Finding the New Connections

You are beginning an exploration of a series of amazing places in Ohio, sites where young women and men just like you once helped their parents and families build earthworks, gather food, construct shelters, and grow into adulthood!

We don't know every detail of what life in Ohio was like two thousand years ago, but we know most of the general outlines. The Native people here hunted, fished and gathered plants from the wild and from their gardens. They preserved food, sorted seeds, peeled bark and stalks to make fiber, and wove clothing not entirely different from the shirts and pants we have today.

Their tools were mostly wood and bone and stone, and they specialized in chipping Flint Ridge flint into sharp, brightly colored points. With flint, they could cut and shape whatever materials they wanted to use for making utensils, from freshwater mussel shells to walnut bowls. They even carved beautifully accurate pipestone animals.

In addition to a rich daily life, we know they had a very important spiritual life. In creating and using mounds and earthworks, they revered the spirits of their ancestors and gathered with others to honor the wonders of the earth and sky.

As you visit the earthwork sites on the Ancient Ohio Trail, following paths which have been traveled by humans for thousands of years, you will be a trailblazer in your own right, finding new connections across the landscape, through time, and with objects, shapes, and hilltops you will see all around you.

From park rangers, teachers, Native people, archaeologists, and others we have collected some stories, activities, and lists of places to see and things to do - but we want these ideas to be just a beginning of your own adventures on the Ancient Ohio Trail! As a trailblazer, you can record and remember your adventures through your own pictures and words in a journal. Or on a tablet or phone.

Welcome to the trail - start making your own connections!

Sincerely,

Your friends along the Ancient Ohio Trail