One estimate is that Michigan was once home to tens of thousands of mounds. Mounds were so prevalent in the state once that the very road that my workplace is located on is called Mound Road for that reason. Few, if any, remain today having been plowed under and built over.

Normally, when we talk about burial mounds and such, we picture Indians. But should we? Who built the mounds of Michigan? The truth is, we don't know. Even the local Indian legends say the mounds existed when the first Indians arrived. They further state that the moun-builders were an "evil people" called Yam-Ko-Desh or "prairie people" and that they also minded copper. Archaeological evidence, however, turns up no connection to the copper pits or Upper Michigan and mounds. So now we have two mysteries: Who built the mounds and who mined the copper?

By the 1880s, farmers were digging up mounds constantly and finding very strange things. According to reports, there were cups, vases, knife-blades, "caskets," etc. The strangest of them were the copper and shale plates. The numbered into the thousands. They were examined by an Illinois attorney named Henrietta Mertz who cataloged the pieces. The Smithsonian fired off charges of fraud. The objects can't be real, they said. But Mertz, hired because of her expertise in detecting fraud, could find nothing fraudulent in them.

The problem is this: if the plates are real, it would mean a large, organized community of Christians of some sort lived in Michigan and built the mounds. So, this is either a huge fraud or one of the most significant archaeological finds ever. The sad thing is, hoax or not, they need to be studied and evaluated on the basis of that study--not on what science finds convenient to spout off about. Yet, science has shown so little interest that over half of this collection has been lost due to the fragile nature of the artifacts, most of which are sun-baked clay. Many have crumbled or been shattered due to carelessness and inexperience. These things unearthed by people all across the state. It would be impossible for anyone to have faked these and then put them in the ground for others to find.

People were tearing into mounds wherever they could find them. Only one in ten had anything in them but the yield was still a rich one. But science still insists they have to be fakes. Well, maybe they are. But what if they aren't? There are 13-month lunar calendars depicted here, for exmple. Certainly not impossible to fake but pretty imaginative and not without some good artistic skills. These artifacts need to be preserved and studied seriously and systematically. If they are real, we will need to radically modify our views of history. If they are fake, then at least we'll know:

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Professor W.B. Hinsdale of the University of Michigan surveyed some of the mounds in 1925 and came across this skull fragment which was printed in the Detroit News. It dates from before the Common Era. The hole is not ragged or jagged. The area around the hole is pristine. The hole is neatly cut. Who did this, how and why?

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