states: [usa]
category: cultural
year: 2023
region: Europe and North America
latitude/longitude: 40.0536583333, -82.4460611111
visited: 2024
The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Ohio, USA, inscribed in September 2023, encompass eight monumental complexes built by the Hopewell culture between 1 and 400 CE. Spanning Newark, Chillicothe, and other sites, these geometric enclosures—circles, squares, and octagons—crafted from earth, feature precise astronomical alignments and served as ceremonial hubs for a vast trade network across half of North America. As the USA’s 25th UNESCO site, they showcase pre-Columbian engineering and cosmology, offering a window into an ancient Indigenous civilization’s spiritual and social legacy.
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