News & Opinion

Sunday, 7 September 2008
08:53PM

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5/02/08 - Researchers Document Similarities Between Newark Earthworks and Stonehenge
- Christina Morgan, WOSU News

Click here to listen to this story

NEWARK, OH (2008-05-02) Researchers expect the Newark Earthworks to become a World Heritage Site within the next few years.

Such a designation would place the central Ohio system of geometric mounds in a class with Stonehenge in England and the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon near Mexico City.

This weekend, experts on each of the three sites are gathering in Newark to compare notes on distant cultures that seem to have much in common.

Anthropologist Lionel Sims of the University of East London calls the similarities between Stonehenge and the Newark Earthworks remarkable. He says the people who built Stonehenge 2500 years ago and those who built the Newark mounds about 2000 years ago were in a transition from a society of hunters to an agrarian society.

The massive monuments they built by moving thousands of tons of earth or thousands of tons of stones symbolize that change.

Sims says in every culture everywhere in the world, monuments are built during the transition from hunting to farming, in part because this transition causes problems within the group some are on board with change, others are not.

Director of the Newark Earthworks Center Richard Shiels says the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon are represented this weekend in Newark by a group of Aztec dancers who take annual pilgrimages to sacred sites.

The dancers visited the Great Circle Mound on Thursday. After surveying the area, they gathered around a picnic table at the opening to the mound and smiled patiently as pictures taken with cameras from each member of the group.

The Aztec dancers perform Saturday evening at the Great Circle Mound near Newark. Earlier in the day, at the Ohio State Newark campus, researchers will offer information on World Heritage Sites. Also available on this site: Click here to listen to an interview with Stonehenge expert Lionel Simms, Principal Lecturer on Anthropology, University of East London.

Click here to listen to excerpts from interview with five of the dancers from the Aztec group Palabra del nino Dios Teopi-Itzintecuhltl (Word of the Holy Child Teopiltzintecuhtli)

2/7/08 - Dublin Failed to install recommended safety measure at Muirfield interchange.

Despite significant concerns about the safety about an elaborate highway interchange in Dublin, the city never installed a safety measure designed to keep vehicles from sinking into ponds at the interchange.

In the past 3 ½ years two men have died after their cars plunged into one of the ponds at the intersection of routes 161 and Avery Road. Documents obtained by WOSU News indicated Dublin agreed in 1999 to install underwater grates that would keep cars from sinking more than two feet into the water. The grates were never installed. Instead the city built walls around most of the ponds, but not where the two cars entered the water.

Download copies of the documents by clicking here (PDF - 1MB)

ArtZine

ArtZine is WOSU TV's monthly arts and culture newsmagazine. Features highlights of some of the best artists and groups in the Columbus area. more...

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SymphonyCast is a two-hour weekly radio program featuring a full-length concert by a national or international symphony orchestra. Concerts are drawn from Europe's leading ensembles, along with U.S. orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Cleveland Orchestra. SymphonyCast airs on WOSU 89.7 weekly on Sunday evenings at 8pm through September. more...