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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

If you have been a regular reader and a fan of my work and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider doing so. I take no ads, I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands (most of the time). Thus, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

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Illinois Adventure – Cahokia Mounds

An evening pause: Time for some less well known North American archeology, very nicely persented, describing a history likely quite similar to other similar sites in the southwest.

Hat tip Cotour.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

15 comments

  • wayne

    on a more fanciful note….

    “America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation”
    Graham Hancock
    https://youtu.be/GAccZ8eWhXo?t=320
    1:43:19

  • Visited an aboriginal mound along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. It isn’t all that high, but built with people carrying dirt in buckets. Impressive.

  • I’d never heard of the entire Mississippian civilization. (I grew up in Wisconsin. Does history teaching suck or what?)

    Thanks!

  • Doubting Thomas

    Echoing Markedup – Never knew! Now I have a new road trip destination.

    Thanks Robert!

  • Chris Lopes

    “on a more fanciful note….”

    That’s putting it mildly. :)

  • wayne

    Chris–
    Thankfully, Hancock does not do aliens.

    Joe Rogan Experience #961
    Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson & Michael Shermer
    https://youtu.be/tFlAFo78xoQ
    3:35:09

  • wayne

    Doubting Thomas / Markedup2–

    Wisconsin has multiple mounds– check Baraboo and Madison, to name 2 locations.
    (Interestingly– in college, both the Geology and Anthropology departments, went on on regular yearly field-trips to Baraboo.)

  • wayne

    Ancient Wisconsin ~
    Lost Pyramid Mound Of Burlington
    (2021)
    https://youtu.be/9h9oyW-MEiQ
    1:49

  • wayne

    “Is the house of history built on foundations of sand?”
    Graham Hancock | TEDxReading 2016
    https://youtu.be/ZyfE3IvDWR8
    18:04

    (This is the one that got him banned from TEDx.)

  • Doubting Thomas

    Wayne – Thanks – I’ll check them out and may load them into my US tour plans.

    Sincerely

    Doubting Thomas

  • wayne

    Doubting Thomas-
    There are mounds in Indiana and Ohio as well.

    Check out the “Mounds State Park,” in Anderson, Indiana.
    https://www.in.gov/dnr/state-parks/parks-lakes/mounds-state-park/
    They have “10 unique earthworks built by the Adena-Hopewell people.”

  • wayne

    In Ohio…..

    Hopewell Culture National Historical Park,
    Chillicothe, Ohio
    https://www.nps.gov/hocu/index.htm

    (We have no idea what these people actually called themselves. “Hopewell” was the name of the guy who owned the farm upon which this stuff was discovered.)

  • wayne

    In Michigan—

    The Norton Mound Group
    https://www.michigan.gov/som/0,4669,7-192-29938_68915-54607–,00.html

    “The Norton Mound Group is one of the best preserved Hopewellian burial centers in the country and one of the most important archaeological sites in Michigan. The site represents a fine example of the northern extension of the Hopewell culture. When first excavated in 1874 by W. L. Coffinberry under the auspices of the Kent County Scientific Institute (now the Public Museum of Grand Rapids), the site consisted of 17 mounds ranging from 30 feet in diameter and 1.5 feet in height to 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet in height. Once part of a much more extensive system of over 30 mounds which were destroyed by the expansion of the City of Grand Rapids, only 11 retain their basic form.”

  • markedup2 noted: “(I grew up in Wisconsin. Does history teaching suck or what?)”

    Well, yeah, if you just pay attention to what’s in school.

  • To be fair to my History teachers, I did have some good ones. I remember saying something typically teenaged-stupid and the teacher took a week to tell us about a bunch of stuff that had been removed from our history textbook.

    Now, I remember neither what I said nor any specific examples, but it was eye opening to have a teacher explain how textbooks were created, why stuff is left out, and what some of it was.

    My current favorite under-taught bit of history: The Battle of Athens (Georgia, not Greece).

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