences have taught us much. This may just be a time for all humans to forget their negative passions, have their hearts come together, put down their devices, look into each others’ face and eyes, create a better new world, and maybe discover the infinite within ourselves.

 

Rebel Who Influenced the World in Their Own Fashion, The Beatniks

    

They were a subculture of rebels who adopted a bohemian lifestyle: sunglasses, berets, leotards, and loose sweaters.  They brought on a new rage in entrepreneurship world, Espresso shops and basement nightclubs. Poetry reading was cool.A peyote vision was the inspiration for the poem Howl in the early 1950s by Allen Ginsberg.  Underrepresented outcasts found a voice and things like drug use; political radicalism and sexuality, including homosexuality, were being discussed in materialistic and conformist USA. The general population was all shook up. Opposition was fierce.  

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed 

by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at

dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient

heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,”

   Copies of the poem were seized at customs, people were arrested and jailed for selling the poem and a widely publicized obscenity trial in 1957 would judge that the poem was of importance to society.

     From 1958 to 1960, the media was sopped up with news and images of the Beat Generation.World War II was over. The persons behind this  literary movement chose to show their disillusionment through the written word, novels and poems. The world would change on October 4, 1957. The Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik. The word beatnik was created by a newspaper columnist in 1958, a play on the word Beat and Sputnik.  In 1960 President J. Edgar Hoover considered Beatniks enemies of the country, along with Communists and Eggheads. Some people did not like them, others tolerated them and yet others imitated them.  

    They give us some new words: like, dig, crazy, cool. For a while, everyday was a field day for the media and the Beatniks were the fodder. Stereotypes developed: the playing of bongo drum and beards. Some saw them as delinquent, some make fun of them.  The beat generation started off having real concerns about things like the atomic bomb and ended up being a societal stereotype but they certainly paved the way for the generation that was to come: the hippies.

Historical World Pandemics

1855

In Cuba there are no people of Amerindian descent. Could the Columbine Exchange be responsible for this? A pandemic is the worst case scenario for an infectious disease. A disease officially becomes a pandemic when it has spread beyond a country’s borders. The image shown here is of from the 1855 pandemic and is of interest as for the first time ever images of a pandemic were photographed.

Presented here is a journey along the path the major outbreaks of diseases in the world traversed from antiquity. History only became an academic discipline in mid 19^th century Germany. Also the Gregorian calendar we currently use was introduced in 1582. However, major plagues have shaped the course of humanity in numerous ways. The focus here is not on statistics and gruesome details: 

430 B.C.: The Plague at Athens, mainly in the area of Greece, the Mediterranean, Africa, Egypt, and Persia. It started during the Peloponnesian war. DNA collected from teeth in an ancient burial pit points to typhoid fever as being the cause and the disease was transmitted via contaminated food and water.

165 A.D.: The Antonine Plague, or the Plague of Galen. There were two outbreaks in about 100 years. Affected was the Mediterranean area and most likely the disease came through the Silk Road. This plague could have caused the fall of the Roman Empire.

250-270 A.D.: The Cyprian Plague which affected Ethiopia, Syria, Northern Africa, and Europe. One of the significant events of this time was that fields were abandoned, farmers died and agricultural production collapsed.

541-542 A.D.: Justinian Plague. Outbreaks continued for 225 years. Affected were Constantinople, Egypt, Palestine, and the Mediterranean. It was transmitted by the black rat. Also affected were India, China, and Africa. DNA analysis shows it was a bubonic plague – yersinia pestis. One of the effects of this plague was to weaken the Byzantine Empire, and this allowed the Arabs to encroach.

11th Century: Leprosy, Europe. This outbreak was such that in 1200 A.D. an estimated 19,000 leprosy hospitals existed all over Europe. The most ancient evidence of leprosy came from a 4,000 year old human skeleton in India. Genetical analysis shows the disease evolved over 100,000 years ago in Eastern Africa or Southwestern Asia.

1350 A.D.: The Black Death:  Eurasia, Europe and Africa. This is the most devastating pandemic recorded in human history. It is estimated to have killed 30 t0 60% of Europe’s population and created religious, social and economic upheavals.

1492 A.D.: The Columbian Exchange: Brought by Columbus to Caribbean and Americas. The natives carried none of the acute infectious diseases that that affected Eurasia and Africa. Among these diseases, malaria and yellow fever destroyed almost all the population of the Caribbean and the Americas. In return syphilis most likely spread from the Americas to the Europe.

1665 A.D.: The Great Plague of London: In January, an outbreak erupted in St Giles-in-the-Field, then a small impoverished village west of London. Unsanitary conditions were attributed to this plague.

1817 A.D.: First Cholera Pandemic: This is the first of seven cholera pandemics over the next 150 years. Affected were Russia, India, Britain, Spain, Africa, Indonesia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany and America. British soldiers in India were among the dead. The rapidity and virulence with which the disease struck, took everyone by surprise.

1855 A.D.: The Third Plague Pandemic. This plague ravaged the globe. It reached all continents. Hong Kong was able to isolate the bacillus that caused it. This pandemic was the first to be photographed and left an extraordinary legacy of visual material.

1875 A.D.: The Fiji Measles Pandemic was spread by the British. Fiji, in the South Pacific is comprised of 850 islands but only about 100 are inhabited. At this time, Europeans were expanding trade throughout the pacific islands, including Fiji. King Cakobau and some other Fijian chiefs signed the Deed of Cession which handed the Fiji islands to Great Britain. The king sailed to Sydney, Australia in December of 1874 and returned January of 1875. Some of the men on his ship still had contagious cases of measles which started the epidemic. 

1889 A.D.: The Russian Flu: Affected were Siberia, Kazakhstan, Moscow, Finland, the rest of Europe, North America and Africa. At that time, trains and ships alone sped the transmission of the flu so that it reached the U.S. 70 days after the virus' first peak in St. Petersburg and circled the globe in just a few months.

1918 A.D.: The Spanish Flu, now called the 1918 Flu pandemic: It decimated Europe, the United States and parts of Asia. Also called La Pesadilla, it was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected about a quarter of the world's population at the time. The virus that caused the swine flu and H1N1 are sub types of this virus.

1957 A.D.: The Asian flu: Affected Hong Kong, Singapore, India, UK, US, China, United States and England The strain of virus that caused the pandemic, was a recombination of avian influenza (probably from geese) and human influenza viruses. As it was a novel strain of the virus, there was minimal immunity in the population. A vaccine was available from October in the UK, although it was only available initially in limited quantities, its rapid deployment helped contain the pandemic. The flu continued to circulate until 1968, when it transformed into a sub type and caused the 1968 influenza pandemic.

1981 A.D.: HIV/AIDS: Initially Africa, Haiti, United States. It is widely believed that HIV originated in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo around 1920 when HIV crossed species from chimpanzees to humans. Available data suggests that the current epidemic started in the mid- to late 1970s. By 1980, HIV may have already spread to North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia. By 2017 for the first time ever, more than half of the global population living with HIV are receiving an antiretroviral treatment. There is robust scientific evidence that people who have adhered to treatment and achieved an undetectable viral load cannot pass the virus on.

2003 A.D.: SARS: Global. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was first discovered in Asia in February 2003. The outbreak lasted approximately six months as the disease spread to more than two dozen countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia before it was stopped in July 2003. A SARS-like virus has been isolated from civets (captured in areas of China where the SARS outbreak originated). CDC banned the importation of civets. The ban is currently still in effect.

They Were Ready When the Earthquakes Came

In this age of modernity, given the vast almost unsolvable environmental problems on the planet, the search continues for eco-friendly houses made from eco-friendly material. Well, look no further than the Hakka people in the Fujian province of China for answers that even the Chinese themselves consider a rarity. Some people in ancient times had the knowledge that we don't practice anymore! Tulou are rammed earth structures that for hundreds of years have survived material aging, natural weathering and very importantly strong earthquakes, bearing in mind the Fujian Province of China is an earthquake prone area, this is a smart thing. The structures are reinforced by wooden and bamboo strips. Since the 11^th century, Hakka Tulou have gotten cracks from earthquakes but resulted in no structural damage. It has even been reported that some of the cracks self healed. I imagine this self healing is similar to that which happens to small cracks in concrete due to the presence of lime.

The Hakka people lived in aclass-free, egalitarian community based on mutual respect, in a harmonious relationship with the environment and their homes are an outstanding example of human settlement. These dwellings have such outstanding universal value; many are listed as UNESCO heritagesites. Their buildings are mainly circular with some square shapes. The design may be a reflection of their wish for family unity based in the I Ching, the Chinese system of divination. The Tulou are called China’s forgotten coliseums. A Tulou structure may be up to 5 stories high and capable of housing up to 800 people.

Nowadays, the Tulou lifestyle is under threat as young people move to the cities. Remaining people rely on tourism rather thanfarming. What a loss! Imagine falling asleep in a room of thick  earthen walls while listening to the sounds of a trickling stream nearby in a safe and secure environment. That’s a few lifetimes of serenity rolled into one. Those walls were a good source of defense from animals, invaders and earthquakes, but hmm, would they survive a drone attack today.....humanity is forever at a crossroads!

Video from You Tube, reflects sadness at the changes taking place. 

What does Tartar Sauce Have to do with the Shape Shifting Human Psyche?

Some subjects stir up more questions than answers. For example, who truly were the Tatars or Tartars and where was the great global empire of Tartary? It is recorded that there were Great Tartary, Little Tartary, Chinese Tartary and Independent Tartary. History as an academic discipline is a fairly new and had its origins in 19th century Germany. To figure what went on before academically is sometimes accomplished by putting pieces together from here and there in a biased fashion, depending on the point of view of the authors.  When relying on historical accounts, are we just being served up fractions of the truth? In the case of Tartary, was there  conquests and cover ups for political reasons? Was Tartary mainly an Islamic world? How advanced scientifically was it?  It seems that Tartarian related matters have disappeared from many lexicons and to a large extent from the face of the planet. 

Eastern Hemisphere showing Tartary in gray. It was huge. 

Reference to The Tartars were made as recently as the 19th century. We can find hard historical evidence including maps. Considering that the magnetic north pole is now moving from Canada into the direction of Russia, speculation is fueled that the land mass could have actually been different at that time. This is very interesting to conceive of. There has been speculation about the Bering Land Ridge as a point of connectivity. Also the Chinese would have had a different method of recording events than that of Europe. What is the real history behind the Great Wall of China? The curious land Tibet? Then there is the romantic aspect of this subject in novels like Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, legends of Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions. Words travel, morph and their meanings, sometimes by misnomer, find new life in the human mind in exotic faraway locales. Who would think to associate the Scottish tartan with Tartary (see image below)? And tartar sauce is a word that found its way to North America via Europe - tartare. The conquest driven Tartars (hated but influential) wound their way into western Europe and brought their habit of eating raw ground meat - steak tartare. The sauce for steak tartare became known as tartar sauce. We use 'tartar' sauce in today's particular English food lingo, unmindful of the travel path of the word through the minds of countless peoples of different languages and cultures, from the far reaches of one end of the globe to the other, transforming the word's etymology through the centuries. The Tartars sadly are no more, disappeared from our consciousness, but given the almost cyclical nature of life on this earth, maybe they could arise again in a new way, under a new name as long as the psychic pull of language is deposited in the human psyche with everyday use. This post contains some empirical evidence that would hopefully pique people’s interest to explore more. There is no doubt that Tartary and the Tartarians existed. Shall Tartary live on as romantic figments of our imagination or not at all? Uncovering layers of the past could be quite intriguing even though we have to view things through the lens of countless wars and change. 

Tartarin reference: from book by Ian Mortimer

Was Tartary in North America?

The graphics below include: 

• Declassified CIA information with mention of the Tartars.
• Another intriguing eastern hemisphere map. 
• Another world map showing a close connection to North America and the Bering strait.
• Map and description of the countries of the eastern hemisphere, 1820.
• List of countries of the 'known world.'
• Encyclopedic reference to Tartary.
• Flags of the countries of the east, including Tartary.
• The Tartarians. 

Who were these flesh and blood people and what were the stories of their joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats? The stories of husbands, wives and children? Are they a lost people or were they just absorbed by shifting national boundaries? Maybe, sadly, we will never really know. But the power to rewrite history as some see fit perseveres. For it is has been said that history is written by the victors.                                                   

Declassified CIA information

Another Eastern Hemisphere map

               

Another world map showing a different configuration of the planet's land mass and possible Tartar influence in North America

1820 Then known countries of the eastern hemisphere

List of countries

Encyclopedia reference

Tartary flag listed in flag of countries

The Tartars

Fascinating Historical Event that Never Repeated Itself: the Dancing Plague of Medieval Europe

Also called St. John’s dance, St. Vitus’ dance, dancing mania, dancing plague - this was a social phenomenon that gripped medieval Europe between the 14^th and 17^th century. The earliest known outbreak was in the 7^th century. People would dance in the street for hours, days and months. Dancing outbreaks would attract thousands of men, women and children.  Was it caused by a fungus or did the dancers belong to a deviant cult? Was it a mental disorder or people just trying to fit in? Or was this just plain mass hysteria or maybe communal stress relief? Were they on drugs? There were no videos or photos in those days. In fact history as an academic discipline was not invented yet.  People relied on artists to paint and engrave events that happened. The drawing below called ‘Dancing Mania on a pilgrimage to the Church at Sint-Jans-Molenbeek,’ is a 1642 engraving by Hendrick Hondius. 

Dancing mania was not an isolated event. It happened all over Europe. The treatment was to have musicians accompany the dancers. This of course, attracted more dancers. One helluva of a party one must say! Where did the dancers get time for anything else? No one has agreed on the cause for this.

                This mania may have led to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the southern European tradition of tarantism. Some dancers would travel from place to place, some wore colorful attire and some carried wooden sticks. Some wore garlands in their hair. Some were naked, some had intercourse, some acted like animals, and some screamed, laughed and cried. Some became violent on seeing the color red. Of course the dancers suffered resulting illnesses. Some became ecstatic and maybe the dancing could have been contagious. Prayers were made and pilgrimages undertaken to fix the problem. Exorcisms were performed. The participants were said to be mentally disturbed, some called it a festival and others thought the dances were staged. But the strange thing is this all stopped abruptly and the world has not seen the likes of this again.

                A few strange things have happened in the world since this time, but the only thing that closely matches this is the Tanganyika laughter epidemic in 1962. 

                                                  Enjoy this animated You Tube video.