Not very long ago, my daughter called me in a rush from a used bookstore in downtown Middletown, Ohio—a place that’s seen better days, rough around the edges, but still holding onto some hidden gems. She told me I had to come right away because she’d found something special and was guarding it like a treasure. When I got there, she handed me an 1885 original edition of The Prehistoric World: Or, Vanished Races by E.A. Allen. The book is barely holding together after all these years, its pages fragile and yellowed, but it’s a remarkable artifact. I bought it for a reasonable price, and it’s become one of my prized possessions. It’s not just a book; it’s a window into a time when exploration and curiosity drove inquiry, before modern institutions locked down narratives with rigid assumptions.

I’ve always been drawn to these topics. Back in high school, even as far back as fifth and sixth grade, I was ahead of my teachers in history and anthropology classes. I’d read widely—Joseph Campbell’s works, myths, comparative religion—and I knew much of what was being taught was incomplete or outright wrong. I endured it to graduate and escape that institutionalized mindset, which I saw holding back real understanding. In my twenties, I dove deeper into Joseph Campbell and even joined the Joseph Campbell Foundation. My adventures around the world, combined with a lifelong connection to southern Ohio, shaped my views. My wife and I have been married nearly 39 years, and throughout that time, we’ve visited Serpent Mound repeatedly—every few years, it’s become a touchstone for us.

Living in southern Ohio, near Middletown and Hamilton, I’ve always had a personal relationship with these ancient sites. Serpent Mound, the massive effigy serpent earthwork in Adams County, is one of the most famous, but closer to home are the mounds along the Great Miami River Valley. There’s the Miamisburg Mound, one of the largest conical burial mounds in eastern North America, built by the Adena culture around 800 B.C. to A.D. 100. It’s 65 feet tall, 800 feet around, and excavations in 1869 revealed layered construction with possible stone facing and burial goods like pipes and effigies. There are even reports that they found skulls in that mound that would fit over the top of regular people, and that these finds terrified the excavators and they abandoned the site, never to return. Yet, despite its proximity—right near where I grew up—schools never took us there on field trips. We went to other places, heard stories about Native American burials and the sadness of destruction by Europeans, but nothing about these advanced earthworks.

Then there’s the area across from Joyce Park in Hamilton, where Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park now sits near Fortified Hill, an older than 2,000-year-old ceremonial earthworks site tied to the Hopewell or earlier traditions. In Allen’s 1885 book, there’s a description and illustration of a large effigy mound or structure in that vicinity—two high peaks carved or shaped, possibly reflecting ancient alignments, even to constellations like Aries, thought to be around 5,000 years old in some interpretations. The book chronicles many Ohio River Valley mounds, dedicating significant portions to the Miami and Mississippi cultures, Mexico, the Aztecs, and global prehistoric peoples. It’s an adventurous, Victorian-era take—profusely illustrated, speculative, open to wonders without the heavy filter of modern politics or funding constraints.

What strikes me most is how this 1885 book feels more honest about discoveries than much of what came later. During that era, explorers and adventurers reported findings without preconceived notions imposed by institutions. Allen’s work reflects a time when people were excited about vanished races and prehistoric worlds, including reports of mound contents that challenged emerging narratives. Many 19th-century accounts from Ohio mounds mentioned unusually large skeletons—sometimes described as 7 to 9 feet tall—unearthed during excavations. These were often speculatively linked to biblical giants or to ancient, advanced peoples. Newspapers and reports from the time sensationalized them, but they reflected genuine observations before professional archaeology standardized explanations. Mainstream archaeology today attributes these to the Adena and Hopewell cultures—sophisticated societies with wide trade networks, astronomical alignments in their earthworks, and ceremonial practices—but dismisses giant claims as misinterpretations, exaggerations, or hoaxes based on crumbling bones and poor documentation.  I have come to understand that the anti-giant conspiracy that has permeated the sciences was a secular construct intended to disprove biblical narratives, rather than to understand them, which was a critical error from that perspective.

I can’t help but feel that institutional science took a wrong turn. After the late 19th century, education and research became centralized, often prioritizing narratives that fit political or funding needs over raw observation. The mounds were attributed solely to ancestors of modern Native Americans, like the Adena (800 B.C.–A.D. 100) and Hopewell (200 B.C.–A.D. 500), who built massive geometric enclosures and burial sites with precision. These are now UNESCO-recognized, like the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, celebrated for their engineering and cultural depth. Yet, in my view, this framing sometimes ignores anomalies or alternative interpretations to maintain control over the story.

This ties into broader questions I’ve pondered for decades. What if these earthworks—Serpent Mound with its debated alignments to solstices (summer sunset at the head, possible lunar or solar cycles), Miamisburg’s layered burials, Fortified Hill’s ceremonial space—are remnants of something older, perhaps offshoots of lost civilizations? Some speculate connections to Atlantis or pre-Ice Age advanced societies, which were wiped out by the Younger Dryas catastrophe around 12,900–11,600 years ago—a sudden cold snap possibly triggered by comet impacts and freshwater floods that disrupted ocean currents, leading to megafauna extinctions and cultural disruptions. Graham Hancock and others link this to Plato’s Atlantis, a global flood-like event ending an Ice Age civilization, with survivors possibly influencing later cultures.

In Ohio, the mounds don’t fit neatly into short timelines. Serpent Mound’s age is debated—some radiocarbon dates suggest an Adena date around 300 B.C., others a Fort Ancient date around A.D. 1100, with possible repairs—but its astronomical sophistication and serpent symbolism hint at deeper roots. The book I found predates the heavy institutionalization that followed, capturing a spirit of adventure where discoveries weren’t immediately boxed into “primitive Indians” or dismissed. It dedicates half its 800 pages to American earthworks, showing alignments and complexities that modern textbooks often downplay.

My frustration stems from this: growing up here, no one talked about these sites in school. No field trips to Pyramid Hill or Miamisburg. No discussion of potential giant remains or alignments that “they shouldn’t even know about” at the time. It felt like a deliberate omission to preserve a simple narrative. Institutions, chasing grants and political correctness, built assumptions around limited data, leading to dead ends. Meanwhile, independent researchers and adventurers are bypassing them, returning to direct observation and instinct.

This book reminds me how much more open inquiry was in 1885, before the Smithsonian and universities solidified control. It shows we knew—or at least wondered—more freely then. We’ve gone downhill in some ways, prioritizing preservation of timelines over pursuit of truth. My daughter recognized that instinctually when she saved it for me. It’s a benchmark: a call to question, explore, and reject complacency in institutionalized science.

We need to return to that adventurous spirit—observe these mounds, ask who built them, why, how old they truly are, and how they connect to our story today. The earthworks along the Ohio River Valley aren’t just relics; they’re evidence of advanced understanding—astronomical, engineering, spiritual—that challenges easy answers. By reflecting on books like Allen’s, we see where assumptions went wrong and how rediscovering truth requires going beyond the official path.

Bibliography

•  Allen, E. A. The Prehistoric World: Or, Vanished Races. Central Publishing House, 1885. (Available via Project Gutenberg and archives.)

•  Ohio History Connection. “Miamisburg Mound.” ohiohistory.org.

•  Ohio History Connection. “Serpent Mound.” ohiohistory.org.

•  Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. hopewellearthworks.org.

•  UNESCO. “Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks.” whc.unesco.org.

•  Romain, William F. Various studies on Ohio earthworks astronomy.

•  Hancock, Graham. America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. (For Younger Dryas and catastrophe discussions.)

•  Various 19th-century newspaper reports on mound discoveries (e.g., via historical archives).

Footnotes

1.  Radiocarbon dating debates on Serpent Mound: See Monaghan and Hermann (2019) reconciliation of dates.

2.  Giant skeleton reports: Often debunked as mismeasurements (e.g., Columbus Dispatch, 2019), but reflect period observations.

3.  Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: Firestone et al. (2007) and subsequent studies.

4.  Adena/Hopewell mainstream views: National Park Service, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park.

Rich Hoffman

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