It’s probably no coincidence that so many major holidays occur around this time of year. In addition to Christmas and Hanukkah, at least five other traditional celebrations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia take place this month.
All fall around the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and in Ohio people have been marking it for at least 2,000 years. More than 100 are expected to go to Fort Ancient in southwest Ohio Sunday to mark it yet again.
It’s unknown exactly why Hopewell peoples went to such great lengths to mark celestial phenomena, but it’s beyond question that they did.
For centuries after A.D. 1, peace reigned across what is now the eastern United States as people of different cultures shared the same belief system. They made periodic pilgrimages to the Ohio Valley to build vast monuments that are so mathematically and astronomically precise that in 2023, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks were named Ohio’s only World Heritage Site.
Requiring more than a century to plan and build, the Octagon Earthworks at Newark mark the 18-year cycle of the moon.
More than 100 miles to the southwest, Fort Ancient charts the phases of the sun.
The 110-acre hilltop site is enclosed by 3.5 miles of earthen walls, some as high as 23 feet, said Neil Thompson, a spokesman for the Ohio History Connection, which runs and cares for the site.
Construction was an immense effort, given that the walls had to be built one basket of earth at a time — and had to be built sturdily enough to last for millennia.
“There’s no place in the world quite like this,” Thompson said. “They made the hilltop enclosure so the earthen walls followed the hilltop, and they were still able to code the solar alignment in what they did. I think it’s another human testament to the creative genius that made these places.”
Fort Ancient isn’t just some big, crude structure looking out over the Little Miami Valley.
“At Fort Ancient, the builders literally carved the rhythm of time into the land,” the History Connection’s website says. “Two of the distinctive limestone-capped mounds align to the summer solstice sunrise, and two align to the winter solstice sunrise. These days must have held deep importance for the site’s builders.”
Stand behind one of the mounds on Sunday and you’ll watch the sun rise through the exact center of a gap built into an earthen wall hundreds of yards away.
Doing so is free and open to the public, and you’ll likely be with people who have traveled from other continents just to see it.
As with other Hopewell sites, artifacts have been found at Fort Ancient that came from as far away as the Rocky Mountains, the Atlantic Ocean, modern Canada and the Gulf Coast.
That means that vast, intricate trading networks existed when it was built — although there’s no known written record from the time describing them.
Also due to the lack of a written record, it’s unknown why the movements of the sun and moon were so important to the Hopewell people that they’d undertake such a gargantuan effort to mark them.
But we know why the winter solstice was important to other cultures.
As the shortest day of the year, it could be a time to check grain and hay stores and decide what animals to slaughter so the rest could survive until spring.
That might call for a feast. And just being in the depths of the gloomiest part of the year might be reason enough for a celebration of light and rebirth and renewal.
Fort Ancient will open at 7 a.m. Sunday, with sunrise to come 50 minutes later. A guide will be there. Click here for a map and directions.
Weather in the area is expected to be clear and in the upper 20s. The museum will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and bathrooms are available. The park is open until 5 p.m.
This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.