Fort Ancient and Miamisburg Mound

This morning, before catching our flight to St. Louis, we visited Fort Ancient and Miamisburg Mound. It is thought that Fort Ancient was not a defensive retreat, but only used as a ceremonial complex, but archaeologists have accomplished digs on 4 of the corners of the walls and found remnants of posts that would have provided the superstructure for a wooden defensive structure as described in the Book of Mormon. This fort is atop a plateau with steep cliffs around most of the structure. There is 3.5 miles of walls that surround the structure and a man-made earthen bridge that filled in a gap between plateaus. It is estimated it took 553,000 cubic feet of earth to construct the walls around the fort and at least another 500,000 cubic feet of earth to fill in the gap between plateaus.

This is a map of Fort Ancient; the narrow part in the middle is the area between plateaus that was filled in by workers. 

We drove out to the North Overlook; from here you can see how high we are above the valley below. 

Way in the background you see a bridge and beyond that you can see a water tower. The water tour is 3.5 miles away; from this you can tell how long the earthen walls are.

Remember the Adena time period relates very well with the Jaredite time period

The Hopewell time period relates very well with the Nephite and Lamanite time period

Since the Nephite structures were mostly all wooden, there is no remnants to teach us how they were built; the above examples are only guess work.

This painting depicts how the moon would have aligned through the great circle and square earthworks that were depicted in previous posts. 

If you can see through the glare, you can distinguish the wall that surrounds Fort Ancient. 

This is an Adena Mound, however, it was most likely used by the Nephite nation too a couple of hundred years after the Jaredite destruction. 

Can you imagine how much dirt was hauled in to construct this? There are no visible signs in the area where the dirt was hauled in  from. 

From the top of the mound looking north you can see a mound off in the distance, it is about 12 miles or so away.

From the top of the mound looking south you can see another mound, approximately the same distance away. There are additional mounds both north and south of which Fort Ancient is a member of; with this communication chain the Nephites and the Jaredites were able to signal one another in case of an enemy attack or other emergency or need to communicate. No one knows for sure how many miles up and down the state of Ohio the signaling ability could go.

After this visit, we headed to the airport for our flight to St. Louis via Chicago.