Newark,
Ohio Site - Observatory Circle and Octagon
The trip to this site was an interesting one...Sadly, this area of the
Newark site is owned by a country club..."The Mound Builders Country
Club." No joke. The name certainly implies that they know what they are
driving their carts and playing golf on...but hey - they do it anyway....(note
where the golf cart is in this photo.)
Again - I was lucky enough to have my friend Pat show me AROUND the
site...The word "around"is a good word to use as we were "the public"
and not allowed to get off a small paved pathway that runs around the
golf course. In fact by the time we got over to the Octagon, there was a
police car driving around us in the adjacent parking lot, just to make
sure.
Just move your mouse over
the photos below to see where the embankments are more clearly.
This golf course's
"roughs" are also known as "ancient sacred embankments"...
About the Observatory Circle and Octagon at Newark, Ohio by Pat Mason
Although often referred to as the
Octagon Mound, this set of earthworks is in the form of a circle
joined to an octagonal set of walls by two straight parallel
mounds. The octagonal enclosure covers nearly fifty acres. The
circle, called the Observatory Circle, covers 20 acres. Its
circumference is divided in half by a high mound, the
Observatory Mound, positioned to afford a direct line of sight
down the center of the entire Octagon Earthworks. This alignment
marks the northernmost period of the lunar cycle when the
moonrise can be viewed by looking directly down the long axis of
the mound complex. - Patricia Mason, 2006
I have put 4 different videos of the trip through the golf course
together below. The person who is telling me about the site is my
friend, Pat Mason, who is a member of the "Friends of the Mounds" in
Ohio, and a specialist on the Newark site.
Observatory
Circle and Octagon, Newark, Ohio
Use the following links below to learn more about the different types of
man-made mounds:
Types
of Man-Made Mounds
Man-made mounds are mounds that were made from the ground up and fall
into four basic shapes or categories. Conical mounds, Effigy mounds,
Temple Mounds and Geometric (usually linear) mounds. Use the following
Links to learn more.
Conical Mounds - look like
pyramids except that they are rounded. They, just as the great
pyramids, were built in honor of some special shaman or king, and
are in fact burial sites for them as well.
Effigy Mounds
- are shaped like animals and or spirits, and were believed to have
ceremonial, navigational and calendar-like purposes. It is known
that many of these align with the stars and could have been used to
predict solstices, and even eclipses.
Temple Mounds -
were mounds that either were man-made or "truncated" natural hills.
Structures (many times temples) were placed upon the flattened top
and were considered to be "living spaces" for shamans or their
leaders and their families.
Geometric-Shaped
Mounds - were usually circular, square, or linear in shape, and
were thought to have alot of the same uses as the effigy mounds, but
sometimes (like the Newark site above) were believed to be created
together to build ceremonial & observatory inside large complexes.
To learn more about the people who built the
mounds, use the following links:
