Hopewell Culture National Historical Park
April 2025
Mysteries of the Mound City Group
We visited Mound City Group in Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, since 2023. Mound City Group is a restored Hopewell earthwork complex containing 25 mounds of varying sizes enclosed by a low, earthen wall.
The Hopewell people were a group of related Native American cultures that flourished in eastern North America, primarily in present-day Ohio, along the Scioto River, from approximately 200 BCE to 500 CE. The term “Hopewell” is not what they called themselves; it’s a name given by archaeologists, named after M.C. Hopewell, the landowner where these significant earthworks were first excavated.
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The spiritual and artistic Hopewell people cultivated a deep connection with nature and created extensive trade networks throughout North America. Moreover, the likely astronomical alignments of many Hopewell earthworks, represented by their circles, squares, and lines, indicate they had an advanced understanding of the cosmos.
Why and how did they disappear? No one exactly knows.
